by Alexander O. Onukwue
Mallam Garba Shehu caused quite the stir on Tuesday, August 22, when he let it drop that President Buhari’s office was undergoing renovation due to an infestation of rodents.
That was in response to the reports from the President’s first day of resumption after 103 away that he would be working from home. In seeking to be as clear as possible on the reason for the work location, Mallam Shehu set off a course of conversations that has left a mark of incompetence on the administration of the Villa.
But besides the embarrassing notion that the entire staff and men of the Aso Rock management neglected the Office of the President to the mercy of rodents, it should be worthwhile to review the excuse because something seems not to really add up.
President Muhammadu Buhari was visited by his media team on the weekend of the 12th and 13th f August. Speaking in an interview after the meeting at Abuja House, Special Adviser on media and publicity, Femi Adesina, put up the notion that the President would be on his way soon, subject to the green light of the doctors. Meanwhile, previous visits must have given the impression that Buhari would not be far from his return to the country. The Abuja House detachment of the #ResumeorResign protests may have played a role in hurrying Buhari out of London ahead of schedule but surely the Aso Rock staff have had time to put the office in a proper state before he arrived on the evening of Saturday the 19th.
Did the staff take the departure of the President on an “indefinite” vacation to mean that he would never return? That would bother on malice but even if it were so, would Muhammadu Buhari have been the last person to deserve to use that office, so as to render it the abode for the feasts of rodents?
Without mentioning the rats, Femi Adesina corroborated the issue of the dilapidation of the President’s office as the reason for Buhari to have to work from a replica office for some time. But that does not satisfy; if the office was not in that state as at May 7 upon his departure to London, why has it come under such deterioration so quickly under so short a period?
It is either the handlers of the housekeeping duties and their supervisors are grossly inept, unaware that their jobs are a service to guard a national treasure, or that there are cracks in the mighty Rock and Lion King and rats have to be taken to the lab to find a way out.
Nigeria I hail!!!