Abba-Aji: A burden called presidential adviser

Put mildly, the outgoing week has been a hectic one for me. I have had to visit every conceivable library and bookshop around Lagos in search of a dictionary, a thesaurus or any reference material that could provide a guide on the true meaning of Abba-Aji, the surname of the nation’s Presidential Adviser on National Assembly Matters. Sadly, it has been a fruitless effort.

After dropping two bombshells that unsettled the nation and left President Goodluck Jonathan scandalised, I wanted to know if Abba-Aji is a synonym for parrot or a compound word for verbal diarrhoea. But not even my resort to the Internet has been of any help. Neither Google nor the other search engines could offer any meaningful assistance in the onerous task I set for myself. They are yet to appreciate the phenomenon that Senator Mohammed Abba-Aji has become in the political lexicon of the world’s largest black nation.

Indeed, ‘’iconoclast’’ would have been a preferred word in describing the burden that Abba-Aji has become on the President he is supposed to advise. But I have studiously avoided the word after after realising that in the heady days of the late Nigerian maximum ruler, Gen. Sani Abacha, the nation was also ladened with a voluptuous Minister of Special Duties, the late Alhaji Wada Nas, whose name was corrupted to Wada Noise on account of his reckless outbursts.

The difference, however, is that while Nas’s outbursts were aimed at defending his principal’s interests, the verbal gyrations of Abba-Aji are such that have subjected Jonathan’s bid for another term as President to severe strain.

Curiously, he chose the outpost of an opposition party to launch a verbal missile against the House of Representatives for passing the Freedom of Information Bill. Speaking with reporters in Maiduguri, the capital of the All Nigeria People’s Party-controlled Borno State, Abba-Aji tore into the lawmakers at the lower chambers for seeking to bring an end to the ill fate that has been the lot of the bill since the Obasanjo administration.

He did not only express hope that the Senate would throw out the bill that is intended to give concerned Nigerians greater access to information on the goings-on in government, he also revealed his strategy to frustrate the bill at the Presidency level if it survived the Senate.

Not one that would deny working against the interest of the larger society, Abba-Aji boasted that he led the forces that frustrated the passage of the 34-clause piece of legislation on the floor of the National Assembly during the Obasanjo administration. He therefore vowed to return to the trenches if that is what he must do to see that public interest does not override the personal interests of public office holders.

It did not come as a surprise that President Jonathan had to disown the statement that was bound to draw public outrage at a time he was still battling with the ripples of the insult he launched against the South-West while flagging off his zonal electioneering campaign in Ibadan on February 8. In a moment of accidental discharge, the President announced to the crowd that turned out at the rally that the South-West was ‘’too important to be left in the hands of rascals.’’

Of course, the statement drew the ire of governors and other leaders in the zone, as well as the electorate, who felt that the President’s statement amounted to questioning their sense of judgment in voting for so-called rascals. The result of the presidential goof at Ibadan seemed to have manifested in the scanty crowd that attended the campaign rally Jonathan held at the Tafawa Balewa Square in Lagos on Tuesday.

Speaking with journalists at the Murtala Mohammed International Airport in Lagos on his way to the rally on Tuesday, the Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Mr Ima Niboro, declared that Abba-Aji spoke for himself and not for the President or the government. “I speak for the President and the Information Minister speaks for the government. In the matters of law, the Attorney-General of the Federation speaks for the government. If the speech didn’t come from any of the three of us, then he is speaking for himself,” he said.

While Niboro’s denial fulfilled a moral obligation, it offers no insurance against the Abba-Aji’s threat to frustrate the signing of the bill into law like he did during the Obasanjo administration. Niboro’s denial will amount to nothing if Abba-Aji succeeds in killing the bill at the upper chamber of the National Assembly.

And while Niboro was busy disowning Abba-Aji’s statement on the Freedom of Information Bill in Lagos, the senator was elsewhere granting an interview to a national newspaper, declaring that there is no vacancy for Igbo presidency in 2015. The statement is seeing by many as another deadly blow to Jonathan’s presidential campaign in the zone that is supposed to be a stronghold of the Peoples Democratic Party.

Of course, Jonathan’s camp will also dismiss this as a product of Abba-Aji’s hallucination. The presidential adviser himself issued a statement yesterday to recant his position on the Igbo presidency, obviously as a result of pressure from the various interest groups affected by his outburst. But even the apology was so tepid as to pass for an afterthought. The Yoruba say that a word spoken by an epileptic could well be the voice of God, because he goes to heaven on a daily basis.

The longer Jonathan keeps an adviser like Abba-Aji, the more the opposition he has to contend with even within his own cabinet. He has said enough to prove that he poses more threat to Jonathan’s victory in the presidential race than a combination of Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari and Alhaji Ibrahim Shekarau.

Who wants to be a prisoner?

I deserve no credit for the above headline. It is simply an adaptation of Frank Edoho’s popular television programme, Who Wants to be a Millionaire?

After seeing the fresh and chubby looks of former National Vice Chairman of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) last week, I told myself that if the ebullient figure that danced away at the thanksgiving service organised for him in a Lagos church had just returned from prison where he was believed to have spent two years, many of us must have been living in hell all this while.

His rosy cheeks, fresh skin and calm mien painted the picture of one who had been on vacation and had enjoyed life to the fullest. Not a few of his friends, associates and well wishers at the church service last Saturday must have wished that they were the ones in George’s shoes.

Considering this and the instant hero his associates in the PDP sought to make of him, I have a feeling that prison experience must have become so attractive that another version of Frank Edoho’s programme tagged ‘Who Wants Be a Prisoner?’ could be an instant hit. What do you think?