Opinion

Again, Buhari nails Femi Adesina to the cross

Published

1 year ago

July 25, 2025

Trends Admin

Tunde Odesola

Again, Buhari nails Femi Adesina to the cross

Tunde Odesola

(Published in The PUNCH, on Friday, July 25, 2025)

By some indices of human assessment, such as professionalism, intellect, carriage, humility, handsomeness, etc., the erstwhile Special Adviser to President Muhammadu Buhari (of bitter memory), Mr Femi Adesina, was not cut from the same cloth as many of his colleague editors. There was the tale of a toad-eyed, bosomy and big-mouthed female editor of a weekend newspaper, whose pair of laser-sharp designer glasses could identify a ‘dollarful’ brown envelope in pitch darkness. She’s a Jebusite. Unhatable, oga Adesina is disarmingly different, however.

Meeting Adesina is like walking into a room scented with simplicity and kindness. Who can hate a pair of white eyes nestling on a cherubic black face with a signature haircut and an innocent smile? I can’t.

I once told the story of how I met editor Adesina. I’ll tell it a second time. Twice, I met Adesina in close quarters; twice, I learnt a lesson in humility. The first time I got in the Adesina orbit was around 15 years ago. It was at the Source, Ile-Ife, where his relative was getting married. He had invited the Publisher, Conscience International Magazine, Chief Abiola Ogundokun, who extended the invitation to Osun State newspaper correspondents, on the platter of comradeship.

Adesina didn’t turn water into wine at the marriage, which was held inside the compound of SS Peter and Paul Catholic Church, Lagere, Ile-Ife, but he fed us to our throats, just like Jesus fed the 5,000 multitude. While we were still picking our teeth and sipping drinks after the meal, Oga Adesina began to pack our used plates by himself, like a male servant, but some of us protested and managed to wring some of the plates from his grip. Oga Adesina, at the time, was the editor of The Sun newspaper while we were mere correspondents.

We were three correspondents at the party: The Nation state correspondent, but now the Alagbeda of Agbeda-Ijesa in Ilesa-West Local Government Area of Osun, Oba Adesoji Adeniyi; National Life state correspondent, Omo’ba Wale Olayemi, of Otan Ayegbaju, and my little self.

A Yoruba proverb says, “If the youngster knows how to wash his hands properly, he will have the opportunity to dine with elders.” Eldership is not always an index of age. Sometimes, position or competence confers eldership. Not too long after dining with elder Adesina, I was promoted to the position of news and politics editor of Saturday PUNCH, triggering my relocation to Lagos. I was later appointed group politics editor of the three PUNCH titles. That role came with its perks. One of them was an annual invite by the U.S. Consulate in Lagos to their July 4 media seminar marking America’s Independence Day.

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I was a guest at one of such events when I came across The Sun newspapers’ top dog again. This time, a former editor of The PUNCH, Mr Gbemiga Ogunleye, was also present. An extraordinary mentor and exemplar, if Oga Ogunleye lived during the time of Sango, the god of thunder, a news shrine would have been erected in his honour. He would have been worshipped to date as Ogunleye, the god of news.

I was super excited to be at the seminar with industry giants. I looked forward to hearing divergent views from participants like Adesina, whose newspaper articles I was following, but with whom I’ve never had the opportunity to interact professionally. When Adesina finally spoke, nuggets of humility and intelligence dropped like precious stones from his lips.

The Adesina whom I knew wasn’t the same Adesina who served Buhari. I’m not talking about integrity here; his integrity remains his integrity, but I’m talking about a media guru who sits smugly and clings to the totem of Buhari while the burning train plunges downhill to doom. Adesina, in his heart of hearts, knows the disaster Buhari was, but, in order not to be seen as someone who spread the Buharian good news, which turned out as sad news, he has decided to carry the Buhari cross till he breathes his last.

In his 488-page book, “Working with Buhari: Reflections of a Special Adviser, Media and Publicity (2015 – 2023), Adesina says he left his good job at The Sun, where he earned three times more than what Buhari offered, describing his time in Buhari’s administration as national service.

While it is in Adesina’s rights to fetishise the shroud of Buhari, I feel his justification of Buhari spending undisclosed tonnes of pounds sterling on personal foreign medical trips while Nigerian hospitals were in a shambles was a slap on the face of Nigerians. It was a sin, too.

In the interview on Channels Television, Adesina said, “Buhari has always had his medicals in London, even when he was not in the office. So, it was not about the time he was president alone. He had always had it there,” adding that UK medical doctors had been managing Buhari’s health before his election in 2015 and were well acquainted with his medical history, making it unwise to change medical teams, mid-treatment.

What the wise special adviser was saying was that Buhari, from birth, had never been sick, never been treated in a Nigerian hospital. As soon as he was born, herdsmen hoisted him on a cow, and off to London hospital they went.

Mr Special Adviser, stop feeding Ngerians with nonsense, please! It is a no-brainer that Buhari’s medical records lay in various military hospitals located in the states where he served, before his health became a national liability, after he snatched power.

Of course, you know, Mr Adesina, that Buhari had his medical records in a few military hospitals where he received treatment as a middle cadre and senior officer. So, the same way he transferred his medical records abroad was the same way he should’ve transferred his medical records back to the country, upon assuming power in 2015, if his promise of change wasn’t a shortchange.

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As a Christian, I expect Adesina to throw away the empty can of Buhari’s deodorant and not kick it about like a little village boy kicking a self-made ball of knotted rags. Buhari has gone to his grave with his innumerable leadership imperfections. Adesina should let him rest in peace, and not in pieces.

Nothing defines Buhari’s self-centredness and megalomania than his exposure by Aisha, his wife, and daughter, Zarah, in September 2017. Both mother and daughter intoned that Aso Rock clinic, meant to treat their breadwinner and his First Family, was shambolic, under Buhari’s very nose.

Zarah, in a series of Instagram posts, said, “More than N3bn budgeted for the State House clinic and workers there don’t have the equipment to work with? Why?” Where is the money going to? Medication only stocked once since the beginning of the year? Why? State House permanent secretary, please answer. Why isn’t there simple paracetamol, gloves, syringes… Why do patients/staff have to buy what they need in the state house clinic?”

Wait for her mother’s bomb. Aisha said, “…as you are all aware, Nigeria wasn’t stable because of my husband’s ill health. We thank God he is fully recovered now. If somebody like Mr President can spend several months outside Nigeria, then you wonder what will happen to a common man on the street?

“(A) few weeks ago, I was sick as well; they advised me to take the first flight out to London. I refused to go. I said I must be treated in Nigeria because there is a budget for an assigned clinic to take care of us. I insisted they call Aso Clinic to find out if the X-ray machine was working; they said it was not working. They didn’t know I was the one who was supposed to be in that hospital at that very time.

“I had to go to a hospital that was established by foreigners, in and out 100 per cent. What does that mean? If something like this can happen to me, no need for me to ask the governors’ wives what is happening in their states.”

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Sadly, it’s this incompetent Buhari that Adesina was defending after he had sucked the nation dry, treating himself at The London Clinic when he should have ensured the establishment of good hospitals back at home. For Buhari and the members of the ruling class, it was okay if diseases struck Nigerians dead on the streets, provided they could access adequate healthcare abroad.

Spending donkey’s years receiving treatment in a £3,500 per day elite clinic that caters for the British royal family and political leaders, exposes Buhari as a sailor without a compass. He was the soldier without a gun; an Ogun without iron; a Sango without thunder. Buhari was nothing.

But Buhari had a heart. He had a heart strong enough to push him to spend 225 days outside the country on medical trips, visiting no fewer than 40 countries since 2015. That was Adesina’s hero, whose reign amounted to zero in eight years.

I suspect that without realising it, Adesina was in a toxic relationship with Buhari, like a husband-and-wife abusive relationship, where the husband regularly beats the wife, but the wife soldiers on, wipes her face when a knock sounds at the door, smiles and opens the door, adulating her husband. Or, Adesina probably knew it but was encaged?

With his meagre earnings, where Mr Integrity got the money to fund his expensive healthcare treatment in one of the most expensive clinics in London should be a source of investigation for the EFCC, but corruption is fast killing Nigeria before Nigeria kills corruption.

I pity the Ipetumodu-born Adesina, but I don’t understand why his dove chose to fly with vultures. I put the Adesina kernel on a stone and smashed it with a stone, just to unravel why the tender earthworm crawled to the table salt. Questions popped up in my mind: Why do people smoke when they know smoking kills? Why do people traffic drugs to Saudi Arabia when they know what would happen to their necks? Why do people scream Christiano Ronaldo when they know Lionel Messi is the GOAT? Why?

Insecurity. Compensation. Disillusionment. Hypocrisy.

Email: tundeodes2003@yahoo.com

Facebook: @Tunde Odesola

X: @Tunde_Odesola

Opinion

2027: Competence, Not Zoning, Should Decide Nigeria’s Next President — Imasuagbon

Published

6 days ago

September 13, 2026

Hamdalat Bisiriyu

Nigerians should look beyond ethnicity, region and the longstanding debate over rotational presidency when choosing the country’s next leader, according to a chieftain of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), Kenneth Imasuagbon.

The former Edo State governorship aspirant said the priority ahead of the 2027 election should be finding a president with the ability to confront Nigeria’s economic, security and infrastructure challenges.

Speaking to journalists in Benin, Imasuagbon argued that presidential rotation is not a requirement of the Nigerian Constitution and should therefore not outweigh the question of competence.

He said voters should be more concerned about replacing poor schools with better ones, improving healthcare and addressing hardship than debating where the next president comes from.

Imasuagbon specifically appealed to voters in the South to support former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, who is contesting the 2027 presidency on the ADC platform.

According to him, Atiku has demonstrated the experience and determination needed to improve the country, describing the former vice president as someone capable of promoting national unity and fairness.

He also accused the Bola Tinubu administration of worsening economic pressure through policies including the removal of fuel subsidy, while expressing concern about the condition of roads, electricity and other infrastructure.

Imasuagbon argued that the next administration must focus on practical improvements in areas such as power, transportation, employment, security and public services.

The ADC chieftain also dismissed the idea that the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) would automatically benefit from its incumbency advantage in 2027.

He maintained that the electorate ultimately determines the outcome of an election, arguing that voters could change the political direction of the country if they were determined to do so.

Imasuagbon further criticised what he described as regional and ethnic considerations in the distribution of political appointments and opportunities, insisting that the next president should give Nigerians across different parts of the country a sense of belonging.

His comments come as political parties and their candidates intensify preparations for the 2027 presidential election.

Opinion

Lesson from Dotun Oladipo’s Brave Daughters, by Bamidele Johnson

Published

6 days ago

September 13, 2026

Trends Admin

Lesson from Dotun Oladipo’s Brave Daughters, by Bamidele Johnson

I hope to grow old. I want to see my kids become real adults, find their own feet, make mistakes, recover from them, and perhaps one day complain that their own children are giving them grey hairs. I want that plainly stated before anything else, as everything that follows might read as a man agreeing to an early exit rather than a man simply being honest about the odds.

I want the decades. I want to become the grandfather who repeats the same stories until nobody bothers correcting him anymore. But wanting a thing and being granted are different things. The last year has made that difference harder to ignore than I would like. I have lost many friends recently to keep thinking that optimism is my natural resting state. Some of these men had better blood pressure than mine, better habits, better everything that is supposed to count. It did not save them.

There is no formula I know that reliably separates the men who make it to 70 from those who do not. Anyone who says he knows one is selling something. So, I do not assume that old age is an already booked destination. Even if I once did, which I doubt, the last three years have cured me of such an illusion. As such, I treat it as a hope rather than an expectation, and I have found that a more honest way to live.

It is exactly why I want something placed on record now, while I am still able to place things on record, rather than leave it for people to guess what my wishes were in the fog of a funeral week. If I do not make old bones, my children are not to be asked to read tributes at my funeral. Not one line, however short, however lovingly written.

This, for me, was settled today rather than re-opened. At Dotun Oladipo’s funeral service, his three daughters took turns to read their tributes to their dad, and I found myself watching them with awe. There was a kind of strength in them that I do not possess. It is the strength needed to stand in front of a hall brimming with grieving adults and speak about a man they have just lost. Forever. Strength, however, is not the same as ease. I could see plainly what that strength was costing them as they read. Their voices caught. Their composure held and then did not hold and then held again through sheer will.

In front of them, in the pews, men and women considerably older than them came undone in ways the girls themselves were somehow managing to resist. I went mightily close. Some of the sobbing was quiet, the type people try to fold into a handkerchief. Some of it was not quiet at all, the kind that announces itself whether or not you want it.

Those young women honoured their father with a grace that is beyond me. What they did was astonishing. So, what I am attempting is an observation of a custom I have now watched wound people. This was not the first time I had watched this particular ritual extract more than it should from people already running on fumes. I saw an earlier and harder version of it at a friend’s wake back in 2015.

The first son was called forward to read his father’s tribute, and he could not do it. He tried, but the words would not come, and he stood there in front of a crowd of mourners, with his grief simply refusing to organise itself into sentences. The officiating minister, rather than releasing him from the task, urged him to continue. I sat fizzing with sorrow and ire. He could not go on and, eventually, the minister accepted, but not before insisting a while longer than it should have reasonably taken. His younger brother was called up next, presumably on the theory that if one grieving son could not manage it, maybe another one could. He flunked it in the same way. Grief does not distribute itself more conveniently among siblings just because a programme has been printed and needs to be followed.

I have turned that memory over many times since, trying to work out why this part of the rites is treated as mandatory in the first place. I have not found a satisfying answer. Maybe it comes from a belief that a child’s words carry more weight than anyone else’s, which may even be true, but weight is exactly the problem when those carrying it are struggling to hold themselves together with nothing but adrenaline and the fear of dissolving in public.

Maybe it is simply inertia, the reason we still do a hundred things at funerals that nobody can explain the original purpose of. Either way, I have stopped looking for the justification. I no longer think one exists that is good enough to weigh against what I watched happen to that boy in 2015.

So, let this stand as my instruction rather than my preference, the kind of thing I would rather state plainly now than leave for my children to infer later from how uncertain I sound when the subject comes up in passing. If I do not get the old age I am hoping for, my children will not be asked to read a single word over my body. Someone else can speak for me. A friend, a stranger with a steadier voice and a smaller stake in the loss, anyone whose grief will not be quite so total that standing upright becomes almost impossible.

My children, of course, will sit in front and fall apart if that is what the day requires of them, but without the microphone. That, at least, is one small mercy I intend to arrange for them while I am still here to arrange it.

Dotun deserved every bit of the send-off his daughters gave him today, and I suspect he would have been the first to tell them to sit down and let someone else carry the weight for a while. He did not get a say in that, as none of us ever do once we are the ones being spoken of rather than the ones speaking. Rest well, Dotun. You raised three young women whose strength I will not soon forget. That alone says everything worth saying about the man you were.

Opinion

‘Tinubu Will Win Again in 2027’ — Charismatic Bishops’ Secretary

Published

6 days ago

September 13, 2026

Hamdalat Bisiriyu

‘Tinubu Will Win Again in 2027’ — Charismatic Bishops’ Secretary

A senior Nigerian cleric, Archbishop Chivir Chianson, has declared that President Bola Tinubu will retain the presidency after the 2027 general election, attributing the prediction to a message he said came from God.

Chianson, who serves as Secretary General of the Charismatic Bishops’ Conference of Nigeria, made the statement while appearing on Arise Television on Saturday.

Rather than basing his prediction on political calculations, the archbishop said his confidence came from what he described as the prophetic role of bishops.

He maintained that the conference had previously spoken about Tinubu’s political future based on what he said was divine revelation and that the President would return for another term.

Chianson also predicted that Tinubu’s performance would improve if he wins the 2027 election.

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Addressing the political opposition, the cleric said the bishops could not be blamed if rival parties failed to unite or organise themselves effectively ahead of the election.

He also sought to clarify the position of the bishops when dealing with government, saying their role in speaking truth to power did not mean they should approach political leaders with hostility or disrespect.

According to him, the Constitution, alongside their religious convictions, should guide how they engage the President and the country.

Chianson said he was sufficiently confident in his prediction to promise that he would return to the Arise TV studio after the 2027 election, when he expects the result to demonstrate that the bishops’ prophecy was correct.

His comments add a religious dimension to the increasingly active political conversation surrounding the 2027 presidential race.