Why People Don’t Take Garba Shehu, Adesina, Lai Mohammed Seriously Anymore – Prof Anya

Pioneer Director General of the Nigeria Economic Summit Group, Prof Anya Oko Anya has said that Nigerians do not take presidential spokesmen Mallam Garba Shehu and Femi Adesina and Information Minister, Alhaji Lai Mohammed seriously because of their alleged tendency to trivialise serious issues.

The university don made this known in an interview published by Saturday Sun.

According to him, the current government under the All Progressives Congress (APC) has lost the support of majority of Nigerians because of a problem of “credibility”.

Anya said, “The current government has a serious problem. It has a problem of credibility. We are talking about restructuring; APC was the only party that put it in its manifesto in 2015, but they were the first to deny it to the point that they had to set up another committee headed by El-Rufai to define what restructuring is.
If you didn’t understand it, why did it appear in your manifesto? All the statistics coming out from the international bodies, whether World Bank, IMF, Transparency International, are giving various indications that things have gone bad in Nigeria, worse than it was before.
But, each time, either Garba Shehu, Adesina or Lai Mohammed is quick to respond, which makes the situation unacceptable because when serious organisations and institutions with serious reputations over the years make an observation, find out the basis of the observations, get people who understand it before you can respond. Of course, the result is that you are trivialising very serious issues, and I have been seeing this all over in recent times, nobody takes them serious any more. Even the good things they have done, they bungle it. A good example is all this talk of Saraki can’t be the Senate President because he is not part of the majority party, but it wasn’t the majority party that made him the Senate President in the first place, they seem to have forgotten. They wanted to remove him, but they didn’t forget the first time he outsmarted them and took proper precautions, and they bungled it the second time. How do you want serious people to take such people seriously?”

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Anya, a prominent member of the Ohanaeze Ndigbo, revealed how the influential group’s endorsement of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar came about.

He said, “There were a number of coincidences. When that meeting was planned, the aim was not to endorse Atiku, and as the President General of Ohanaeze, Chief Nnia Nwodo, still insisted in the meeting that this was not a meeting to endorse Atiku, however, Ohanaeze will still meet in January, according to him.
But, the truth of the matter is that more people than expected came to that meeting, and so many people were so pleased with the direction of Peter Obi’s emergence, not because we have not had Igbo people emerging, but Peter in particular and it was Atiku that chose him. For them really, it was like a vote of confidence on persons rather than on party or any other thing.
One thing led to another, and Agbakoba made some propositions and everybody said, ‘yes, yes’. That was it, but the crowd and quality of membership, you can’t ignore it. We were taken by surprise because it wasn’t what was planned. We thought we would just discuss among ourselves and get to the point that where we get direction on which ways we would advise our people, not as a result of that meeting or perhaps after further consultations, but event went just the way it is.
When the message came that Atiku would come, we say why not, that any of the candidates that wants to see us, we are ready. We said if he has taken the initiative let him come.
When he came, he not only gave his commitment on restructuring, which he has been consistent, but even confirmed that he has already got a team of constitutional lawyers looking at the National Conference report to pick out what immediately can be implemented. No commitment can be greater than that in the current situation we have in Nigeria. That swept everybody, and they said what are we waiting for. It was an interesting meeting. There is no point pretending.”

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