Adesina, It’s Time to Shush!

Perhaps, it is only Mr. Femi Adesina, President Muhammadu Buhari’s media aide, who does not know his role in the government of the day, that has enlisted more enemies for the administration as well as heaped more credibility burden on the president.

He not only calls critical Nigerians names at will, he calls their bluff regularly as though being called to accountability is a sin. Adesina looks too much like his utterances and is unable to detach himself from the reality that power is transient. That this is coming from a journalist with name recognition makes his case even the more tragic.

Speaking recently about subsidy on a national television, Adesina said because some people were opposed to the removal of the cankerworm and greatest official corruption pretext of all time, then, the alternative would be more borrowings so that government could have sufficient money to take care of other needs, including infrastructure development.

Now, Adesina is shifting the blame of his boss’ inability to make hard choices on the people opposed to the removal of subsidy. To think his principal had always been opposed to the idea of retaining subsidy and even accused previous administration of stealing humongous amount of money that could have been diverted to other productive uses, makes his latter days submission sheer hypocrisy.

Thankfully, the days of the Buhari administration are numbered and technically, with the extension of the removal date, the president has deferred the task to the incoming administration and this, without sidestepping the issues, has exposed the inability of the government to do anything, let alone take difficult decisions.

Adesina would do well by learning to keep quiet. Enough of the damage so far done to the government and the president. It would cost him nothing to maintain some dignified silence for the rest of his days in office. That he would be the first media aide to any president to have spent eight straight years by 2023, is the reason his ignoble and unpatriotic interventions are disenchanting and unpardonable.