Is a former spokesman for a government the proper and fit person to turn ‘prosecutor-in-chief’ or ‘public opinion antagonist’ of same administration he spoke for?
By Emma Okah
In part one of this article which was published last week, I expressed worry about the habit of a former spokesman attacking his former boss in public and contradicting his own earlier position about governance. I did so because every day in the media, my friend and former cabinet colleague Dr Austin Tam-George who was the first image-maker of the Nyesom Ezenwo Wike administration in Rivers State as the then commissioner of Information and Communications, paints his State Government and immediate past principal in undeserving bad light.
I started writing about Oil Mining License (OML) 25 as follows:
Recently, he was on the sticky OML 25 to dance naked and to turn this concept upside down. It is perceived that most actors outside Kula who take front seat on this matter act as mercenaries. Even if Tam-George is not one, it would be difficult to see him otherwise in such a bloodied information space.
His most unfortunate outburst is his assertion that “Governor Nyesom Wike’s so-called mediation effort on behalf of Shell was dubious and politically tainted from the start, and the Kula community is right to reject it.” When does an action qualify to be dubbed ‘so-called’? This phrase is deliberately used to belittle an effort and to present it as not sincere. Nothing can be further than the truth in the well-meaning efforts of the Nyesom Ezenwo Wike administration to resolve the deteriorating situation. Or, how else does a government mediate?
Today, I will continue as follows:
The long standing underdevelopment of the Niger Delta region deeply hurts us here and nobody can claim to love the people more. The sacred duty of every conscionable Rivers man today is to avert a repeat of the “Ogoni crisis” and pursue our economic and environmental rights to fruition. Stoking war amongst us is not an option and the government may have acted in this light.
Gov Wike allowed an indigene of the affected Local Government Area who is a very high principal officer of the Government to drive the mediation process. Who else could be better? He allowed all parties to attend, and he allowed them to agree on what they wanted. Over N1.4Bn was wrestled out of Shell for the communities. As a starting point, what else would any community ask for from zero Naira, if truly development fund is what that community was fighting for? It may not be adequate but it’s a sign that it could be better and peace was prevailing over violence.
Tam-George submitted that Shell is evil and declared that: “Shell is not alone. It is in collusion with a rent-seeking state that seems bent on grinding its own citizens to dust, in exchange for oil rents.” This statement sounds like an indictment on the APC-led Federal Government. If truly he means that the Kula community was fighting for development by the federal government, or that they were fighting to control their oil assets, is it not the FG that is grinding them to death? Is it the oppressed state government, an equal victim?
I do not think that Gov Wike is against Belemaoil. Is it not the FG that seemingly overlooked this cry of the Kula people as he claimed and renewed Shell’s license for OML 25? If Gov Wike and the Rivers State Government were to support the revocation of the license and push against Shell that has won a license from the FG would you, same Tam-George, not mount the airwaves and accuse the governor of recruiting villagers to throw out a multinational corporation? Would you and your new friends not accuse the Rivers State Government of sabotaging the economy by stopping oil operations and chasing away investors?
So far, over N700Bn has been lost in the shutdown at Kula. This sum belongs to many groups including the Rivers State Government and the affected Local Government Council, let alone the communities. Gov Wike has thus justified his mediation action by making it clear that the revenue being lost belongs to all.
Is it not comical for anybody to argue that the Rivers State Government has no kind of right to mediate? Gov Wike has repeatedly explained that he cannot and did not interfere with the licensing process, an exclusive reserve of the FG. He did not interfere with oil drilling, an exclusive duty of the oil multinationals. He is only intervening in the aspect given to him by the Constitution; peace and stability in the communities. Look, communities do not belong to the FG but to states and LGAs.
Dr Tam-George tried to justify his attacks on Gov Wike by saying that the Kula community is impoverished and lacks basic amenities. He tried to quote how much the Rivers State Government has received from revenue allocation or 13 per cent over the years. He did not tell his audience that this receiving was going on for years before the man he now hates came to power. He would have to point to the projects his new master who was governor before Wike came executed there.
He would have to understand that oil revenue goes to the FG and oil companies first and the responsibility to develop the oil communities falls on the FG and the oil communities as well as the state. The 13 per cent is given to states to develop all parts of the state including the oil communities. Now, if the FG and oil communities have not done anything in Kula, how would it be the Rivers State government or Gov Wike that would be singled out for public trashing, except there is something wrong with the intentions of the purveyor of that logic?
Tam-George said; “Two years ago, the women of Kula began to occupy the oil platforms in protest against Shell’s apocalyptic presence in their community, and to challenge the company’s decade-long environmental impunity. Three decades after the Ogoni uprisings, the showdown in Kula dramatizes once again the crisis of Nigeria’s petro-dollar modernity, and our inability to invent a grammar of citizenship based on egalitarianism and respect for community property rights.” Is he saying this occupation must continue without efforts at reconciliation? Has he been to Kula to see the conditions of the women and the hazards they face? Is he aware that a woman fell into the waters the day they were ferried to the area to showcase their anger to the international press? Who has accounted for the loss and other humanitarian situations? Does he not think that something is going wrong in that place in the name of big oil money at war using innocent community people and women? Is it not purely a war for oil license by big oil powers? Where did Gov Wike go wrong?
The burden of a former spokesman is huge. If you were part of decision and policies, it is difficult to double back to become a freedom fighter. It is not enough to quote amounts the Rivers State Government has so far received; what can serve is if Dr Tam-George can bring memos he submitted to the Wike administration suggesting projects to be executed in Kula and was turned down. Even if he did, he would have to show that he had to resign in protest as a result. Else, a member of a group let alone the spokesman loses the right to double back to condemn his former boss or that same administration. That right is left to others.
Finally, it is important to remind Tam-George that pushing Kula to become another Ogoni as he seems to do is a huge disservice to the people of Rivers State. If a mere shutdown of about two years has led to almost N1 trillion loss, can anybody quantify what has been lost in OML 11 (Ogoni oil field)? So far, killings have not occurred in the OML 25 crisis but the over 2000 human lives lost in Ogoni in over 25 years and asset loss and depreciation recorded there can only be imagined. Is this what Tam-George wants again? Can he not see that this is what Gov Wike is striving to avert?
The Kula siege has been on for two years, in all of it, what exactly has the FG done? Why is Tam-George with some few others angry that the Rivers State may resolve the dispute? How do they think Gov Wike will force the FG to just collect the license from Shell and hand over to Belemaoil as some of the community people are demanding? No normal Riversman will dislike Belemaoil but does that look doable in the international oil business processes? Even if a reversal is possible, only the FG can do it. Gov Wike has no role to play than keep the peace and ensure security.
Dr Tam-George can only be encouraged to join other well-meaning groups that are frantically seeking a peaceful resolution out of this matter. In all his media outing, he made no single suggestion on the way forward. That is the hallmark of hate- induced posturing; the authors never think from their own brains but the brains of their masters.
What is important in this write-up is to remind Tam-George and other former spokesmen that there is a burden upon them; the burden of not being qualified to move from spokesman to antagonist in same space. That is the highest ethical constraint in the job of a spokesman.
(This is my personal opinion)
… concluded
Emma Okah is former Commissioner for Information and Communications in Rivers State.
