Catch this man, if you can. He’s in full flight again after ‘disappearing’ from the radar for a long time. While he was away, those close to him said he was preoccupied with challenges of immediate sort, a battle of political survival in his home state with some fellows he propelled into power, who now want to render him irrelevant. His ‘reappearance’ a few weeks ago came with his usual over the top comments that made the headlines. His gaffe that “Nigeria is becoming safer every day…” is by all accounts, an out of touch with reality. We shall come back to that shortly. But this much is plain: Alhaji Lai Mohammed, Minister of Information and Culture, is a hard-liner, a master of oversimplifying and generalizing complex issues and reducing them to one-line quips. For many years, that brusque style of his has been somewhat effective politically for the government he serves. For almost seven years, that demagoguery, a plain misstatement of facts, has also given him that all-important oxygen of publicity in the position he holds. But hubris sometimes do catch up with people who have this proclivity for maligning the truth. The country pays direly for their mistakes, outright lies and deceit.
Perhaps no official of President Muhammadu Buhari government has become a lightning rod in the air as Lai Mohammed. He evokes different images to different people. For some, he is a sort of joy, a talker and tackler who knows how to settle scores with government’s real and perceived detractors. For many other Nigerians, Lai Mohammed is a counterargument, a minister who defines truth downwards. Indeed, if life is measured just on the impact one has made on his appointed job, Lai Mohammed’s career will be written in volumes of hard cover. It will rivet attention, for good and for ill.
Before his foray into politics, a question was asked in the media: ‘Who’s Alhaji Lai Mohammed’? It was a question asked out of curiosity when someone pops up into public consciousness like a silent mystery. But he had been around for a while. Not until he became a protégé of former Governor of Lagos State, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who made him his Chief of state, Lai Mohammed was relatively an unknown quantity. Few people remembered he was once the imagemaker of the Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria (FAAN). As every political campaign has its own cadence and rhythm, an atmosphere that sets it apart, and propelled by his mentor, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu who knows how to reward loyalists, Lai Mohammed got on top of the tree. With the 2015 General elections fast approaching, and the then main opposition party, the All Progressives Congress (APC) in a desperate effort to acquire power, Lai Mohammed was the preferred choice as spokesperson of the APC.
Whatever he lacks in oratorical gifts, he makes up with hard-hitting words that would make the target look like a wimp. Having a larger end has always been important for political leaders. As the election neared, Lai’s fingerprints were all over APC’s publicity arsenal to unseat PDP. For APC, nothing should be spared. All is fair in politics. The party heaped all Nigeria’s mess on the then ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and President Goodluck Jonathan. Jonathan received the harshest verbal swipes as “clueless” and grossly “incompetent”. Somehow, the mud began to stick. Lai Mohammed won the propaganda offensive, and was accordingly rewarded as Minister of Information and Culture. Who could have done better than him? His profile rose. That’s what happens when you malign the truth to gain advantage. PDP, it must be said, didn’t do a good job in countering the APC offensive. Its communication of Jonathan’s accomplishments was poorly handled. That is now history.
The event of the moment supersedes all things else. Nigeria is still sailing through rough seas, almost on the brink. No calmer waters in sight. No doubt, this is a troubling time for the country and the citizens. Insecurity has taken a new dangerous dimension. And last week must be a sobering period for all. But the ruling APC is still in denial, even as the spate of insecurity seems to have overwhelmed the government. The attack on the Abuja-Kaduna bound train on March 28 must be a grave cause for worry for any responsible government. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo, and Pastor Enoch Adeboye have said that much at the weekend. I have never seen a Minister of information who tells the truth selectively as Lai Mohammed. His gift for fudging facts is like his ‘talent’ for lies. This is evident in the press briefing he had with reporters same day. This is vintage Lai. “ Nigeria is becoming safer every day with a string of successes being recorded in the fight against Boko Haram, ISWAP, bandits and other criminal elements “.
As if nemesis had conspired with terrorists, tragedy struck. According to the Daily Sun account of March 29, the Information Minister had “boasted that the Federal Government had done well in ensuring safety via rail transport. We are proud that in our time, Nigerians are once again able to travel by rail, this time in total comfort and safety “. Sounding very servile, he added, “I am very proud of our security forces, our men and women in uniform, they are living up to the billing. The camps of the terrorists have been decimated, and thousands of the terrorists and their families are surrendering in their droves. The effectiveness of the security forces has been enhanced by the leadership of President Muhammadu Buhari and the unwavering commitment of the Armed Forces and its leadership “. As we all know, this is the opposite of what has happened. Few hours after his vain boast, the terrorists struck.
About 970 passengers were reported on board the train. At least eight people have been confirmed killed in the attack and about 184 passengers still unaccounted for, according to the manifest released by the Nigerian Railway Corporation. As long as our political environment breeds opportunists who excel in pure demagoguery and telling lies, so long will Nigeria remain unsafe. Before we can solve this dilemma, we must stop living in denial. We must first resolve the leadership crisis that confronts our land. There are many Lai Mohammeds in this country. Admitted many of us have hidden flaws, what psychologists call “personality quirks” that seldom come to the surface. But some people have mastered how to control them successfully and resist their exploitation by people around them.
The flaws in the likes of Lai Mohammed could be as result of overweening pride. Such people, psychologists’ say, view admitting the truth as a sign of weakness. It’s also a reflection of the inner character of the individual. Recall that few years ago, same Lai Mohammed said, matter-of-factly, that Boko Haram had been “technically defeated”, only for the insurgents to carry out a new offensive in the North East, taking hundreds of female students into captivity. That’s why Nigeria is paying the hefty price in every sector of our national life. It’s all about leadership failure to acknowledge outright errors and determination to make amends.