by Alexander O. Onukwue

We can begin with the biggest loser and there is no doubt that it is going to be – well, who knows really?

President Buhari really does not care much about communications being dope and attune to what the people think. His national address on Monday was about scaring online children of anger not to cross national red lines. Not big on being public relations savvy, the President will not be bothered about the fuss from Mallam Shehu’s fumbled defense.

Mallam Shehu himself will not lose sleep over this. He will reassure himself that Nigerians easily forget, and news from either Diezani Alison-Madueke or another online scuffle between two public officials will soon take the limelight away from him. His online activity is not so great apart from official duties, with the exception of a few retweets of football related matters. Hence, the public outrage may also be of no immediate consequence to him.

Will the APC and the pro-Buhari groups suffer this more? Very likely, because they have sought to take advantage of every opportunity to defend and extol the virtues of the President and his team. This one got pass them if they are going to be objective, realizing the gravity of the ineptitude with which the admission of a rodent infestation of the President’s office should entail. They will rise again, but this will hurt for a minute.

So who will gain from this?

In a rat race, even the winner comes off still a rat, hence it will be doubtful that any group should want to jump on this as a we-told-you-so moment. The handlers of the former administration of Goodluck Jonathan certainly cannot as they had their own great goofs from the pulpits set up by Messrs Reno Omokri and  Doyin Okupe. Then there was the First lady, Dame Patience Jonathan, who was probably the most significant person who brought down the Jonathan administration with the power of inadvertently spoken off-remarks.

The truly neutral civil society groups could leverage on this to press more on leaders to choose capable assistants and officers, but there are not many fighting for that cause at present. The focus is primarily to get citizens to be informed enough to vote the right leaders.

But are citizens outside of Twitter and Facebook sufficiently outraged by this tale about rats to be inclined to think twice about who their leaders will choose on their teams before voting them at the polling stations?

If that’s not the case, then we all remain at the mercy of the cats.