Abimbola Adelakun

A chain of events in the past one week gave me pause about this unpopular government and an agenda it is executing at our expense. It happened that the co-founder of BudgIT, an NGO that advocates fiscal transparency, Seun Onigbinde, had taken an appointment as a Technical Adviser to the Minister of State for Budget and National Planning. Before now, he was a harsh critic of the Muhammadu Buhari administration, who used his social media handles to share his passionate opinions of the government. To forestall the now familiar habit of cybercitizens quickly rummaging through the social media account of a recent appointee to find evidence of why they are undeserving of the honour, Onigbinde took down his Twitter account.

Despite that desperate move to block his own record, people went after him all weekend. They managed to produce a screen munch of a social media exchange where he had practically sworn he would never take a job with this government. The defence he put up – that he was hired by an organisation and was being seconded to the ministry on their behalf – did not placate his critics. If that was true, why didn’t the organisation announce his appointment to the public in the spirit of accountability? With such a backlash, Onigbinde must have felt the job jinxed. On Monday, he announced he was walking away from the offer.

By now, a pattern is emerging. A well-known critic of this administration gets a job with them after publicly lampooning them. Both the supporters and opposers of the government cry foul. Pressure builds up. Although the critic loses the job eventually, the damage is already done. The administration gets brownie points for being open-minded enough to admit its virulent critics into their circle, thus slyly propagating a myth of its liberalism. They win. The critic, on the other hand, is diminished by the affair. He can no longer criticise without the baggage of the episode weighing him down. And so, another loud voice among the class of civil society activists winds down.

The Buhari Administration 1, Nigerians 0.

 The Onigbinde incident had been preempted by a similar one that occurred this year when the Senate President, Ahmed Lawan, appointed a columnist and critic, Festus Adedayo, as his special adviser on media and publicity. The backlash that followed that appointment was so heated Lawan rescinded the appointment. In his response to his critics, Adedayo made some curious revelation that perhaps offered some insight into why people could go work with a government they had publicly ridiculed. He said he was like a prophet who delivers his “venomous” criticisms and moves on; that he had no attachment to his own words (and by implication, the conviction underlying them). That disclosure – that the critic makes a psychic disconnection from the ideas that he shares with the public and over which they bond with him – perhaps also explained why another critic, Aliyu Abubakar, from Kaduna State, was going to work with the state governor, Mallam Nasir el-Rufai, whom he had previously insulted. Of course, Kaduna lawmakers rejected his nomination. These various instances are bothersome because they have implications for the future of civil society in our tottering democracy.

As one critic after the other goes down, people become more cynical. They see civic activist-advocacy enterprise as another means of getting called into government service to “come and chop.” Then comes the most pernicious consequence of all: self-censorship. Most of the people who have watched this drama unfold several times this year have told themselves, “that could be me.” In order to not fall victim of their own words that are forever archived on the Internet, they shut themselves up. You can be sure a few people have even scrubbed their social media account now. These issues deserve some reflections that should go beyond mere labelling those who have been involved in the “crossover” from the side of the people to that of the government as merely amoral.

I will firmly disagree that someone like Onigbinde is unethical. You do not set up an organisation like BudgIT if you are not a genuine patriot. BudgIT destroyed the mystique of the Nigerian budget as an impenetrable document with a distant relationship to our collective existence. They crunched the big data of the Nigerian governmental magic into sizeable chunks for us to see the gaps in the thought that produced it and be empowered to demand more accountability of our government. I think Onigbinde fell into the same error that has consumed several critics who have worked with the government, both under the military and civilian rule: that they can change Nigeria’s political destiny if they get on the inside.

All of this brings me to this one point that bothers me about the meeting of civil advocacy and the Nigerian social reality: can the critic who takes a principled stand against a corrupt and unpopular government like the present one even afford their stance? By that, I mean, what other avenues of self- actualisation are available for people outside the government given how Nigeria is presently constituted? Think about it, reasonable economic opportunities for upward mobility are limited in Nigeria and are, in fact, shrinking by the day as the impact of Buhari’s economic policies takes its toll. Almost all the few opportunities available have their life source connected to the government. To be a staunch critic of the government could turn you into a pariah and cut you off from access to those resources. So, how do you survive? It is no longer enough to judge those who take up a job with the government as unprincipled people without considering the disciplinary power that the government wields, and how they use it to pummel us into submission. This is one area of victory they have recorded in the past four years. If you look around, you will see that the previously strident voices of the civil society advocates have all but died down.

In places where economic opportunities are broad enough, a critic can take up many other jobs to sustain themselves while without having to walk back from the things they have stood for. Nigeria is a much different ballgame. People are pushed to eat their own words; otherwise, they will just starve. That is why people who criticise the government publicly still go behind everyone to do other jobs for them like writing their speeches and ghostwriting their memoirs. That is why critics form no attachment to the virulent criticisms that drip from their “acidic” pens because they know they will be still interviewed for jobs with those same people.

All through last weekend, I lost count of the number of Buharists saying the Onigbinde episode should teach people to be “moderate” in their criticisms. But, how can you be moderate when you are dealing with a government that lacks any capacity to hear unless you shout and break things?


https://punchng.com/the-battle-buhari-administration-is-winning/amp/

Ardent critics of goverment and government are two parallel lines.

Critics push out the flaws of government and government works to cover up such flaws.

It's an agelong race of checks and balances and like oil and water, never mix.

Abimbola is a good writer,, but part of people that put us in this mess..............Lala n lala.
Heaven dey fall no be one person's problem....
Orun nya nbo nioo, ki soro enikan

agwom:

WINKING, Winking

[s]

Omooba77:
Abimbola Adelakun

A chain of events in the past one week gave me pause about this unpopular government and an agenda it is executing at our expense. It happened that the co-founder of BudgIT, an NGO that advocates fiscal transparency, Seun Onigbinde, had taken an appointment as a Technical Adviser to the Minister of State for Budget and National Planning. Before now, he was a harsh critic of the Muhammadu Buhari administration, who used his social media handles to share his passionate opinions of the government. To forestall the now familiar habit of cybercitizens quickly rummaging through the social media account of a recent appointee to find evidence of why they are undeserving of the honour, Onigbinde took down his Twitter account.

Despite that desperate move to block his own record, people went after him all weekend. They managed to produce a screen munch of a social media exchange where he had practically sworn he would never take a job with this government. The defence he put up – that he was hired by an organisation and was being seconded to the ministry on their behalf – did not placate his critics. If that was true, why didn’t the organisation announce his appointment to the public in the spirit of accountability? With such a backlash, Onigbinde must have felt the job jinxed. On Monday, he announced he was walking away from the offer.

By now, a pattern is emerging. A well-known critic of this administration gets a job with them after publicly lampooning them. Both the supporters and opposers of the government cry foul. Pressure builds up. Although the critic loses the job eventually, the damage is already done. The administration gets brownie points for being open-minded enough to admit its virulent critics into their circle, thus slyly propagating a myth of its liberalism. They win. The critic, on the other hand, is diminished by the affair. He can no longer criticise without the baggage of the episode weighing him down. And so, another loud voice among the class of civil society activists winds down.

The Buhari Administration 1, Nigerians 0.

 The Onigbinde incident had been preempted by a similar one that occurred this year when the Senate President, Ahmed Lawan, appointed a columnist and critic, Festus Adedayo, as his special adviser on media and publicity. The backlash that followed that appointment was so heated Lawan rescinded the appointment. In his response to his critics, Adedayo made some curious revelation that perhaps offered some insight into why people could go work with a government they had publicly ridiculed. He said he was like a prophet who delivers his “venomous” criticisms and moves on; that he had no attachment to his own words (and by implication, the conviction underlying them). That disclosure – that the critic makes a psychic disconnection from the ideas that he shares with the public and over which they bond with him – perhaps also explained why another critic, Aliyu Abubakar, from Kaduna State, was going to work with the state governor, Mallam Nasir el-Rufai, whom he had previously insulted. Of course, Kaduna lawmakers rejected his nomination. These various instances are bothersome because they have implications for the future of civil society in our tottering democracy.

As one critic after the other goes down, people become more cynical. They see civic activist-advocacy enterprise as another means of getting called into government service to “come and chop.” Then comes the most pernicious consequence of all: self-censorship. Most of the people who have watched this drama unfold several times this year have told themselves, “that could be me.” In order to not fall victim of their own words that are forever archived on the Internet, they shut themselves up. You can be sure a few people have even scrubbed their social media account now. These issues deserve some reflections that should go beyond mere labelling those who have been involved in the “crossover” from the side of the people to that of the government as merely amoral.

I will firmly disagree that someone like Onigbinde is unethical. You do not set up an organisation like BudgIT if you are not a genuine patriot. BudgIT destroyed the mystique of the Nigerian budget as an impenetrable document with a distant relationship to our collective existence. They crunched the big data of the Nigerian governmental magic into sizeable chunks for us to see the gaps in the thought that produced it and be empowered to demand more accountability of our government. I think Onigbinde fell into the same error that has consumed several critics who have worked with the government, both under the military and civilian rule: that they can change Nigeria’s political destiny if they get on the inside.

All of this brings me to this one point that bothers me about the meeting of civil advocacy and the Nigerian social reality: can the critic who takes a principled stand against a corrupt and unpopular government like the present one even afford their stance? By that, I mean, what other avenues of self- actualisation are available for people outside the government given how Nigeria is presently constituted? Think about it, reasonable economic opportunities for upward mobility are limited in Nigeria and are, in fact, shrinking by the day as the impact of Buhari’s economic policies takes its toll. Almost all the few opportunities available have their life source connected to the government. To be a staunch critic of the government could turn you into a pariah and cut you off from access to those resources. So, how do you survive? It is no longer enough to judge those who take up a job with the government as unprincipled people without considering the disciplinary power that the government wields, and how they use it to pummel us into submission. This is one area of victory they have recorded in the past four years. If you look around, you will see that the previously strident voices of the civil society advocates have all but died down.

In places where economic opportunities are broad enough, a critic can take up many other jobs to sustain themselves while without having to walk back from the things they have stood for. Nigeria is a much different ballgame. People are pushed to eat their own words; otherwise, they will just starve. That is why people who criticise the government publicly still go behind everyone to do other jobs for them like writing their speeches and ghostwriting their memoirs. That is why critics form no attachment to the virulent criticisms that drip from their “acidic” pens because they know they will be still interviewed for jobs with those same people.

All through last weekend, I lost count of the number of Buharists saying the Onigbinde episode should teach people to be “moderate” in their criticisms. But, how can you be moderate when you are dealing with a government that lacks any capacity to hear unless you shout and break things?


https://punchng.com/the-battle-buhari-administration-is-winning/amp/

[/s]

Hate speech and criticism are two things far apart. Prof Soludo actually criticized the government within reasonable parameters, and today he has been appointed. When hatred becomes mistaken for criticism such society is planning to kill itself gradually.

Stalwert:
[s][/s]

Hate speech and criticism are two things far apart. Prof Soludo actually criticized the government within reasonable parameters, and today he has been appointed. When hatred becomes mistaken for criticism such society is planning to kill itself gradually.

Small boy don wake up again with his cancellation prowess.

Lalasticlala come and see something...

[s]

Omooba77:


Small boy don wake up again with his cancellation prowess.

Lalasticlala come and see something...

[/s]

Has P&ID stopped paying you image laudery fee?

Nigeria a country with many residents few citizens. Traitors who will work against their country just to make a few buck.

M

Super Story

ok

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the general public.

That's been the problem from time inmemorrial

It is a difficult thing to be a government critic...unless someone is paying you salary. Because the thing is, when they catch you, you lose big time.

Good article.

Gani Fawehinmi was an exception. He criticized government till he died. And was very successful and wealthy legal luminary without a single government patronage.

If I can remember, the only albatross on him was when he appeared before a tribunal constituted by military government after NBA has warned its member not to participate. Dr Olu Onagoruwa, his once best friend used that to attack him.

Mention should also be made of icons like Beko Ransome Kuti, Ayo Obe, etc.

Dr Onagoruwa, once Nigeria's foremost constitutional lawyer fell because of Abacha's appointment he accepted.

One of the underlying beauty of democracy is wide-range participation. Participation could be active or passive.
Passive participation includes criticism, commendations, recommendations, commenting etc.
These are usually aided by the mass media.
.................
According to Pablobabera [http://pablobarbera.com/static/world_leaders_paper.pdf],
over 80% of world leaders had an active presence on social media, and used their accounts to communicate with their citizens.
Here they criticisms, commendations, recommendations dutifully.

In the study, it was found that underdeveloped nations most spill criticism as a result of the failed government(s).
.....
So we just have to continue to criticize the government to get the better of them.
That doesn't mean we want Akifku or PDP looters on seat either but we want the best from our president.

Abimbola Adelakun, you have made a good piece.
I hope this isn't an invitation to the FG so as to come 'settle' you too.

APC are smartly working the psychology of greedy Nigerian Government critics, Elzakzaky completely rubished himself all thanks to FG and Indian Government, Lamidi Kanu was made to run like a coward all thanks to buhari/burutai's scare tactics now he is no more a problem in Nigeria, FG intentionally used Money to distabilize #OURMUMUDONDO when they offered Charly Boy money and went ahead to lock up Ogudamisi far away in kano state..
Seun Onigbede was also worked on after APC hired him and also made it public that they now have their critics on their payroll

..

I thought the write up was about the P&ID imbroglio.

USELESS GOVT UNDER THE DULLARD, ANY ZOMBIE THAT QUOTE ME WILL BE STRUCK WITH TH DULLARD MISMANAGEMENT IN HIS OR HER LIFE

The best critic will be interviewed




And then uselessed

Omooba77:
Abimbola is a good writer,, but part of people that put us in this mess..............Lala n lala.
Heaven dey fall no be one person's problem....
Orun nya nbo nioo, ki soro enikan

You are very right .... Just another person who would not criticize constructively , always blaming one person .. coming on with future predictions that never actualize

Whst a delusional writer

Omooba77:
All through last weekend, I lost count of the number of Buharists saying the Onigbinde episode should teach people to be “moderate” in their criticisms. But, how can you be moderate when you are dealing with a government that lacks any capacity to hear unless you shout and break things?

www.nairaland.com/attachments/4274880_img20160713wa000_jpeg8b63eae3a7de9cfcbb52f1bdcf3d09b3

I think the administration should give me a post to score another goal.

Buhari is beating Boko Haram, thats why Boko Haram controls 3 states.


Buhari is winning the battle against Kidnapping, thats why Fulani Herdsmen now kidnap with ease.
When caught the Army releases them.

ArmaniUhuru:
"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the general public.

www.nairaland.com/attachments/4263972_candidate168717520150430101652_jpeg5d095e7c3dfe8b5bf465a64450383689

The Buhari administration is only winning a war against itself by all these you have enumerated, the followers of Buhari are mere syxhophants who are doing more harm than good to this govt by their actions


Check out my signature for quality and durable furniture for your homes and offices

Stalwert:
[s][/s]

Hate speech and criticism are two things far apart. Prof Soludo actually criticized the government within reasonable parameters, and today he has been appointed. When hatred becomes mistaken for criticism such society is planning to kill itself gradually.

Trust me sir, it is very easy to muddy that fine line between objective criticism and hate speech/outright pulling down... We all know this government is very intolerant of the former, and joyously makes effort to taint or portray it as the latter.

Ironically, members of this government, starting from the head, barely disguised their penchant to indulge freely in the latter all through out last regime, especially in the build up to the 2015 elections... He that comes to the table of equity, should be gracious enough to wash and sterilize his hands.

That said, everything written in that editorial is largely sacrosanct, and a belated pointer to a very dangerous precedent. You can't claim to be democratic if you muzzle every loud voice of opposition and criticism in your tenure.

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