“What kind of landing is this”?
That was President Muhammadu Buhari in November 2015 as the presidential jet made a difficult landing in Malta, which hosted the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting that year. The President and his Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina; and the others in the aircraft were rattled by what was later explained to be a wind shear, which is rapid change in wind velocity or direction.
This was one of the anecdotes Adesina shared with friends and associates at the weekend during a farewell dinner they hosted for him.
Adesina, who got appointed while he was both Managing Director of Sun Publishing Limited and President of the Nigerian Guild of Editors, said that he had been a believer in President Buhari from his first coming as Nigerian leader – between 31st December 1983 and 27th August 1985 – because of his anti-corruption stance. “Indeed, I didn’t like (Ibrahim) Babangida at all for overthrowing the Buhari regime”, Adesina said.
He said that he kept advocating for General Buhari and his policies in his weekly column that the latter had to call him one day to express his gratitude. According to Adesina, the discussion lingered enough for the former Nigerian military leader to be convinced that this was indeed a deep skinned Buharist.
Adesina recalled that he got a call on 31st May 2015 that he would be announced as the presidential spokesman. President Buhari was only two days in office. Adesina recalled: “I knew I needed to quit my job and quit my position as President of the Nigerian Guild of Editors; which I didn’t feel like doing, but which I knew I must do.
“The first thing I did on 1st June was to fly to Abuja and see the President, thank him for the appointment and tell him that because I have a job running, I required about one week to go and disengage. He granted it. I came back. I saw my publisher; I met with the management, and on the day I was going to turn in my resignation, I woke up at 5 am, and started to cry. My wife didn’t know I was crying, she just took an ointment and passed it to me. She thought I had catarrh. She didn’t know I was crying that I was going from the known to the unknown. I didn’t know what government held in stock; I didn’t know what I was going to meet there. I just didn’t want to leave what I was doing. But I had to leave for a man I had sold to Nigerians. I had propagated him so much that I would be a hypocrite if I didn’t take that job”.
Adesina found to his amazement that the remuneration for his category of public officers was three times less than what he earned as Managing Director of Sun Publishing Limited, publishers of The Sun newspapers. “What have you got yourself into? What is this? How will I survive on this”? he wondered to himself.
“In eight years, that salary didn’t change. That is why you see people who don’t what to leave private sector for government, except they want to go and steal.
“I stuck it out and God has been awesome in terms of provision”, he further said.
Adesina said that for President Buhari, loyalty is everything. And he reciprocates loyalty with loyalty. He said: “If you are loyal to him, he is loyal to you. That’s why today in democracy, there is no Special Adviser Media who had served eight years.
“I asked him in the series of interviews we conducted with him recently. He dropped only two ministers in his eight years in office. He told me the reasons. I know a President who was happy whenever he fired any of his ministers. He just like rubbishing people. But this is a man who is very loyal”.
Adesina said he lost some friends while doing his job, but he also gained a lot more. “Many times on social media there will be toxic comments, but the President will tell me not to worry. Sometimes I tell him some things and he would ask where I got it. ‘Social media?’. He would say, ‘don’t mind those people’”.
President Buhari had been pronounced dead several times by some of his traducers. And some even wished him ill all the time. Adesina spoke about one of them: “I remember one false prophet. In the last quarter of last year, we had travels lined up – about four, five countries within two, three weeks. That was when he came with the prophesy that the presidential plane was going to have issues. I noted it. We went to all the trips, nothing happened. When we returned, I wrote in my column. And we know each other. He called me: ‘Alagba, e ba bami discuss kini yen now (you should have discussed this with me, Elder)?’ Did he consult anybody before he went public with his false prophesy”?
Adesina said that being in the seat of power is not all roses. “There are risks and dangers, but people think it is all fun, all rosy. I see on social media when they abuse me; that I’m leaving in free government house, I’m riding free government cars, feeding fat on government; they don’t know how much I earned and how much I used to earn. It’s a big sacrifice for our country. And we have to do it.
“At the end of it all, I went to do the job. I’m glad that I went to serve somebody I admire and respect. You can’t do this job for just anybody. It is not a job. It is a commitment. If what I wanted was a job, I didn’t need it at the time I was called to do it”, he said.
