Shagari, Up, Up Close (III)
“One of the tricks of a press interview is that a journalist should try harder to hear the spoken words by mastering the mannerism of his subject, apart for actually listening carefully to the spoken words … again in reporting the interview I decided to do a story-profile in which every interesting element in the president’s life will emerge.”
The series on Shehu Shagari that will start running in the Sunday Concord Magazine will not be the usual “President Shehu Shagari said wham bam” As the writing of the series takes shape, it becomes increasingly clear that every bit of information on the personal life of the first citizen is a bit of big news. In a democracy, it shouldn’t happen that question of the marital status of the leader of the nation who has been in office for more than two years in news. Nobody seems to know whether the president has any children, and if that appears to be stretching things a little too far, then it shouldn’t be that nobody appears to know the number of children that the president has. A highly placed member of the NPN who regards himself as a friend of the president remarked, when told of the impending day between the president and this columnist, that the president might open up in every regard, but might not discuss his family. The gentleman then said that he himself had not met the president’s family. Of course, all that has turned to be the case President Shagari, who once wanted to be a broadcaster, is genuinely enamoured of the press, is unusually open to the extent that he can look a journalist in the face and say that “I will not tell you even if I plan to.” That was what he said when told that he was rumoured to be planning a cabinet reshuffle that would involve the reassignment of Dr.Ishaya Audu as the minister of external affairs.
Journalism can be a funny business. Chuba Okadigbo showed up when I asked the president an embarrassing question about his political affairs adviser. Well, the president told me to ask Chuba since the man was there himself. And Chief A.M.A. Akinloye showed up on the same day that I had pumped the president with questions on his party’s chairman. It was the same with Dr. Audu. He came in with his two minister of state shortly after I asked the president about him. One of the tricks of a press interview is that a journalist should try harder to hear the unspoken words by mastering the mannerism of his subject apart from actually listening carefully to the spoken words. No matter how open President Shagari is, he is still a politician. Some things he will not want to talk about. His style is to be forthright about the things that he really wants to discuss. And about other things that he doesn’t want to deal with, he is wont to get semantic and indirect. I don’t think that President Shagari will lie about anything. It is true that the president is planning a cabinet reshuffle. That much he affirmed when asked. I am willing to wager my salary and allowances for one month that President Shagari, as of December 7 when I asked him about Dr. Audu, indeed planned to shuffle the physician-statemen from the external affairs to another ministry. Otherwise, the president would have said, no, the man would remain in his ministry.
As far as such matters go, President Shagari is his own best image-maker. For a man who is so willing to meet the press, it is really strange to see how the media in Nigeria have failed to bring him closer to his fellow citizens. That the image-making apparatus of the president is poor is not at issue. He was asked about this at breakfast in the presence of his press secretary, Charles Igoh. While agreeing that the press might have failed in covering him properly, the president said that he felt that his image-makers have failed just as badly in providing appropriate publicly for him. Indeed, top officials of the Shagari administration are locked in a bitter tug-of-war on how the president and his office should be covered. Right now, the political office of President Shagari which is housed in the Cabinet Office and headed by Alhaji Shehu Musa, the secretary to the Federal Government, is trying hard to get control of the Department of Information which is headed by Chief Olu Adebanjo. Since I was aware of the details of the battle, I asked the president whether he was satisfied with the set-up of the Department of Information. He said he was. He then explained why he took the department under his office, instead of leaving it as a ministry. The details will appear in the series. Well, if the president says he is satisfied with arrangement as of now, then it means that the efforts of the Cabinet Office to get a change will certainly fail. But a chasm in the relationship between the executive and the nation, and the chasm must be bridged. Otherwise, not much will be known about the president by the people of this country who have the absolute right to know. That’s what strikes me as I am writing the series when I find out that even something as innocuous as the origin of the president’s name of Shagari is not known to Nigerian.
The name Shagari belonged to the president’s great grandfather who gave it to a wilderness that he found ages ago. Unlike others in the north who take the names of their towns as their last names, the president’s town got its name from the family of the president. Who could have believed that Shehu Shagari once belonged to the first party in Nigeria with the word “Progressive” in its name? In 1948, when the 23-year-old Shehu was feeling the stirring of political passion, it was in the NEPU, the Northern Elements Progressive Union, that he showed interest. Therefore, rather than write the usual interview piece, or the lazy question and answer bit, I decided to do a story-profile, in which every interesting element in the president’s life will emerge. The first two instalments will focus on his years up to 1951, while latter instalments will look at the president’s political life. I don’t know how many instalments will be in series. It all depends on how many pages will take the story I am writing.
It is ironical that I got the chance to do this interview with President Shagari. In 1979, shortly after he became the president, I was one of the three correspondents in Daily Times assigned to interview the president-elect. Stanley Macebuh and Doyin Aboaba (now Mrs. Abiola) were the other two on the panel. The three of us met and boned up for the interview. Doyin was to dig into his family background, Stanley to do the political aspect, and I was to take care of the profile. A day or so to the appointed date, Doyin and I were removed from the panel without good reason. Martin Iroabuchi, the deputy editor of the Daily Times and acting briefly for Tony Momoh who was out of town, announced the change in arrangement for the interview. He told me that certain people in the Government Guest House where the president-elect was conducting a transition government felt that Doyin and I were certain to embarrass President Shehu Shagari. I argued in vain that the Times shouldn’t buckle to such outside pressure, but I lost out. Rufai Ibrahim was put in my place on the panel, and Ronke Akinsete took Doyin’s place. The piece that came out of the interview failed to tell the nation anything really new about the president. I told myself that one day I would get the chance to fill the gaps. The years later I got the chance.
©Sunday Concord, January 3, 1982
(Pp.145-148)
