Buhari: On Onanuga and Omatseye’s toxicity at a time of national mourning

Across Nigeria and the world, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu scored brownie points for his leadership following the passing of President Muhammadu Buhari on Sunday July 13, 2025.

Nigerians saw how President Tinubu commendably led the efforts in organizing a state funeral for the late President Buhari; from promptly sending a high-level delegation led by the Vice President Kashim Shettima to accompany the corpse of the late President back to Nigeria, to personally leading the dignitaries that witnessed his internment at the graveside in Daura, Katsina state.

Nigerians also saw as President Tinubu cut a forlorn figure at the fresh mounded final resting place of President Buhari as he paid his final respects to a man who had been his close political associate for over a decade.

While President Tinubu was robustly involved in the funeral arrangements of President Buhari, however two of his leading publicists Bayo Onanuga the president’s Senior Special Adviser on Information and Strategy, and Sam Omatseye the president’s long-term private media honcho chose to willfully ignore the national mood of profound mourning which their principal and the nation’s leader President Tinubu was superintending. The pair instead chose to follow their well- traveled path of mischief and lack of decorum even at a time that called for a nuanced perspective on the loss of such a national icon.

To be sure, I concede and believe that the two men are within their rights to hold and express their opinions on any matter not minding whether it concurs with the prevailing public mood in the country or not. After all across the country many had publicly expressed negative views on late President Buhari and in some areas there were even wild demonstrations of joy at the former president’s passing.

But while many Nigerians will readily agree that Onanuga and Omatseye are entitled to their opinions, however the two cannot expect to go unchallenged if their views tend towards a blinkered clearly partisan bent on an issue of national import such as the passing of a former president.

In one of the statements he signed and issued on behalf of President Tinubu, Onanuga stated that Vice President Kashim Shettima had been “ordered” by the president to proceed to London to bring back the corpse of President Buhari to Nigeria for burial. Under the circumstances of a nation in mourning was that the appropriate word to use in describing an action directed by the president to his Vice? As a veteran Editor and Publisher would Onanuga have allowed the use of the word in a news item to be carried by his publication?  As a public official coordinating the president’s public information was it the right word to use in conveying to the Nigerian public and the world out there an activity that the number 2 citizen of the country should carry out at the behest of the president?

Onanuga may have meant to show contempt and ridicule the VP as a person and the office he occupies, but what he did reinforced the impression many Nigerians and the world have come to have of dysfunctional presidency at odds and in disarray with fractured lines of loyalty clearly manifesting.

While Onanuga is guilty of gratuitous disconnect in his professional and official etiquette as a public official, Omatseye’s attempt at misrepresenting the late President Buhari in his article titled ‘’Anti-climax’’ was downright condemnable. In the article which Omatseye unsuccessfully labored to appear objective but ended up resorting to his familiar setting of a well-known hack writer, he described the late president as a man ‘’who loved himself too much to love Nigeria enough. He loved his faith too much to open his heart out of his prejudices’’. In another part of the article Omatseye said of Buhari that ‘’He was loved by both cow and man. He did less for man than cow, but cows never had a way of gratitude known to man, except men like him, perhaps’’.

I had the privilege of co-authoring the first biography on President Buhari back in 1984 when he first came to national limelight as a military head of State and I can say with all fibre of my being that to describe the late president as Omatseye did was harebrained. I would not know where Omatseye was in 1967, but I would have him know that Buhari as a young army officer was one of the first in the line of fire when the Nigerian civil war erupted in the border town of Gakem in the present Cross River state. His sector Commander then Colonel Martin Adamu to whom Buhari was Adjutant disclosed this to the team that met him in Jos in the course of background research on the late president. If Buhari was a man who loved cows more than man as Omatseye sought to convey, he would not have put life on the line along with others to help save the country at the time. Similarly, much later as General Officer Commanding, 3^rd Armoured Division headquartered in Jos, Plateau state, Buhari took charge of his command and routed the Chadian rebel forces of Hissene Habre who had occupied parts of Nigerian territory. His troops not only routed the insurgents he pursued them right into Chadian territory creating a buffer zone between them and Nigerian territory. Again Buhari once held the portfolio of Petroleum Ministry at a time when few if any knew what an oil well was.

Was that the mark of a man who loved himself more than he loved the nation?

Onanuga’s indecorous statements is borne out of an incurably insufferable, hollow arrogance which defines his management of President Tinubu’s public affairs engagement. Omatseye wallows in sea of blissful ignorance barely covered by an ingrained see-through prejudice.

What unites both men is that they have a measuring rod of seeing everything through a Tinubu telescope; everybody and everything in the world must be viewed from how it measures up to the persona of Tinubu as a person and as a leader good or not so. But I must say in the circumstance of the passing of president Buhari the pair have goofed big time. By their overzealousness and intemperate statements and actions as President Tinubu’s top public and media managers, they have dented President’s Tinubu’s commendable efforts on Buhari’s funeral arrangements in the eyes of Nigerians and the world.

Gadu can be reached via [email protected] and 08035355706 (texts only).