By Abdulrahman Sade
Over a template of periscoping Nigeria’s public relations practitioners and the various media men that have represented politicians and any other high profile principals who desire media representation, Garba Shehu has stuck out like a shining armour. Not in the negative aspect of it, but in all its ramifications.
The man Garba Shehu today speaks for President Muhammadu Buhari, but before that he bestraddle the Nigeria media space speaking for someone who, for all intents and purposes, fought to sustain the sanity and sanctity of our democracy, Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar.
This means that Garba Shehu has the finesse, the intellect and the witticism to somnambulate from all sides of the divide.
Many people have talked about the role played by the former Vice President to sustain our fledgling democracy but not many have seen Garba Shehu to be worthy of any mention, not knowing that so many people have spoken for Atiku before but none has reached the depth and soul of Nigerians like Garba Shehu did. In fact if caution is thrown to the winds, Garba Shehu can be credited with single handedly shooting down the third term move of Obasanjo otherwise described as the tenure elongation mechanism.
Indeed, Garba Shehu has so become a household name that you cannot say Garba Shehu and get the question which one. There is only one Garba Shehu in Nigeria. He is intelligent, combative, respectful, rambunctious, appealing, logical, fierce, witty and in so many occasions brutally frank. Garba Shehu is a friend of the rich and a servant of the poor. And it is a fact that everybody who has ever worked with him has had niceties to say about Garba Shehu.
He is so many media men rolled into one, a media man’s media man. And the good thing about Garba Shehu is that he is unassuming.
I have seriously considered making Garba Shehu my role model because the way in which he defused what ordinarily would have turned into a huge controversy, because of his realistic view of life. When PMB made the announcement of the two men to take charge of his and his government’s image, two names came to the fore, Femi Adeshina and Garba Shehu.
Immediately, the north and especially its media men went into the question of which supersedes the other. It would have raised serious conflict and power play in the corridors of power if not for Garba Shehu’s humility. He it was who drew the attention of his professional colleagues and supporters by breaking the offices down and subjecting himself to the seniority of Adesina. He had quelled a serious fire with his humility and truthfulness and since then there has been peace in the Villa.
When Garba Shehu wants to take someone to the cleaners, he does so with a type of sophistry that when he tells you to go to hell, you simply ask for a direction there. One of the key Nigerian politicians that would forever regret that he allowed his yes men to discard of the services of Garba Shehu in government was General Olusegun Obasanjo, who got a real taste of Garba Shehu’s medicine when he allowed the ace publicist to fight for democracy on the side of Atiku. Another of Garba Shehu’s acerbic media venom is Mr Labaran Maku, the megalomanic information minister under former president Goodluck Ebele Jonathan.
See what Garba Shehu wrote on Maku in this Wednesday column in the people’s Daily where he holds a substantial share. He writes; beyond occasional insults hurled at men and women, past and present in power in the North, Maku’s edge is that he speaks Hausa to the BBC and the Voice of America, which gives him direct connections to the hearts and minds of the Northern masses. Talking about his courage, who but Maku could go to Kaduna, the so-called home of the “Kaduna Mafia” – famous for running and ruining Nigeria (?) – to tell the Northerners that they should forget the Presidency in 2015 because “power can never return to the North”
(Nigeria Observer), and that “Northern leaders lack the moral reasons to lead the country come 2015”?
Maku alone can look at the Northern political elite and tell them that they are tied to ethnic politics and religious bigotry. In Kaduna at the self-styled “townhall meeting” he pronounced that the emancipation of the North would not come from a Northerner (which curiously includes himself). “Every day, we keep advising people that politics is not madness, it is not about religious bigotry, it is like market… All the Propaganda and fight for political power are only retarding the North’s development.”
This does not merely underline his clarity of thought but also establishes his fearlessness when tackling recalcitrant views in or outside government. I am recalling all these here because Garba Shehu has remained an unsung hero for a long time. It is time we begin to cheer our own. When good deeds are left unsung over a long period, they disappear into the wilderness and are eventually forgotten.
The media cannot afford to leave its windows undraped while it spends all its time draping other professional’s verandas. Garba Shehu was at different times Managing Director of the Triumph newspapers, President Nigeria Guild of Editors, frontman of the Atiku Campaign Organisation and later headed the All Progressives Congress media team before he was appointed to become the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media. He is a man worth talking about.
Sade wrote from Abuja
