A Note to Dele Momodu, Purveyor-General of Deception

There is renewed hope as expectations have become reality of the overwhelming determination of the people to get things right with the 2019 general elections at the doorsteps and the choice of new leadership to steer the country back to greatness.

Dele Momodu has once again exhibited his unique talent for spinning fables without even a thread of truth connected to his prolific eruption of words. It is his penchant to attempt turning a grain of sand into a mountain, or ants into giants.

Perhaps, too nimble with the pen while too careless with factual analysis, Momodu is more showman than journalist. He seeks sensation and attention more than veracity. Sadly, his ego, swashbuckling pen, his passing acquaintance with the truth, all highlighted on the back page of THISDAY Newspaper, means that he is well-placed to spin false narratives that sometimes trap the uncritical reader. More often than not, Momodu is hoisted and entrapped by his artifices.

Three examples will suffice. During the Osun gubernatorial campaigns, Momodu falsely claimed that the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) had frozen seven bank accounts belonging to Senator Ademola Adeleke and his family, including popular musician Davido. Momodu later had to apologize for this flight of fancy. However, unrepentant in his pursuit of untrue scandal, Momodu quickly moved into another fabrication: He circulated a video of an American man declaring his support for Senator Iyiola Omisore as Governor of Osun State. This video was quickly debunked by an activist, Kayode Ogundamisi, who showed that the video was clickbait created via an online platform called ‘Video Spokesperson’ that allows purchasers to create such pretend or jocular videos for $30. The third instance of Momodu dissembling was when he falsely posited that Femi Otedola had confirmed to him that he would run for Governor of Lagos. Otedola quickly said he never told Momodu such a thing. Momodu never replied to Otedola calling out this outrageous breach of truth and of friendship. It is in this context that we should view Momodu’s recent contribution to the genre of political fiction entitled ‘Buhari, Tinubu and the Abdication of Responsibility’, published in the January 12 edition of THISDAY Newspaper. In this article, Momodu complains that President Buhari intended for Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu to campaign in his stead. Momodu claimed this is why President Buhari named Asiwaju Tinubu as his campaign co-chair. Momodu went into a verbal tirade that designating Tinubu as co- chairman was a historic abdication of presidential responsibility that should automatically disqualify the president’s re-election bid. One must feel sorry for Momodu. It seems that ever creeping envy has driven the mad hatter even madder.

Momodu squanders an entire page of valuable journalistic real estate on essentially a non-issue. My goodness, every presidential campaign I have ever heard of has a campaign organization wherein someone other than the candidate manages the daily operations of the campaign. Even Momodu’s new found hero, former VP Atiku Abubakar, has people managing his futile run for office. Strange that Momodu grouses about Buhari when Atiku is guilty of like infraction. In fact, objectivity would compel one to admit that a sitting president has a lot of work to do with regard to national governance. It would seem the sitting president has a greater reason to have someone manage his campaign. Atiku, the man of rich and easy leisure, has no such demands on his time and can devote himself fully to the pursuit of what he sees as the golden chalice.

Momodu knows well that every campaign needs a proper structure and an important reason for that structure is to create a division of labour whereby the candidate can focus on those things that only the candidate can do. If Momodu bothered to read the President’s statement on this matter, he would have seen that Asiwaju was to oversee day-to-day operations on the president’s behalf but not campaign in his stead.

President Buhari made it clear that he would campaign. Putting a lie to Momodu’s speculation, the president, after the inauguration of the presidential campaign council, attended the January 12 campaign rally in Bauchi. Let’s be honest here. Momodu is not mad about the president attending or not attending a campaign rally. Momodu is mad that the president has been governing without making recourse to the fount of wisdom that Momodu believes only he possesses. The president’s crime is that he did not put Momodu first. Thus, Momodu wants to put the president last. Momodu is the type of person who upon seeing a happy parade pass by rushes to call his friends that he just saw a funeral procession simply because the parade organizers were at fault by failing to designate him the grandmaster of their affair. Momodu is an interloper cum laude.

Since his paymasters have hired him to attack the president, he will do what a hired larynx is paid to do- shout at every opportunity. Imagine if the president had taken the opposite approach and told us that he is placing governance on hold so that he could focus on the campaign. Momodu would have excoriated the president to no end. Momodu would have shouted that the president was sacrificing governance of the nation in order to satisfy his personal ambitions. Now, when the president places his personal wellbeing in the back seat, Momodu claims this is an abdication of duty. I am familiar with the duties the constitution bestows on our chief executive. I am much less familiar with any law or even moral obligation that requires a president to campaign as Dele Momodu would have it. If such a rule exists, it exists only in the selfconceit of its author.

Yet, even in the interstices of his retreating moral conscience, Momodu must admit to himself that the president’s position that he will focus on governance but campaign as required is the most stately and appropriate stance any leader could take. Trying to turn the practice of every decent president in all democratic societies into an offense because President Buhari is involved merely shows the shallow nature of the opposition. They believe that they can turn a speck of ice into a raging fire just by screaming long and loud enough. They may try as is their right to do, but they ought not to complain when one points out how foolish they look in attempting the futile task.

In another section of his article, Momodu takes a clumsy broadside swipe in an attempt to create disaffection between the President and Vice-President. He claimed that the president only fully allows the VP to operate when the president is out of country and the VP becomes the acting president. This argument is meretricious in the extreme. The Vice-President can only be given the powers of Acting President when the President is out of country. When the president is in Nigeria, he cannot well cede his powers to the VP. If he did such a thing, it would be abdication of constitutional and legal authority several magnitudes greater than the false abdication that gave rise to Momodu’s article and crocodile tears. How can Momodu logically rail against this imaginary abdication yet promote an abdication of a much more grievous nature? He can do so because logic and truth mean nothing to him. He was hired to spit fire and before you spit fire you must first eat it.