A Clarion Call to Arms (4)
When Charles Igoh Came for Lunch
“On Sunday, May 29, Mr. Igoh, the president’s spokesman, came over to the house for lunch, and by the time that we had chatted for some four hours, it was clear that he didn’t like the things I had been writing on the president.”
It is one thing to write a column and he ignored, and it is another thing to write one and be challenged regularly by those who disagree with you. Some may even get so angry with you that they will call you names. And until you get used to being abused, you may lose some sleep. But once you take it as the price you pay for shooting your mouth, you take it all in stride and understand it to be one of the lesser hazards of writing a column. Charles Igoh, the president’s main spokesman, is an able man who has the eloquence to address himself to those matters that he has chosen to address himself. On Sunday, May 29, Mr. Igoh came over to the house for lunch, and by the time that we had chatted for some four hours, it was clear that he didn’t like the things I had been writing on the president. He was quite genteel about the whole thing. He made it clear that the president was not angry that I was writing critically about his administration. If fact, I didn’t even ask the pointed question of whether the president was angry about any particular article. We just took the path of honourable disagreement on a range of issues.
Precisely, Mr. Igoh said he didn’t mind, and that President Shagari didn’t mind, that I had become a little critical recently of his administration. But he, minded, and that the president minded, that I was writing only in general terms without listing instances of executive lapses that I pointed out in the continuing series called “A Clarion Call to Arms.” That gave me food for thought, and that’s what I did even as Charles continued in his baritone to insist that I was not being specific in my criticism. After some reflections, I didn’t think that Charles Igoh, too, was being specifi in saying that I wasn’t being specific. But I was at a disadvantage. The gentleman was my guest, and courtesy demanded that I thought deep and hard before saying anything, and even then I must pace my expression.
Before Mr. Igoh left, I told him that I would think about his kind words, although I insisted that I had been as specific as I could be without running foul of my style of writing. I told him that I preferred to look at problems in conceptual terms without descending to the position of a cataloguer. For example, I told him, the instalment on how the president selected his cabinet was specific enough as a case expression of how the president displayed a lack of understanding of how the system he heads should work. That phrase which came up a number of times in my column seemed to be the most insufferably annoying part of the piece in the view of the State House. If you look at it another way, it appears as though Mr. Igoh was accusing me of rudeness to the president of the republic, although he didn’t quite say so. It was really tough to be so confronted. Charles Igoh and I then agreed that we should establish better communication to avert disagreements in the future, even if that meant that I should ask to see the president to get clarifications on an issue or another.
I knew that Sunday that I would be at the State House on the following Wednesday for the monthly presidential briefing with vice-president Ekwueme. Charles didn’t tell me that President Shagari himself would be there to host the luncheon for the news executives. And I didn’t know this until I reached the State House when Igoh told me that the president would meet the journalists that day. That’s when I knew that at some point that day, a discussion of mt series might come up, as it surely did, but in the subtle manner in which President Shagari is wont to deal with these matters. Interestingly enough, I was looking forward to an encounter with the president, no matter what shade it took. And when it happened, Vice-President Ekwueme started it. Four or five journalists were asked to join the president, the vice-president and the minister of information, Alhaji Garba Wushishi, in the small living room set away to the side of the main hall of the House on Marina. I was included in the group. I must confess that I felt slightly uneasy sitting next to the president of whom I had written so harshly just three days earlier. But he chose not to bring up the article, although we both knew that its fumes were in that room at that time. The president only challenged Dan Agbese, the editor of the New Nigerian, for publishing a series of articles that supported Liblya’s Ghaddafi at the expense of Nigeria. I wasn’t able to see what was happening behind Dan’s placid expression as the president told him he read everything closely.
I thought it would be my turn next, and I was ready to join issues with the first citizen on the matter, but he chose not to bring it up. However, as the discussion on the relationship between the press and the government continue, Vice-President Ekwueme looked at me and said: “Dele, why haven’t written a column criticizing how Awojobi (Professor Ayodele Awojobi) was been misusing access to the court, but you people wrote an editorial calling for the resignation of Umaru Dikko?” I didn’t expect the question, but I realized immediately that the issue there, knowing the way the vice-president’s mind works, was the call for the resignation of Umaru Dikko, the minister, of transport, who was also the director-general of President Shagari’s re-election campaign. After joking that Yakubu Mohammed should be asked to defend his action for carrying the ringing editorial, I said that seriously, Umaru Dikko should not hold those two jobs. The vice-president disagreed, saying that he couldn’t see anything wrong with Dikko’s dual role, especially since the president had decided that Dikko was capable of combining the two jobs. I said, and kept laughing in trying to keep things light, that I disagreed. I told the vice-president that Dikko couldn’t hold those two jobs for they were incompatible: you couldn’t hold a ministerial job and then hold a partisan political job. The vice-president then asked me if I was suggesting that the president, who holds as executive job, could not hold a political job. I said he could, in the sense that the constitution permitted him to, and that his executive job was political in the real sense that he was holding, as I put it, “an elective, political, executive job.”
Just before the president joined the discussion, the vice-president asked again:” Are you saying that the president can’t assign any job he likes to anyone he likes based on his judgment?”
“I am not saying that, Sir,” I said, “I am saying that the president can’t give a minister paid with part of my taxes a partisan assignment.”
Then President Shagari came in. He said: Are you saying that I can’t ask Umaru to carry out an assignment for me?”
“No, Sir,” I said, “Mr. Dikko can carry out assignments for you, so long as they are ministerial and government assignments. But he can’t take on political and partisan assignments.”
“But in essence,” the president said, “I am the director-general of my campaign. I only ask Umaru to do a thing or two.”
“Ah,” I said, “so we are all wrong in addressing Mr. Dikko as the director-general of the campaign.”
“No,” the president said.
All this time, the discussion was carried out in a relaxed atmosphere. After the point was gently made that Mr. Dikko could not combine the ministerial role with the partisan political role, at least from my viewpoint, I offered to take over one of his jobs. The president then quipped that he could not give me that job because I was no longer a loyal party man. It would be rude of me to look at mmy president and say that I was never a member of the National Party of Nigeria (NPN) or any party for that matter. But I said gamely that I was a loyal member of the party. Someone then: “which party?”
“Of course, the president’s party?” I said.
That was perhaps the president’s way of saying that I was getting a little too hard on his government and perhaps his party. But he was very nice about it as Charles Igoh had been days earlier. And it seemed clear that the president, the vice-president and Mr. Igoh didn’t think that I bore animus against them and government. The series which will continue with the discussion on how President Shagari decides is nothing short of my civic responsibility – as a citizen and journalist.
©Sunday Concord, June 5, 1983
(Pp.216-219)
