When Mr
Femi Adesina, Special Adviser on Media and Publicity to President Muhammadu
Buhari, explained why he has not followed my footsteps at the public
presentation of my book, ‘Against The Run of Play’, last Friday in Lagos, I had
a feeling that he might be speaking too soon. Going by feelers from Aso Rock,
the real drama of the health challenge of President Buhari may have just
started. And I feel very sorry for Mr Adesina because there is no manual for
managing the media for a sick president; especially under the political climate
in which we operate with all the mix of religion and ethnicity.
Tomorrow
marks exactly seven years that President Yar’Adua died and, as it has been a
tradition since May 2011, I usually coordinate a memorial advert for those of
us who were his principal officers in remembrance of him. It is also a period
when we reflect on what might have been. Against the background that President
Buhari, for the third week in a row, skipped the Federal Executive Council
(FEC) meeting yesterday, the rumour mill is already on overdrive while
parallels are already being drawn to the Yar’Adua saga.
On
Monday, Chief Bisi Akande, former Osun State Governor and founding National
Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), issued a loaded statement.
“The health of the leader is intricately intertwined with the health of the
nation. It is more so in a delicately fragile Union of Nations called Nigeria”
wrote Akande who claimed to have wept when he couldn’t see President Buhari at
the wedding of his grandson in Kaduna last Saturday.
Although
Chief Akande attributed the health challenge to “corruption fighting back”,
whatever that may mean, the point is that President Buhari’s capacity to govern
has been severely diminished and the agitation for him to either take another
medical vacation or resign would be more strident in the coming days and weeks,
especially if he does not resume work. That then explains why the idea of a
second term that some people within the administration are now canvassing, is not
only silly, it is very provocative. But it is also understandable.
In a
piece I did when President Buhari went on his elastic vacation in February, I
borrowed from the embedded lessons in the book, “When Illness Strikes The
Leaders: Dilemma of The Captive King” to examine the implications of what is
happening in Nigeria right now. According to Jerrold Post and Robert Robins,
“the ailing or aging leader and his close advisers can become locked in a fatal
embrace, each dependent upon the other for survival: a captive king and his
captive court. In the absence of clear rules for determining when a leader is
disabled and should be replaced and how a successor will be chosen, illness in
high office can be highly destabilizing”.
I
consider it very sad that Nigeria would be going through another traumatic
season like this on account of the health of the president. But we have to take
Mrs Aisha Buhari’s word that her husband is not in any immediate danger. While
we will come back to this issue another day, it is comforting that the handlers
of President Buhari have managed the Aso Rock end of the situation very well
thus far, given what I hear these days. I hope it stays that way.
Of Hackers and Pirates
My web
portal, olusegunadeniyi.com is loaded today. From the transcript of what
President Buhari’s spokesman, Mr Femi Adesina said at my book presentation to
that of his immediate predecessor, Dr Reuben Abati, there are revealing
insights for readers. I thank both of them for attending the book presentation.
On the web portal, there is also the speech by former Head of State, General
Abdulsalami Abubakar who, as chair of the occasion, arrived 10 minutes before
the scheduled time of 10am to meet Chief Emeka Anyaoku, Mr Remi Makanjuola and
several other members of their generation who were more disciplined and had to
be kept waiting for almost an hour before we started the event. On the website
also is the book review by Dr Okey Ikechukwu. It also contains the addresses of
the bookshops/places where the books can be purchased.
Meanwhile,
I have been overwhelmed by the kind words and messages of solidarity, following
the hacking and free distribution of my book, ‘Against The Run of Play’. While
I thank all the people who have taken it upon themselves to fight the infringement
on my intellectual property in the social media, and I have seen several
efforts, I want to make two things clear. One, this battle is not about me.
Two, given where I am coming from, I am not so much bothered by what happened.
Perhaps, I should explain that.
I wrote
my first book, ‘Before The Verdict’, in 1991 as a fresh reporter with The
Guardian on Sunday. I collected the CVs of the 23 presidential aspirants in
both the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and National Republican Convention (NRC)
which I then used to write their profiles. In my naivety, I imagined that
members of the two political parties would find it useful before making their
choices. I expended all my savings on it yet at the end, only one person paid
for a copy: Mrs Ireti Kingibe. I am not sure any other person read the book.
Following
the disqualification of the 23 presidential aspirants, I updated the book with
the reports of the primaries that led to their disqualification and titled it
‘Fortress on Quicksand’. I printed about a thousand copies which I hawked
around. The only person I can remember who gave me any money after collecting
two copies of the book is Dr Ibrahim Datti Ahmed, one of the disqualified SDP
presidential aspirants at the time. A year later, I wrote “POLITRICKS: National
Assembly under Military Dictatorship”.
Despite
the fact that the book captured the entire debate on the June 12, 1993
presidential election as well as all the drama preceding it, I got no feedback
that any of the people who took the copies, free of charge, read it. Yet, that
did not deter me from writing, in August 1997, “Abiola’s Travails” to mark his
60th birthday at a time the winner of the annulled June 12, 1993 presidential
election was in detention. For that effort, only the then Chairman of PUNCH
newspaper, Chief Ajibola Ogunsola gave me any financial support. That in itself
is very instructive since I was at the time a staff of Abiola’s Concord
newspapers.
In all
those efforts, what motivated me was to tell the background stories of the
political developments at the time even when it was not financially rewarding.
But by the time I got married in December 1998, I had to come to terms with the
fact that I no longer had any money to waste on books that I was not sure
people were reading.
However,
early in 2005, then as the editor of Sunday THISDAY, I wrote a column about
those goading President Olusegun Obasanjo to seek a third term in office. Many
of them were involved in the late General Sani Abacha’s controversial
transition programme that was designed to end with his adoption and I named
names. The responses I got to the piece suggested that majority of Nigerians
had forgotten. That was the inspiration for yet another book: The Last 100 Days
of Abacha.
Before
I started, I sent a mail to Nobel Laureate, Prof Wole Soyinka that I was
writing a book on Abacha and I would want him to present it for me. Days turned
to weeks and I didn’t hear from him. Then, one day, I got a mail from him
saying he would be in the country within two weeks and that he would like to
see the manuscript. I had not even written a single line!
I went
to Vanguard, PUNCH and Daily Times where I spent days using their libraries
after which I wrote the draft. On completion, I sent it to Reuben Abati to help
me look at. He called to say that he enjoyed it and that he would write a
comment which I could use any way I liked. Without solicitation, that was how
Reuben wrote what I turned to the Foreword while Col Abubakar Dangiwa Umar
(rtd) wrote the Postscript. The book sold out within weeks despite the price
tags of N8,000 for paperback and N15,000 for the hardback editions. It was the
first financially rewarding book I wrote.
The
next book of course was “Power, Politics and Death”. Even though the online
edition was hacked from Day One and was being circulated free, I still made
some good money from the sales and we actually printed a second edition. In
2012 and 2013, I worked on The Verbatim Report (The Inside Story of the Fuel
Subsidy Scam). It took me more than one year to complete but at the end, I put
the book on my website for free download. It is one of the most extensive works
on our oil and gas industry. It is about 800 pages. Interested readers can
still download it free on my web portal just like the Abacha book which is also
there for free download.
I have
gone to this length to let readers know that my motivation for writing has
always been to tell compelling stories that would be read while monetary
consideration is secondary. However, as I stated in the statement I released on
Sunday, I am more worried, especially for those in Nollywood, who are
practically at the mercy of hackers and pirates. When creative people in both
the arts and sciences cannot be guaranteed the legitimate benefits of their
sweat and investments, they lose the incentive to take the risk to create and
innovate. And when that happens, the whole society loses.
I thank
all the individuals and groups who have taken it upon themselves to fight not
only for me but against the theft of intellectual property that is now becoming
rampant in our country.
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