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| Mr. Femi Adesina |
In this interview with SAHARA TV
monitored by ENIOLA AKINKUOTU, the Special Adviser to the President on
Media and Publicity, Mr. Femi Adesina, who is also the immediate past
Managing Director of The SUN and President of the Nigeria Guild of
Editors, speaks about his appointment
Are you excited about your appointment?
Well, it is a call to service and one should be thankful when called to serve one’s country.
With this appointment, will you be switching sides that is, from scrutinising the government to defending the government?
Let me first of all examine what you
said, that I will switch sides from scrutinising to defending the
government. No. The scrutinising part will still be part of my duty.
Before I can speak for the government, I must first scrutinise the
decisions and the policies and then make an input before I can then
defend. So, it is not a total switch. There must still be a lot of
scrutinising because anything I am going to defend, I have got to be
able to understand it, agree with it and see the rationale behind it
before I can defend it. So, it is not a total switch.
So, what if you do not agree with a policy? How will you approach it?
If I don’t agree with a policy, I will
first ask for an explanation and when I am given the explanation, I will
make my input. But then, my input does not have to override what may be
in the public interest or what is in the interest of the larger number
of people. My opinion might not necessarily be the correct one. So, when
such challenges come, you have to weigh it and say, ‘is it in the
larger interest of the people, is it in the interest of the country?
Will it eventually result in a better standard of living for the
people?’ That is the way to look at it. It doesn’t have to be something I
must agree with all the time. I should be able to appraise the
decisions that have been made and seek to understand them and then make
my contribution as necessary.
There are reports that you know President Muhammadu Buhari very closely. What is your relationship with him?
I will say ‘yes’. The President is
somebody that I have admired for a long time since he was a military
ruler. When he was a military ruler, I was already in my third year in
the university. So, I can say I knew him and his style and I liked it. I
felt sorry when his government was overthrown. So, when he came back
into partisan politics in 2003, it was something that was very exciting
for me and since then, I have been supporting him. I am a journalist and
I write a weekly column. I have been pointing Nigerians in his
direction since 2003. And whenever I wrote anything in his (Buhari’s)
support, he would call me on the telephone and we would discuss and he
would thank me. I remember in 2009 or thereabout when Prof. Tam
David-West wrote a book on Buhari and it was to be presented at the
Nigerian Institute of International Affairs. I was the Master of
Ceremony on the occasion; so, we got to speak and know each other
better. That was the first time I would meet him (Buhari) in person.
Thereafter, he ran for Presidency in 2011 and I still wrote in my column
that I thought he was the best person to rule Nigeria and bring a
change. Whenever I wrote those things, he would call me and he would
thank me and we would talk.
So, eventually, in August 2013, I lost
my mother and we needed to do her funeral. So, I sent Buhari an
invitation card. The service was in Lagos and lo and behold, before the
service started, he drove in. It was a pleasant surprise. It was a
Christian service and he sat through it. Those who had said that he was a
religious bigot were shocked. This was a Muslim man that came for a
Christian service and attended the full service and yet they were saying
he was a religious bigot. So, that act cemented our relationship
because after the event, I phoned him the next day and thanked him but
he said he was the one that should be grateful because he had never
given me a kobo and yet I always gave him all the support. He said there
were people that could pay me millions of naira for such support but I
had decided to pitch my tent with somebody that could not give me
anything. So, that cemented our relationship.
You know, in 2011, he said he would not
contest the Presidency again but in the run up to the 2015 elections, I
felt he should still run and I wrote that the fact that he said in 2011
that he would not run again could not be carved in concrete and he could
change his mind if he wanted and the rest, they say, is history. He
changed his mind, he ran and he won. Significantly, on the night that he
was declared the winner, my phone rang around midnight and one of our
leaders in the media called and said, ‘Please hold on for Gen. Muhammadu
Buhari’. I was shocked and when he spoke to me, he said he appreciated
my support throughout the campaigns and now that victory had come his
way, he just wanted to say thank you. So, that was how it played out.
How did you get the appointment? Did he call you or were you interviewed?
After he had been declared winner and
after he had called me on the telephone, I deliberately stayed away from
him for two reasons. The first was because I knew he would be under a
lot of pressure. A lot of people would be calling to congratulate him
and probably seeking one thing or the other. So, I think from that
night, which was March 31, I deliberately stayed away from him because I
did not want to add to the pressure that would be on him and secondly, I
didn’t want it to be that I was seeking a position in his government. I
am a born again Christian and I want anything that happens or comes my
way to be what God has ordained. I don’t push anything; I don’t lobby
for anything, so I kept my distance from him. But then, people around
him kept talking to me and kept telling me that they believed I was the
best person to be the spokesman for the incoming President. However, I
did not give any commitment for two reasons. The first, as I said
earlier, was that I didn’t want to lobby and secondly, I have a job that
I enjoy doing: Managing Director/Editor-in-Chief of one of the leading
newspapers in the country, The SUN, and then, I was also the
President of the Nigeria Guild of Editors. Those are high calibre jobs
and responsibilities. So, I wasn’t looking for a job, but then, people
around me kept talking to me till eventually, there was some sort of
interview but I would not say it was a direct interview but people
singled me out to say, ‘Well, if you are invited to serve in government,
will you serve’? My conviction had always been that I would never serve
in a government except one headed by Muhammadu Buhari. So, when they
singled me out, I told them I didn’t think I wanted to serve in the
government but since it is Muhammadu Buhari, I will consider it. But I
also reminded them that I also have a job and I have to consult with my
Publisher (Orji Uzor Kalu) and I have to seek his blessings. Reluctantly
too, my Publisher gave his blessings. He told me that they would not
know the sacrifice he had made by letting me go but since it is a
service to the country, I have his blessings. So, I got back to them and
told them ‘yes’, that I had sought my publisher’s blessing and the next
I heard was the announcement that I had been appointed Special Adviser
on Media and Publicity.
You will be going into the job
in a changing media landscape. You will grapple with the social media
and the traditional media. How do you hope to navigate these two worlds?
I
would rather refer to the social media as digital media because the
social media is just a variant of the digital media. Nobody can do
anything successfully in the media today without factoring in the
digital media. The social media, the digital media and every other thing
will be used together. You would have seen the role they played in the
campaigns. You could feel the pulse of the electorate and could already
discern the direction the election would follow by merely following the
digital media, particularly the social aspect of that digital media. It
played a major role in the campaigns and there is no way you are going
to ignore it. The traditional media has its place because there are
people who are still glued to it. But the younger generation uses the
digital media, so, you then need to use all the avenues to reach the
people.
So far, what do the media
headlines, regarding Buhari’s administration, say to you about what you
are going to be dealing with on the job?
I will tell you that it is no tea party.
It is going to be a hectic work, but then, it is going to be me working
for somebody that I believe in. So, I guess I will have to throw my all
into it. I am under no illusion that the job is going to be easy or a
picnic. It will not be. But I will throw my all into it and as long as
my principal remains who he is: straight, accountable, focused and
someone who wants to effect a change in the country, I guess we will get
it done. When you have a good product, the marketing is easier.
Have you spoken with previous government spokesmen like Dr. Reuben Abati and Mr. Segun Adeniyi?
I have spoken with Segun Adeniyi (the
late President Umaru Yar’adua’s spokesman); I have spoken with Ima
Niboro who was former President Goodluck Jonathan’s first spokesman; but
I have not spoken to Reuben Abati.
What advice did they give you?
They gave me an insight into how to do
the job successfully. I have spoken with Segun more than once but I have
spoken with Ima Niboro just once. I will meet with Segun again and we
will talk.
Source: Punchng
