Why the elites hate Buhari —Presidency

The Presidency on Sunday dismissed claims by some analysts, that the current administration has been hijacked by a power-hungry cabal, saying no leader can operate without having a team of close confidants.

The Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, stated this at a dinner organized by the Press Corps of the All Progressives Congress (APC).

He said in other climes, every president has a “kitchen cabinet,” adding that in Nigeria, government critics would prefer to refer to such collection of self-sacrificing individuals as cabal.

Shehu said: “What is the meaning of cabal? I just googled Thesaurus and among many other definitions, what they are saying is that cabal means ‘conspire, intrigues, mystique, occult, secret’. There is no government in this country that we have had that some people were not accused of being a cabal in that government and it is because every administration, every president must have a secretariat. Every president must have people who advise him. It is not a sin, it is not an offence to have people that you take into confidence. Elsewhere, they call it ‘kitchen cabinet’, but in our own country we are being derogatory and we term them the cabal so that it will tarnish their own good standing. A lot of them are successful people who are making extreme sacrifices to even be coming to serve the government.

“Some of them have no need around government but because this is a country of people, some of them much in a hurry, in fact, for some of our elites, Buhari is a bad man because you cannot go to him and say give me oil well and he will sign papers and give it to you.

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“So, we understand the game that is playing out and there is always a price, in any case, to pay for that kind of exposure. Even the president himself, the kind of things that are being said of him, if he did not offer himself to serve, some of those things, people would not even have the chance to say them against him. So, we will live with it, we will accept it because it goes with the territory.”

On proposed efforts to regulate the social media space, the presidential aide said the move is an attempt to protect the minority and vulnerable groups in the country.

He said claims that President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration is bent on shrinking the media space and voices of dissent are absolutely unnecessary.

He added: “Social media has become a problem for many families because rights of women and children are being abused. There is a need to protect vulnerable members of the society. There is a need to protect minorities whether tribal or religious in our own country. So, it makes sense that you as media stakeholders come around the Minister of Information and Culture and formulate the kind of regulations you want so that it is not that there is a top-bottom approach so that the government will not be accused of imposing a regulatory mechanism on the media. The minister is saying come, sit down with me and let us talk about it. And I was told that the day he called on the Nigeria Union of Journalist NUJ, they walked out on him. If that report is true, I think it is very unfortunate. I think we need to come around him and offer media-driven solutions so that at the end of it this country will have a vibrant and effective social media communication system.”

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