By Mohammed Bello Doka
A presidential spokesperson is not merely a messenger. He is the custodian of state credibility, the interpreter of national priorities, the gatekeeper of governmental truth. When such an office is cheapened by desperation, compromised by incompetence, or weaponised for petty cartel battles, the result is what political philosophers call “the collapse of the public mind.”
And nowhere has this collapse been more visible than in Bayo Onanuga’s reckless deployment of an unvetted, inconsistent, and previously anti-Tinubu writer in a failed attempt to tarnish Nasir El-Rufai.
As Nietzsche warned: “Whoever fights monsters must take care not to become one.”
Onanuga, in fighting El-Rufai, did not merely become the monster—
he became the evidence El-Rufai was right all along.
THE ONANUGA OPERATION: WHEN DESPERATION REPLACES PROFESSIONALISM
In what passes for the modern communication structure of the Tinubu Presidency, Onanuga, in a moment of panic, reached not for seasoned communicators, not for policy experts, not for credible APC thinkers—but for a proxy writer whose public archive contradicts everything she was hired or encouraged to defend.
In amplifying Sa’adiyyah Adebisi Hassan as the authoritative voice against El-Rufai, Onanuga committed the cardinal sin of public communication: he outsourced state messaging to an unverified mercenary pen.
This is not spin. This is not strategy.
This is institutional malpractice.
And it proves something deeper:
Tinubu’s media machinery is no longer a national platform—it is a cartel of panic-driven loyalists clutching at anything that looks like a lifeline, even when it is a double-edged sword.
THE WRITER ONANUGA CHOSE: A HISTORY HE DID NOT CHECK—or DID NOT CARE ABOUT
The woman deployed to attack El-Rufai, and by extension the Muslim North, is no stranger to political writing. But her history is not what Onanuga pretended it was.
Here is what Sa’adiyyah, the “defender of Tinubu,” has publicly written:
1. “STRATEGIC SUICIDE” — She accused Tinubu of acting as France’s puppet.
She condemned his foreign policy as dangerous, unintelligent, reckless, and colonially submissive.
2. “TINUBU CAN FIND SOLDIERS FOR FRANCE BUT NOT FOR NIGERIANS DYING IN THEIR HOMES”
She declared Tinubu’s leadership “treason by priority.”
3. “THE SECURITY ARCHITECTURE OF A CLOWN REPUBLIC”
She described Tinubu’s national security structure as a joke, demanded the NSA be fired, and accused the administration of rearranging “chairs in ruins and calling it Renewed Hope.”
4. “TERRORISTS AREN’T INVISIBLE—OUR SYSTEM IS USELESS ON PURPOSE”
She accused Tinubu’s government of lacking political will, mismanaging intelligence, and enabling terrorists through incompetence.
These were not whispers.
They were not private notes.
They were published, bold, furious indictments of the same administration she suddenly defended to attack El-Rufai.
So the question becomes:
**Did Onanuga know—and still use her?
Or did he not know—and still use her?**
Both answers are catastrophic.
TWO POSSIBILITIES — BOTH DAMNING
OPTION 1: ONANUGA HIRED HER
If he recruited or paid her (as many influencer-payment rumours suggest—$3,000–$5,000 per hit-piece plus data-boy amplification), then:
Onanuga knew her inconsistency
Knew her previous anti-Tinubu writings
Knew her lack of ideological stability
Yet still used her as an attack weapon
Why?
Because in Tinubu’s media cartel, tribal comfort trumps competence, and loyalty trumps truth.
This exposes the very thing El-Rufai warned about:
Tinubu is governed not by institutions, but by a small Yoruba political cartel—not all Yoruba, just the cartel—where membership, not merit, determines influence.
OPTION 2: ONANUGA DID NOT HIRE HER—but picked her out of desperation
This option is even worse.
It means:
Onanuga did not vet the writer
Did not check her past
Did not verify credibility
Did not recognise she had attacked Tinubu more brutally than El-Rufai ever did
Did not understand he was amplifying a hostile voice
This is not misjudgement.
This is dereliction of duty.
A presidential spokesperson cannot operate like a panicked activist on Facebook.
He cannot grab the nearest attack piece simply because it flatters his insecurity.
As Plato warned:
“Ignorance, when it is in power, is the most violent of tyrants.”
HOW ONANUGA VALIDATED EL-RUFAl’S CLAIMS
El-Rufai argued that Tinubu’s government is run by a small Yoruba political cartel.
Onanuga’s behaviour confirmed it:
1. He ignored dozens of intelligent APC-linked writers (North and South).
2. He sidelined Daniel Bwala, a brilliant communicator who was initially promised the spokesman role but was benched the same day to protect Onanuga’s dominance.
3. He reached for a writer whose only qualification was proximity to cartel alignment, not competence.
Even Yoruba outside the cartel do not matter.
It’s not ethnicity.
It’s inner-circle tribalism.
This is how democracies rot:
when a government stops listening to the country and starts listening only to its cartel.
DATA DOES NOT LIE — ONANUGA’S NARRATIVE COLLAPSES UNDER FACTS
The attack on El-Rufai tried to portray Tinubu as a “competence-driven reformer” fixing Buhari’s mess.
But here is what Nigeria looks like today:
Poverty:
Before Tinubu: ~90–100 million poor
Under Tinubu: 130–139 million
30–40 million newly poor Nigerians
Killings:
6,549 killed between May 2024 and mid-2025
570 killed in April alone
Kidnappings:
Doubled to over 3,804 in one year
Illiteracy:
Rose to 40–41%
Out-of-school children:
Now 20 million
Inflation:
Peaked at 34.19%
Prices permanently higher
Numbers don’t bow to propaganda.
Facts don’t follow ethnic loyalty.
Reality is not moved by Onanuga’s desperation.
As the economist Ha-Joon Chang said:
“Numbers are like weapons: they either protect the truth or expose the lie.”
In this case, they have exposed the lie.
THE CARTEL COMMUNICATION CULTURE — LOYALTY OVER COMPETENCE
Tinubu’s media ecosystem is not national.
It is not balanced.
It is not professional.
It is:
tribal-cartel aligned
panic-driven
loyalty-centred
competence-averse
and shockingly unprofessional
Onanuga’s panic-led amplification of Sa’adiyyah is not an accident.
It is the signature of a communication cartel that fears scrutiny and relies on attack dogs instead of arguments.
Many Tinubu loyalists still breaking their backs online to defend APC should pause and learn a simple, brutal truth: Tinubu does not reward loyalty outside his inner cartel; if you are not inside that circle, you are on your own. His cabinet reflects what Daniel Bwala once revealed on national television — over 90% of those appointed opposed Tinubu during the elections, from my own analysis another 6–7% were neutral, leaving barely 3% of those who actually suffered to bring him to power. What does that tell you? That the man you are labouring for does not even see you. This is the same man who is on the verge of buying off every governor in the country while ignoring the ordinary foot soldiers who carried him on their backs. To the “data boys” and “data girls” running themselves into the ground for tokens: wise up and refuse to be used — nothing good comes from being loyal to Tinubu unless you belong to the cartel. I speak from experience: I was the very first of the data boys. I created the Tinubu Media Team in 2019, the first organised pro-Tinubu support group in Nigeria, still verifiable on Facebook today. Yet when Tinubu decided to fund a support structure in 2020, he bypassed the pioneers and went straight to Southwest Agenda (SWAGA). From the beginning, it was never about Nigeria — it was about a section of the Southwest subservient to him. Only under intense pressure was the Tinubu Support Group (TSG) created, but nothing changed. The movement, the cabinet, and this present government remain a carefully curated Southwest agenda — never a Nigerian agenda.
THE QUESTIONS THEY COULD NOT BURY
Despite all the shouting, all the insults, all the manipulations,
none of the core questions were answered:
1. Why are key Muslim Northern figures being quietly displaced ahead of 2027?
2. Why is Northern insecurity treated with lethargy?
3. Why do trillions flow to Lagos while the North bleeds?
4. Does Tinubu disown the claim that he “does not need Northern votes”?
5. What is the future of Vice President Shettima in this recalibration?
6. Is this coincidence—or a slow restructuring of the political North?
Silence is also an answer.
And here, the silence thunders like truth.
CONCLUSION — A HIRED WAILER, A FAILED GAMBLE, A CARTEL UNMASKed
Bayo Onanuga thought he found an attack dog.
He found a mirror.
He thought he was silencing El-Rufai.
He proved El-Rufai right.
He thought he was burying questions.
He amplified them.
He thought he was winning.
He lost the fight before it began.
As James Baldwin said:
“The moment you refuse to face reality, reality will face you—with a vengeance.”
And reality has faced Onanuga:
you cannot hire credibility.
You cannot purchase legitimacy.
And you cannot bury truth under propaganda.
Tinubu’s spokesman hired a wailer—
but in the end, the only thing exposed was the cartel he serves.
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opinion