Southern Borno, Christians Won’t Be Used Against Governor Shettima – Gusau Special Adviser on Communications to Governor Kashim Shettima of Borno State, Isa Gusau In this interview with a select group of journalists speaks on recent developments concerning his boss as they affect the insurgency and 2015 politics that is already heating up in the State. Michael Oche presents excerpts of the interview. A battle line seems to have been drawn by your boss – Governor Kashim Shettima and his godfather, Ex-Governor Ali Modu Sheriff. What is happening? By his nature, if you have ,met him, Governor Kashim Shettima does not draw battle lines with people. He doesn’t initiate fights and even when fights are launched against him, Shettima doesn’t fight back, he goes all out to make peace as a natural peace maker, he is unconsciously humble at peace times and in disagreements, this is why some people underestimate him for a weak man. Amazingly, he wins most of the battles launched against him without drawing battle lines, he simply absolves and triumphs over those who fight him, this is how God has created and blessed him. His strength lies in his absolute sincerity and politeness in dealing with people, he never relates with hypocrisy, he is never hostile, he is never the aggressor, he is usually the attacked party in virtually every issue I have observed involving him for years. You can do your investigations and confirm whatI have said. Governor Shettima can never be the guilty party in any squabble; people try to override him all the time because he is tolerant to a fault, humble, simple and never hostile or hit back with hostility. I will give you an assignment, go to Borno, do thorough investigation covering the Government House and all the places Governor Shettima had worked either in the University of Maiduguri as a lecturer or in Zenith Bank where he rose to become a General Manager in Maiduguri or even at University of Ibadan where he had his Masterdegree, if you are able to get one individual who tells you that Kashim Shettima publicly insulted him whether as a Governor or before then, I will pay for a bet. No single person at the Government House will tell you he ever heard Governor Shettima shouting at anyone or insulting anybody from the top officials down to cleaners, messengers, cooks and drivers. Those of us close to him, how we know the Governor is angry with someone or with us is that he will relate less with you, he will not ask his security details to deny or restrict your access to him, no he won’t do that, you can always go see him and greet him as usual, he will answer your greetings in a polite way, usually when you tell him ‘good morning’, he will reply, ‘good morning, my brother, how are you, how is your family and then give you an assignment or seek your opinion over something etc’ but when he is angry with you, when you say ‘good morning’, he will reply, ‘good morning, how are you’, then he will ask you to call someone for him, that is his own way of dismissing you, he will say nothing after that, no assignment and no seeking your views but he would never walk you out of his office as one would expect a Governor to do with authority. One or two days later, he can talk to you about where you went wrong or take some actions depending on the issue. This is Shettima for you. So, there is no battle line as far Governor Shettima is concerned, and he has respect for the former Governor, Ali Modu Sheriff as one of the statesmen in Borno State. You said there is no battle line but your former commissioner for information Inuwa Bwala is believed to own a new Newspaper that has been carrying some stories with very serious allegations against Governor Shettima and his government and Bwala often speaks for Sheriff as his top associate, what is going on? I have tried to avoid discussing the former commissioner and my elder brother because he is not an issue before us, we don’t want to be distracted from serious issues to child play. With due apologies, what the former commissioner is doing is just child play, no serious person takes his publications seriously because it is clear that there is malice. He is publishing because he was sacked and he is being childish, I am sorry to say so. I used to have lots of respect for him, I thought he was an extremely strategic PR manager but he has grossly disappointed me with the way he is going about his malice. He is far older and more experienced than me but I can’t behave like him. Of all the media platforms in Nigeria that are owned by trained journalists or those who practiced journalism or even those who are trained journalists, the former commissioner’s Newspaper called National Trail but which from the look of things has derailed nationally (laughs), is the only one whose editorial is openly and recklessly connected with the political position of its publisher. Governor Orji Uzor Kalu owns the Sun and New Telegraph Newspapers, Kalu is a PDP man, he was having problems with his successor but The Sun never made the current Governor of Abia the subject of consistent blackmail with falsehoods, the Sun and Telegraph do not indicate partisanship that is openly tilted towards the PDP despite Kalu being in PDP. Chief Dokpesi is a PDP leader, his AIT and Raypower do not openly and recklessly align with PDP, they are objective and factual based, The Nation carries lots of stories that support the Presidency, they reflect PDP positions despite who is said to own the paper being an opposition leader, there is so much wisdom in someone separating his media investment from his personal views because when you establish a Newspaper, your dream should be making every segment of the market have stakes in the Newspaper, it should earn public trust and confidence so that it can be public-market driven and not ownership opinionated that is driven by falsehoods. Readers are not fools, they think, a lot of them are analytical. When you start a Newspaper, it takes you years to win public trust, readers have loyalty to existing papers, for you to shift some of these readers to pay attention to you, you must prove the worth of every line you publish to earn and win their confidence with the truth you write, the day to day objectivity, the sense in your style, no reader will take any paper serious when the paper makes a State and a Governor a permanent feature of its editorial content with open bias, you end up wining public sympathy for the person you perpetually attack. What happens when you perpetually attack a particular person is that you only attract partisan readers who don’t like person for sharing your own political position and these are not the readers you need, the people you need to win are those that don’t already have your own opinion. Honestly, my boss Inuwa Bwala goofed. People would have respected him if he was able to separate his Newspaper from his brand of politics. Suspense is an important strategy in life, if the commissioner had focused on his politics and allowed the paper grow objectively he would have kept all of us in suspense with some real and imaginary fears, we might all be thinking what he could pull but by going to publish all sorts of none existing and serious allegations in just three to four editions, he has succeeded in erasing any fear anyone might have had, he has done his worst and there is no effect, what more is there to be afraid of? It wasn’t a good strategy, sometimes you deliberately refuse to hit so as to leave opponents guessing whether you will hit and when, they permanently keep courting you but when you go wild and the effect is not felt, people reduce their estimation of who they thought you were and capable of doing. So, the Governor is not in any way worried by the publications, he doesn’t read them, we all don’t because we have serious issues of insurgency which leaves innocent citizens killed; we simply can’t spare time for childishness. In one of the recent publications, a former Senator of Borno State, Senator Hambagda was interviewed accusing Governor Kashim Shettima of discriminating against the people of southern Borno in terms of support for victims of insurgency, what is your reaction? I am surprised you mentioned Senator Hambagda because I haven’t heard anything about him since 2011, I think he has long relocated out of Borno, he wasn’t around all through, if he truly granted that interview and speaks now that relative peace is in Maiduguri where was he living before the crisis? I will say thanks to Governor Shettima, security agencies and youth volunteers for working for peace, now the Senator can come back to Maiduguri and continue his politics from where he stopped in 2011. But the issue of southern Borno is one of the failed tricks of some people that have constituted themselves into political aggressors against the Governor. By the way, when last did Senator Hambagda visit Southern Borno, probably in 2011 or earlier? You see, until the last five or so months, Boko Haram attacks were exclusively confined to the Central and northern part of Borno State. There were occasions in the past in which persons were killed in some part of the south but cases of communities being sacked were largely in the Central and northern part of the State and this is why the focus was victims support was initially there largely.
Posted on: Wed, 13 Aug 2014 19:55:56 +0000
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