The Senior Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, stoked an online controversy on Monday when he declared that age was not an important factor in the choice of ministers.
An online protest had greeted the inclusion of Chief Audu Ogbeh on the first list that President Muhammadu Buhari presented to the Senate for screening. Some social media activists had described the nomination of Ogbeh as an avoidable act of recycling.
Ogbeh served the country as a Minister of Communications in 1982. Then, the late Olusola Saraki, the father of the Senate President, Bukola Saraki, was a member of the Senate session that screened Ogbeh.
About 33 years after that screening, Ogbeh faces another Senate session led by Bukola from today (Tuesday) for another round of screening.
Diverse jokes on Ogbeh’s nomination had flooded the Internet since #TheList was unveiled, just as some of the names contained on the list have been enmeshed in controversies.
Reacting to the one on the age issue, Adesina, on Monday, declared that “age does not matter.”
The spokesperson, who has made several online remarks that turned controversial in recent months, attempted to distinguish between what he called “mental age and chronological age”. He argued that the former was much more relevant to performance, which he urged Nigerians to focus on.
He said the nominees qualified because they were Nigerians.
“People who have been nominated are qualified and are Nigerians. Talking of age, there is a saying that ‘age does not matter’.
“We must rather talk of the mental age rather than the chronological age. It is not the chronological age that matters,” Adesina, who was tweeting on #ministers, posted.
He also said the President would not be designated as a minister even though he would supervise a ministry. Buhari said he would personally oversee the Ministry of Petroleum Resources.
Adesina said every state, in line with the provision of the Constitution, would get a ministerial appointment.
He said, “President Buhari is not going to be designated a minister but he will supervise a ministry. He has all it takes to supervise a ministry.
“He will respect the Constitution; the Constitution says a minister must be appointed from each state.”
Adesina’s tweets were received with outrage across different social media platforms. Some of the youths who have, over the years, complained about being excluded from mainstream politics, condemned Adesina, whose statements trended on social platforms for several hours.
Responding through @sdatti06, Abubakar Sadiq tweeted, “Age matters; we want youths to be involved in governance. We should remember that that was what Buhari and his team promised during their campaign.”
Sadiq, who copied Buhari and Vice President Yemi Osibanjo in his tweet, said Nigerian youths would not get an opportunity to learn if the elders continued to dominate the system.
Also commenting on Adesina’s position, one Didy Arowo wondered why the President ignored thousands of young Nigerians doing well in different endeavours for individuals old enough to retire from active service.
“There are many qualified Nigerians out there; bring fresh people into the system. How do we want to effect change in the system with the same old people that destroyed it?” he asked.
With the tweets recording thousands of critical responses on the Internet, some online activists said the spokesman would run into a more serious trouble with ‘online citizens’ if he failed to take appropriate cautions.
Interestingly, the Nigerian digital space is set for another engaging week as the @NGRSenate has promised to tweet “details of curriculum vitae and credentials” of the nominees during the screening.
Meanwhile, about four months after their appointments, Adesina and his colleague, Garba Shehu, still use unverified social media platforms to disseminate official information.
Despite the sensitive nature of their portfolios, they have yet to get their Twitter pages verified. This casts aspersion on the credibility of the accounts, especially among the international community.
Adesina and Shehu, the Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, had low social media profiles before they were appointed. But they have, in the past four months, built a huge following.
