Would Goodluck Jonathan have won the 2015 elections if his communicators were a little nice and not so self-absorbed?

Dr Reuben Abati, Doyin Okupe and Reno Omokri did not receive much love from the Nigerian public during their years at the Villa defending and speaking for Jonathan. Try as they may, Nigerians could only see disproportionate obsequiousness. Every time the Jonathan image was associated with Lee Kuan Yew or some other beacon of integrity, the stench of corruption in the government only boomed the more, tuning the populace towards further repulsion.

Since the fall from glory, Mr Abati has returned to his true public service calling, serving enlightening and insightful weekly columns on the state of the nation. Mr Okupe has quit the PDP but remains in politics with a smaller party. But rather than shrink or become less visible, Mr Omokri has somewhat transformed himself into a one-man civil society army.

From the comfort of his social media accounts, Reno has sustained a stream of attacks at the Buhari presidency like no other since 2015. His timeline on twitter is literally a mix of nuggets (either prescribing norms for moral conduct or marriage) and blistering digs at the government. He has anointed himself the chief scourge of the administration, an idea unarguably derived from his description of himself as a pastor and author of religious material. His jabs have not spared former colleagues too, Femi Fani-Kayode being the latest.

More recently, he has focused on the Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed. After various tweets deriding and lambasting the Minister’s so-called lists of looters of the treasury under the Jonathan presidency, Mr Omokri has now released his own list in a long post made on Facebook. Rather unsurprisingly, he begins the list with “Muhammadu Buhari and His cronies” as first among the ‘real looters’, with serving governors of Imo and Kaduna states Rochas Okorocha and Nasir El-Rufai second and third respectively. Reno’s list also contains Ministers Babatunde Fashola, Abubakar Malami and Adebayo Shittu, as well as the Chief of Staff to the President, Abba Kyari. Besides the reeling of names, what could be regarded as impressive about his list is the effort made to provide evidence in dates and figures, as well as some reference and context for the accusations he makes. On deeper investigation, many of those claims may fall through as lacking in truth but a Reno that makes efforts to present facts is the one Nigerians appreciate, one they wish could have better handled his duty as presidential spokesman before March 28, 2015.

But just as they think that, the other Reno shows up, the one with a predisposition for seeking attention and personal recognition so obvious it nearly obscures the sense that he is for the achievement of a greater purpose unconnected to self-advertisement. It is that Reno that chooses to post photographs of himself with the British Prime Minister, Theresa May, in order to show that a meeting of the PM with President Buhari is nothing special. A random selfie with Mrs May at a conference of the Conservative party last October, according to Reno, is the equal of an official welcome of the President of Nigeria to the Prime Minister’s Office at 10 Downing Street.

With the (nominal) following he has online, Mr Omokri’s influence cannot be underestimated. There is a line, in his tweet about he and Mrs May, calling on Aso Rock to show Buhari’s actual achievements rather than convey pictures with a foreign leader as an achievement. There is much sense in that in light of the administration’s refuge in completing old projects as the reason for the absence of new ones. However, one really wonders if it had to be accompanied by a trivial-mindedness that portrays the current opposition to the present government as little more than individuals grasping for personal promotion. Nigerians know such opposition could never be in their interest once they get into power riding on that horse of self-importance.

There is a Reno capable of putting politics away to call for prayers for the President’s son in the aftermath of his power bike accident. That’s also a Reno with the ability to pen a book on the Jonathan administration that ranked reasonably high on Amazon’s bestsellers list. If you follow a lot of Nigerian politics of twitter, that is the Reno whose views always come up on your timeline, objectively ridiculing the government, usually factually. Why can’t we always have strictly this Reno?

Alexander Onukwue