Boni and His Goebbles

By

Babayola Muhammadu Toungo

babayolam@hotmail.com

As is expected, Mr. Asaph Zadok, the ‘brand new’ Adamawa State Commissioner for information has taken to his to his new office like a duck to water.  His performance so far is true to type.  From his antecedents, Mr. Zadok seemed to have prepared for this particular assignment very well and the position of government’s chief spokesman suits him perfectly well, irrespective of the ideological leanings of the government or its performance in office.  The commissioner’s advertorial in the Daily Trust of Tuesday, September 16^th, 2003 titled “An Apology for Boni” drew my attention.  It was a pathetic attempt by the commissioner to explain the governor’s visit to the state High Court Complex to, as he put it in the said advertorial, “BEG” (emphasis his) for the release of vehicles impounded by the court in a debt judgement involving Messrs. Stirling Civil Construction, a contractor to the state government and one of its sub-contractors.  From my understanding of the feeble effort to deflate the story carried by the Daily Trust on the governor’s visit to the court, Mr. Zadok only came across as a true student of Paul H. Weaver.  I don’t think the borrower of the book will learn the art of ‘News and the Culture of Lying’ more than the owner of the book in so short a time that it will take one to borrow, read and digest a book as was insinuated in the advertorial.

When I saw the caption reading “An Apology for Boni”, I expected the commissioner to apologise for the OPC approach the governor took to such a weighty issue rather than the dreary effort put up by Mr. Zadok.  I expected to read an apology for the wanton disregard and childish grumpiness displayed by Boni Haruna by causing the door to the office of the Assistant Registrar, Litigation, be broken.  There was nothing in the said advertorial that justified the governor’s visit to the court since neither himself personally nor the state government was a party to the case and Stirling is a limited liability company that Adamawa state government is not a shareholder.

 Mr. Zadok raised an issue completely unrelated with the matter at hand by insinuating that “certain changes in Stirling Construction” might have beclouded some people’s judgment.  This I find utterly ridiculous as whatever corporate or boardroom changes Stirling undertook wasn’t in anyway responsible for the governor’s executive recklessness that has been the trademark of the Boni administration since 1999.  If the visit is only a “little happenstance” then I believe the commissioner should have overlooked the Daily Trust story instead of trying to insult our intelligence with his advertorial.  Such incidents have happened in the past but everyone pretended it was okay to allow the governor have his moments of petulance just so our “nascent democracy” could be protected.  But now that Mr. Zadok appears set to ‘apologise’ for the governor’s shortcomings or explain away with a wave of his regal hands, he should be ready to explain “little happenstances” like the administration’s lack of performance in the past four years; its lack of focus or direction; the verbal violence visited on the populace daily by the governor; the state of our township roads; the non-availability of portable drinking water in the state capital and other major towns in the state; the pathetic condition of our health delivery system that is the worst in the country, etc.

Also the promises made by the governor to several groups and people that were not meant to be kept even as they were made.  I was in Yola recently and sent for a friend, a former elected councillor from Maiha, to meet me in Yola to discuss certain things.  My friend sent back a message through a commercial driver that he could not afford to come to Yola for lack of funds.  He could neither fuel his car nor afford the commercial vehicle option.  I was shocked beyond believe by his response.  Coincidentally, I met another former councillor from Yola and was lamenting to him the condition of my friend, his ex-colleague.  He confirmed to me that most of them couldn’t afford to travel outside their localities as they are all broke.  They have expended their savings expecting to receive their severance pay from the state government which governor Boni Haruna promised them will be effected soonest since 2002 when Local Government Councils were dissolved nationwide.  I was told that the governor made this promise at different for a more than thrice, the latest being Thursday, September 11^th 2003 on the occasion of swearing-in some commissioners.  But they are yet to receive a dime and are therefore at the mercy of friends and relations.

If the governor can drive all by himself to the court and break the door to the Litigation registrar’s office and the commissioner will call it ‘little happenstance’ then it may take an earthquake for any event to qualify as a problem.  When the judiciary is under assault, the common man has to run for cover.  There is a state Chief Judge in Adamawa State who the governor can summon privately or even call him on the phone and ‘beg’ him to effect the release of the vehicles to enable them discharge the boiling hot asphalt at the project site and ensure thereafter that they were brought back to the court.  Or better still, there is an Attorney General who the governor can send to the Chief Judge to appeal to his sense of justice.  But no, the governor prefer to go to the court himself to proof who is the boss and at the end of the day succeeded in only making a fool of himself.

The governor’s pronouncements since after his second coming appears combative as if he is in a duel with everybody – from civil servants to labour leadership to politicians and now it is the turn of the judiciary.  He may be fighting his demons for all I know.  But thousands of Zadoks cannot turn the facts on their heads.  I think Paul Weaver’s book could only affect those already with the latent talent to lie through their teeth while invoking righteousness and I am afraid we may see this type of reactions in the years to come.  Boni now has his Goebbles, whose antecedents show a man with no discernible ideological bent except self preservation.  They make a perfect match.