Sympathy and homily for Tinubu’s media team

Against the backdrop of this author’s personal experiences while serving in at least two genres of journalism practice – first in the newsroom and later on the media spin-desk, where the mission was to launder the image of a principal, the dilemma facing the media team of Nigeria’s President Bola Ahmed Tinubu remains easy to […]

Against the backdrop of this author’s personal experiences while serving in at least two genres of journalism practice – first in the newsroom and later on the media spin-desk, where the mission was to launder the image of a principal, the dilemma facing the media team of Nigeria’s President Bola Ahmed Tinubu remains easy to appreciate.

As a former reporter, as well as editor, and later, editor-in-chief of some newspapers across both analog and digital eras, with added exposure from a stint as the longest serving Director of Information and Publications in the National Assembly, this author qualifies to offer copious doses of sympathy and homily for the president’s media team, now saddled with maintaining a clean image for the potentate.

In the discharge of their duties, they have transited across different roles – media spinners and propagandists, as well as who some may call ‘rabid attack dogs.’ However, just as it is said that in every palace there should be a dancer for every music played there, what this author offers them is the wisdom nugget that while their communication skills may be topnotch, it is not wisdom to pick on any fight for the sake of it, or just because one has and trusts on ‘words turned into swords’, (credit: Adidi Uyo).

It is in that context that a recent press release by the president’s media team, which rebutted a Daily Trust editorial titled, ‘Nigerians are hungry’ re-published on Thursday, August 7, 2025, served the wrong purpose.

Titled, ‘Responsible critique requires fact-driven narratives: A response to Daily Trust editorial’, the rebuttal was written in such scurrilous language as if the newspaper was being queried for saying the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

In any case, this PENPOINT column does not intend to take up issues with the rebuttal from the high office of the presidential aides, even as it is at its best, an opinion of the writer(s), even if it was written on behalf of President Bola Tinubu, and by implication, his entire administration. In any case, it can still be excused, as whoever wrote it needs to earn his pay by defending his principal.

This is also just as a responsible and responsive newspaper, Daily Trust is only discharging its legitimate duty to the society by exercising its mandate of holding government accountable. The newspaper, like any other credible media outfit, has the duty of watching and responding to issues in the country’s public space from a position of high moral ground, especially as even the power to do so is enshrined in the constitution.

Meanwhile, in response to the rebuttal, this column will confine itself to just two principles.  The first is that winning an argument against physical evidence is invariably an uphill task, while the second one is the African proverb which holds that ’plenty talk does not fill a basket.’ 

With respect to the first principle, it is significant that the presidential rebuttal not only acknowledged in denial that Nigerians are hungry but also agreed with Daily Trust on all other queries by the editorial. The only point of deviation between Daily Trust and the presidency is the emphasis by the newspaper, not the substance.  For agreeing at least in principle with Daily Trust, the presidency has eventually vindicated the newspaper as a credible witness to truth.

 With respect to the second principle on volume and quality of verbiage, kudos should go to the writer(s) of the rebuttal for mastery of language. Yet, just as plenty words cannot fill a basket, so a thousand tonnes of untruths and suppositions cannot drown the truth anywhere, especially in the reality of daily living in the present day Nigeria under the current administration of President Bola Tinubu. In this context rises the question: “Are Nigerians actually hungry under President Bola Tinubu, even after two years in office”?

A cardinal principle of mass communication practice is to have the audience in mind in the course of sending out a message for public consumption, especially on matters that concern and touch them personally. And hunger remains one of the most significant challenges of mankind in any part of the world. Yet that is what the presidency is chiding Daily Trust newspaper for drawing public attention to by tacitly denying that Nigerians are hungry. Meanwhile, it is the plight of hungry and hard-pressed Nigerians that spurred Daily Trust to avail the president a wakeup call to do the needful beyond the propaganda-driven complacence that is courtesy of his aides, whose enterprise betrays them as detached from the realities on Nigerian streets.

Seen in context, the association of mass hunger and starvation with the Bola Tinubu administration is not based on illusory considerations but has been its core credential from inception as far as most Nigerians are concerned. 

While it is regularly argued in defence of the president that the administration inherited the present state of affairs, it also needs to be appreciated that governance is a continuum. Hence with the inception of the Bola Tinubu administration, the expectation was that he would build on whatever stump or wreckage (as the case might have been) that was inherited from his predecessor to change the narrative of governance in the country. Rather, he came into office as president with plans for reforms that were bereft of remediation measures to cushion whatever adverse effects would fall on the citizenry from such reforms, which started from two sensitive areas of public life – namely, the removal of fuel subsidy and allowing a free fall of the exchange rate of the naira.

With Nigerians having moved on with the pangs of the reforms, it will be the infliction of double jeopardy on them for the presidency to act without pathos by discounting their tears in pain. That is what the presidential rebuttal is doing.