Meet Lai Mohammed – The Hardest Working Man in The Action Congress

It’s difficult to listen to radio or open the newspapers in Nigeria today, without listening to or reading about Alhaji Lai Mohammed at work. The National Publicity Secretary of the Action Congress political party never fails to use every opportunity to get the manifesto and opinions of his party across to the public via the media.

Mohammed has commented on every gaffe of the Obasanjo and Yar’Adua administrations. From OBJ’s third term agenda, to the Yar’Adua’s alleged ill health, the bungling of the 2008 budget and the missteps with the 2009 appropriation and Maurice Iwu’s INC’s Im(?)partiality – nothing that has happened in the polity in the last three years has escaped Iwu’s attention.

He’s become such a force that even the security agents of government now pay "special attention" to him. If only the other members of the Nigeria political class could take their jobs as seriously as he does his.

The Link Between Ram Killing and National Reputation

In the fifteen or so years that I have been consciously watching the media, this is the first time that I’ll be seeing images of a head of state physically murdering an animal, all in the name of killing the “Sallah Ram”. Seeing President Umar Musa Yar’Adua presidentially doing away with a ram on the front page of the Guardian newspaper today shows that our president is either a terribly stubborn and insensitive man, is surrounded by unbelievably inept advisers and minders, or simply suffered a security breach. Even the Head of the Islamic State of Saudi Arabia, the homeland of the Islamic Faith, has never been portrayed in the media killing a ram for the Eid-el-Kabir Islamic festival.

The states that Nigeria does business with have got laws against what our president did yesterday. Some of the heads of states and the international bodies that he’ll be asking for loans, assistance or just plain and simple support would have choked or thrown up if they were there at Abuja, seeing what our “oga” did to that ram. I’m not been hypocritical, having killed a few animals in my time; but the head of state of the most populous black country in the world must live up to globally recognized standards of decency and civility.

I really don’t care what the President does in the privacy of his Aso Rock quarters or his Katsina home, but slaughtering that ram in the presence of the media does not in any help his reputation or that of the country he leads.