It’s not official until it’s denied

My president never misses an opportunity to shake hands and show off his array of presidential traditional garbs bedecked in gold pendants. Our president loves his national dress, flying and never misses an opportunity to party. By the time you’re reading this, it is probable that Liebaron Maku has rolled out the drums to celebrate […]

My president never misses an opportunity to shake hands and show off his array of presidential traditional garbs bedecked in gold pendants. Our president loves his national dress, flying and never misses an opportunity to party.
By the time you’re reading this, it is probable that Liebaron Maku has rolled out the drums to celebrate 15 years of evil rule.  Our eleventh or twelfth presidential plane is on its way. Come to think of it, if you are buffeted on all sides by your cluelessness; if every other channel you switch greets you with criticisms, celebrations become a national mask. Masks are used to cover scars and the shame of ugliness.
They are not always right, but the media is an incredible heckler. They can make you uncomfortable if you let them. And it is evident that the media both traditional and new is making those in government uncomfortable.  Why, even Viola Onwuliri bitterly complained in far-away Poland about the damage of social media.
When the president of your nation convincingly says at the 7th Presidential Media Chat that a newspaper was set up primarily to run down an agency of government and failed because it did not achieve its aim, then you’ve got it coming. Those in government can only wish that the media would go away. Unfortunately, rather than go away, its influences are growing. The media work like legion; they swarm like flies at the putrescence of official lethargy. It’s hard enough dealing with the local media, but now the legion includes foreign media who will now be tackled with a sizeable budgetary allocation.
But please, don’t believe anything you read or hear through the press until government denies it. Last week, I learnt that the president signed the nation’s budget in camera and dispatched it through a presidential messenger to Prime Minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. There are those who said he did so in order to avoid being late for the Pretoria party. You see the president was invited to grace the reinstallation of Jacob Zuma (northerners beware – this name has nothing to do with the liquid that bees produce).
But then, don’t believe the rumour because it did not come from the presidential spokesman. Shortly on arrival in Pretoria, social media snitches reported that the president was booed by the #BringBackOurGirls club. Such wickedness cannot be left unmitigated and so, Reuben Apati had to issue a long-winding denial. Now its official, the president was heckled but it was a friendly heckle, not boo. The presidential spokesman has earned his wages as well as his estacode.
Someone should tell the Naija media to show patriotism and stop regurgitating expletives spewed on our government and our president daily. Naija is the joke of the town, from Harare to Bujumbura, Entebbe to where else. Imagine Uncle Bob of Zim did not know that we have rebased definitions here, airplane fine bara (mendicants) and gratification is neither corruption nor stealing – ask the ICPC chief. Hear Bob “You get into a plane in Nigeria and you sit there and the crew keeps dilly dallying without taking off as they wait for you to pay them to fly the plane.” You feel like shouting ‘et tu Mugabe!
Uganda and Naija do not have much in common except that both have entered into the western world of infamy for signing into law, bills criminalizing same sex marriages just for the fun of it. But Yoweri Museveni could not miss an opportunity to swipe at us when he said he would rather hang himself than fail to protect his citizens or call the UN to do the job for him. Shhh! It’s not official until it’s denied.
Paul Kagame stands like a traditional staff of office but he could not stand seeing President Jones and four others dressed in their master’s robes and summoned to the Elysee Palace to answer their master’s query. Many share his shame here but heh, don’t believe it until it’s denied.
Jonah Jang is a few inches shorter than Kagame. His mathematical makes sixteen greater than 19 and his god sanctions rigging. Clueless in tackling insecurity on the Plateau, Jang wants a special prison opened for government critics. As a friend of the president, let me warn that if Jonah advises thee, consent thou not. We all know that there is no love lost between Russia and the rest of the superpowers over events in Ukraine. Prince Charles threw his hat in the ring and by the weekend, Russian was Putin it to him that this is no royal behaviour. When will President Jones tackle his brother hecklers or deny what they said, so that it can be – official?