Editor’s note: The UK newspaper Daily Mail has over the last weekend accused the Minister of Transportation Rotimi Amaechi of diverting N142bn during the presidential campaign in 2015. Abimbola Adelakun in this piece for the Punch shares her views on what President Muhammadu Buhari can do with his Minister Amaechi.
Derisive story about the Minister of Transportation
On Sunday, British tabloid, Daily Mail, published a rather derisive story about the Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi. The paper taunted Amaechi, “friend of the president” with a rhetorical question that asked if he was “fantastically corrupt.” That piece by the conservative press was a well-timed slung shot, calculated to land in Nigeria at the time when President Muhammadu Buhari’s band of disciples were still celebrating his almost unexpected riposte to the British PM, David Cameron; his earlier diplomatic gaffe at the anti-corruption summit in London had shown the level of contempt and condescension Cameron had for Nigeria.
Daily Mail seemed desperate to stanch the indignation that accompanied Cameron’s comment and what better way to do that damage control than to first scoff at Nigerians’ huff and puff at the Cameron’s colonialistic condescension, and then turn the joke on them? And what better way to turn it on Nigeria than pointing out to everyone that Buhari, the celebrated incorruptible leader of a “fantastically corrupt” country, has a huge log in his eyes that needs to be reported?
The report had nothing new to say — for Nigerians, that is — and it cannot be described as a particularly intelligent piece of journalism. It was largely a pastiche of recycled speculations about the role Amaechi paid in the 2015 election of Buhari.
By now, everyone in Nigeria has either heard of or read about how Amaechi was said to have “bankrupted” Rivers state while he was governor so as to finance Buhari’s election and for that reason, the President remains indebted to him, politically and morally. The paper did not present proof of this accusation and it is rather doubtful it had any. We know that money spent on election in this part of the world is neither invoiced nor receipted and anyone asking for empirical evidence in this case is either extremely naïve or simply duplicitous.
An incorruptible messiah on a donkey paid for by powerful but extremely corrupt friends
However, when the snide remarks and the inciting comments in the article are subtracted, one is left with a rather amusing portraiture of Buhari and the paradox he embodies — an incorruptible messiah of his people gallantly riding to Jerusalem on a donkey paid for by powerful but extremely corrupt friends. Perhaps, the only people who are not bothered by the apparent contradiction are the self-labelled “Buharists” whose zealotry and enthusiastic faith in Buhari are akin to religious worship.
Whatever the point or the politics of the piece by Daily Mail, what cannot be dismissed is its likely potency. Nigerian leaders tend to recoil at bad press when it comes internationally than when handed out by local critics. Nothing nurses the Nigerian leader’s narcissism better than to be given that much coveted back pat from the West. That perhaps explains why Buhari speaks more to the foreign media than he engages local journalists. At some point, whether by local or foreign journalists, he will be asked how he manages to balance his anti-corruption agenda with the company he keeps.
One of the most sensational stories of corruption ever sold in Nigeria
For a while now, his government’s anti-corruption drive has led to some really dazzling revelations of how past government inordinately dipped its hand into the public till to fund the 2015 elections. The Dasukigate involving the immediate past National Security Adviser, Sambo Dasuki, was one of the most sensational stories of corruption ever sold in Nigeria
But could amaechi be the only Judas in buhari's cabinet?
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