I was saddened watching Mr. Bayo Onanuga, Special Adviser to President Bola Tinubu on Information and Strategy, discuss the state of the nation on Arise Television on Tuesday. To be fair, though, he is the president’s spokesperson and his job entails defending the indefensible. But beyond that, he has the reputation of insensitivity to the plight of ordinary Nigerians whenever he finds himself on the corridors of power, an attitude he exhibited grotesquely during the interview. Nigerians may have forgotten how barely four months after he was appointed Managing Director of the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) by President Muhammadu Buhari in May 2016, Onanuga, a veteran journalist, went on a social media rant accusing the Nigerian media of “over-sensationalisation,” and deliberateness in discrediting the Buhari government.
Just as he did two days ago, he insisted in the September 6, 2016 Facebook post that reports in the media about hardship were “mere propaganda” orchestrated by those who lost the 2015 election. “I was in Bauchi and Jos at the weekend, I also found that food was cheap everywhere,” he wrote. “In our hotel, we paid about N700 for a plate of semovita, or eba with a choice of catfish or chicken. On the roadside, I found to my surprise that with just N1000, I bought over 50 oranges, two giant water melon and 10 pieces of sweet potato. I had experienced a similar thing in the market at Abuja, where I found that with N1,400, I could make a big vegetable soup, with tomato, pepper and roasted Titus fish.” And the sucker punch: “Are the media and bloggers really painting a correct image of our country? It’s time for the media to objectively conduct a reality check about our reports, whether we are not over sensationalising so-called hardship that we talked about.” Then, the suffering of Nigerians was “so-called,” an illusion and a figment of the people’s imagination, just as it is today.
