By CHIDI OBINECHE
Often times, savvy patriots insist they are honest about everything. Not even when what they say or do diminish themselves or threaten their own self esteem and their relationships with others in weakening their trust in them. It doesn’t matter to those who are hooked on it that the art could be a burden to anyone’s comfort. Any rat in a sewer can live up to its set goals. That is the nature of rats. But a human doesn’t indulge in fancy- free patriotism as the driving force of his life no matter the stakes or compulsion because he is more. A certain Mr Penderwick observed many years ago that ‘.. Even a tiny bit of patriotism is not dishonourable when it is used for altruistic reasons’.
The sages also observed that just one wrong move but well intentioned has the power to tarnish a thousand good deeds of the past. President Muhammadu Buhari’s current debilitation has screwed up a twirling cocktail of mechanisms served on the altar of patriotism, but which most people pass off as deceit and cover ups. It has enlivened the political space with a stench that can be perceived miles away. His minders and state officials are in a mindless race to outdo one another.
Mohammed, the man charged with his government’s information machinery has been at his wits end churning out spicy “palatable” chunks of facts. The morsels come in shapes and designs enamoured to hoodwink and please at the same time. The secrecy that has characterized the president’s sickness apparently may have put the man charged with information management a hapless creature of the road. For a man who loves to do his job, the squeeze is most likely to come between him and the perceptive members of the public. And he goes down as the whipping boy in a storm that no one understands the rubrics. It strangely benumbs the mind.
At the height of apprehension over the president’s detour to reclusiveness on account of health challenges, missing the Federal Executive Council meetings and other official duties for weeks, Mohammed has been at his best striving to stitch the broken ends together in all earnestness. Mohammed has at every bend of the way been handy and most effusive in the defense of his party and government with soulful sophistry and song that belies the sheer nationalistic instincts that drive his politics. Of course such smouldering passion goes with missteps.
A most salacious one was dropped on Monday when in a most clawless candour he declared that Nigeria’s culinary delicacy, Jollof rice, a joyous gift from the Yoruba ethnic stock some odd centuries ago and now savoured worldwide actually originated from Senegal. Whether he said it to deflate the simmering wrangling between Ghana and Nigeria over ownership of the dish, or it was just another of stories from his rich bag of wise cracks still knocks at the mind. It was a crack demonstration of shining headwork slaughtered on a delicate imbalance, a disservice to the tongue.
The crux of the matter is that in this cesspit, one has to always assume that it must be said, seen or felt. That is the burden of information management, the cross to carry when all and everything looks up to you. It could be fun, even jazzy. But it is lonely. Patriotism in the trenches no matter the euphemism it is clothed in is a bugger. It can put one in the crappers. It defaces the mirror of reality.
Born in 1952 to the family of Alhaji Mohammed Adekeye, he earned a bachelor’s degree in French from Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife in 1975 and Law degrees from the University of Lagos and the Nigerian Law School in 1986. He co – founded the legal firm of Edu and Mohammed as a Senior Partner in 1989. He served as the Chairman of of Optimedia Limited, a subsidiary of Afromedia Plc since December 18, 2008. He also served as a Director of Afromedia Plc since May 2011 He is a fellow of the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations (NIPR) and worked as Public Relations Officer for about ten years at the Nigerian Airport Authority, now Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria (FAAN). He was Chief of Staff in the government of Bola Ahmed Tinubu in Lagos and later ran for the governorship of Kwara state on the platform of the Alliance for Democracy, AD. He was the National Publicity Secretary of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) and later All Progressives Congress, APC. He was on November 11, 2015 sworn in as Minister of Information and culture.