July 5th, 1999 will forever remain indelible in my mind. That was the day I lost one of the greatest minds to ever walk these shores – at least during his days. The day started like any normal Monday morning. I left Kaduna for Abuja because I was in Kaduna for the weekend and reached the office at about 11:00 am and walked straight to the office of the late Salihijo Ahmad, then one of the Executive Directors of Afri-Projects Consortium, the Managing Consultants to the defunct Petroleum (Special) Trust Fund (PTF) an intervention agency established by the late Sani Abacha. As it was our wont, we meet every Monday morning to chart the course for Blueprint Consortium, a media company that was floated by like minds and in its infant stage. I was with the late Salihijo Ahmad till after the zuhur prayers. He signed some documents for me and I left promising to come back much later. That later never came because he died before isha. Throughout that day, SA (as he was known and addressed in the office) was nowhere near any security office to be “debriefed” by any egocentric megalomaniac.
I write this piece for two reasons – the first reason is that July 5th, 2018 will be exactly nineteen years since SA left this world; and the second reason is an interview I read in The Sun newspaper of June 30th, 2018 granted to the paper’s Kaduna correspondent by one Abdurrahman Mohammed, who claimed that SA died after he was “debriefed” by the said Mohammed who claimed that “because they have enough spiritual powers” that whoever they “debriefed” must die. I have certainly taken note of this and will consult with other family members to get to the bottom of this claim. Truth be told, I have never read such a disjointed, incoherent and lies-laced interview in my entire life. With the campaigns around the corner, shameless and conscienceless people don’t hesitate to exhume the dead in order to play to the gallery or score cheap political points. With whom? I don’t know.
The late Salihijo Ahmad died a year after the death of Abacha and if my memory serves me right, Buhari resigned as PTF Chairman on May 28th, 1999, a day to Obasanjo’s inauguration, saying he cannot serve under Obasanjo. The records are there for those who wish to verify. It appears Mohammed Abdurrahman is needlessly regurgitating the lies of Femi Fani-Kayode, who in one of his regular attacks of insanity claimed “the witness that could have nailed Buhari about the graft that took place at PTF … but died under mysterious circumstances”. The late Salihijo Ahmad died in Abuja on Monday 5th July 1999, barely a week after the appointment of the IMC headed by Dr. Haroun Adamu and about seven months before they filed their now discredited report. He died of complications from a longstanding heart ailment. We therefore demand that we should leave the deceased’s soul to rest in perfect peace, as we pray to Allah to grant Salihijo Ahmad’s soul Aljannah Firdaus. Ameen.
For Abdurrahman Mohammed to claim (or assert) and The Sun newspaper to publish that Salihijo Ahmad died because the claimant “debriefed” him after Buhari refused Abacha’s plan to make him Interim President is nonsense, to say the least. What is our media becoming? Simple verification cannot be done in matters that are weighty and may affect the reputation of others. How long and how much will it cost The Sun to confirm the wild allegations made by this hallucinating attention grabber? Do we so care less about the reputation of others that we are ready to throw ethics and decorum to the winds?
The wild allegations and the disjointed nature of the answers provided by the interviewee, which in no way has any connection the questions asked, would have warned any serious reporter or medium to throw away the interview instead of rushing to town with this laughable tissue of make-believe stories. I thought Kenny Ashaka is an experienced hand that can spot a fraud a mile away. I thought wrong. An example of the hallucinatory nature of Mohammed’s mind was his claim that Buhari jumped his fence into the valley when security men came to his house. Why will he jump his fence because he saw security men in his house? This was supposed to be when Abacha was Head of State and Buhari was still Chairman of the PTF. Did Mohammed, Kenny Ashaka and The Sun conveniently forget that the PTF survived Abacha and Buhari served in the same capacity under Abdussalami Abubakar? Are these people for real? Please tell me I didn’t read this interview.
This only tells you the level some people will go to, just to destroy Buhari’s legendary perpendicularity. This makes me love Buhari the more. Listen to Mohammed Abdurrahman and Kenny Ashaka, “my operatives came up with results and findings that they were planning to make Buhari a president through this entire route of the CPC and…”. Is this for real? When was CPC registered? 2010 I believe. When did Abacha die? 1998. What is our mass media becoming? Do we still have the Nigerian Press Council, Nigerian Union of Journalists, Nigerian Guild of Editors and all the other regulatory and professional bodies? Was The Sun out to tarnish the reputation of Buhari and Salihijo Ahmad or were they in pursuit of a genuine human interest story?
Any medium that is serious about the promotion of national cohesion and understanding wouldn’t be reckless enough to publish such rubbish and call it an interview. The mere fact that the dates didn’t check out is enough to alert the editors that something is not right here. This sort of journalism has turned the profession and the professionals into laughing stock the world over. Also this kind of media practice may directly be responsible for the spate of murders in contemporary Nigeria. Victims are turned into villains by our media because it appears to me that is the sort of narrative and outcome of an already prepared agenda laid down for our media men.
Salihijo Ahmad was head and shoulders above these minions when he was alive and this is exactly the reason why nineteen years after his death, they are yet to make peace with themselves and his successes at a relatively young age. He died at forty-two. My only consolation in all this is that God spared SA the pain of witnessing the thrash passing as news – for he was preparing to invest into the media when death came calling. He is spared the hate market known as social media, though I cannot differentiate between the ‘social and the mainstream media’. They appear to be overlapping in their roles of misinforming the world or skewing their reports to suit a particular outcome. At least Premium Times owned up to their mischief.
Allah yafe, fauna ne, SA.