20 August 2010By Saka
Raji Audu
"It is one of the saddest realities of life that one
has more people who are interested or pre-occupied to
pull one down to their levels than those who are
interested or dedicated to pull one up to their
heights." – Tam
David West
One naughty issue troubling
the media industry in
Nigeria
today is the unchecked infiltration of quacks and
those who have no business in the industry except for
monetary benefits. This is unfortunately, with high
level of consequence, affecting the image and
integrity of responsible journalism in the media
industry of the country. Since 2006 when a Yobe born
man with clerical background, Tukur Mamu gate crashed
his way into the media industry with his Desert
Herald kind of newspaper and began to damage the
media profession with impunity, he has always been
coming out with fictitious stories that lack iota of
truth except deception, malice and extortion, mainly
due to ignorance of some of his gullible readers.
In the past, the
Yobe State Government had cause to
complain bitterly to the reading public to be wary of
the recalcitrant but busy body nature of her son who
dishes out fiction about people and society from his
Kaduna enclaves. Tukur Mamu, a clerical assistant
turned publisher has been variously arrested and
cramped into detention by the law enforcement agents
for framing up people, issues and publishing same for
the consumption of unsuspecting general public. First,
he was arrested and detained after series of genuine
complaints by the concerned people in respect of his
quack and bull story of the assassination of the late
revered cleric, Sheikh Mahmoud Ja'afar of blessed
memory.
Mamu, the publisher cum
Editor in Chief of the Desert Herald was also
arrested and detained by the presidency about his
unconfirmed report he published against the former
First
Lady, Hajia Turai Yar'adua. Thereafter,
his Yobe State Government also ordered his arrest and
detention on ground of frame up and malicious
publication. He was however let the hook of these
detentions after the intervention of some people, some
of whom are his sponsors. It is clear that Mamu has
been using his mushroom newspaper to witch hunt,
malign and threaten
government officers
and political shots that refuse to cooperate with him
for the sustenance of his gutter newspaper. His policy
is "give me or you are disgraced." In 2009, there was
an alleged demand of N2M from the
Kano State Government by the notorious
publisher, which he did not get. This became public
knowledge after Mamu fell out with his erstwhile best
friend, Sulaiman Uba Gaya, former aide to Governor
Shekarau, who Mamu described as "traitor" during the
days of their scuffles.
In fact, there was no
fiction that Tukur Mamu has not manufactured and
published to tarnish the image of the government and
people of Bauchi, Taraba, Kaduna, Zamfara,
Borno,
Kano and host of others, just to alms twist them to
get undue patronage. The readers of Mamu's junk would
have noticed in recent time the consistent publication
in the Desert Herald the list people that
allegedly made financial commitment to Mamu's
newspaper from Zamfara State Government and constantly
reminded them to redeem their pledges. A careful,
decent and responsible publisher would have adopted
decent and responsible way to get his pledges
redeemed. But Mamu and his medium lack this basic
tenet. Their main philosophy is to rubbish and
blackmail people to get what they want, perhaps, due
to their greed, avarice and desperation.
On 17th July,
2010, the Desert Herald organized an event in
Kaduna tagged "The Desert Herald Awards for Excellence
2010."During the ceremony, some Nigerians were
honoured. Ironically, Governor Mahmud Shinkafi, his
wife, Hajiya Aisha Mahmuda Shinkafi and that of her
Bauchi State counterpart,
Hajiya Abiodun Yuguda were among the 'final nominees'
of the Desert Herald kind of Award for
Excellence. Consequently, the well publicised occasion
also indicated that Alhaji Ibrahim Geidam, the
Governor of
Yobe
State would serve as Chairman of the
occasion. The issue here is that considering the media
hype the Desert Herald has variously lampooned
on the Chief executives of Yobe, Bauchi and Zamfara,
it baffled the public that the newspaper included
these states as recipients of its awards and honours.
It is either that something had gone under the table
or Mamu's newspaper was publishing from his two sides
of its mouth. What then is the moral justification for
its publisher to criticise and pull them down? Is this
not what it is referred to as "double standards?"
Indeed, the People's
Governor, Malam
Ibrahim Shekarau of
Kano State
has been one of the unfortunate targets of Tukur
Mamu's blackmail and malicious publications. The
reason is not far fetched. The governor has refused to
bow and kowtow to Mamu's treacherous campaigns of
calumny. It should be recalled here that in 2006, when
Shekarau declared to run for a second term as governor
of Kano State, Desert Herald mischievously
published an unverified allegation of house
acquisitions and ownership of foreign bank accounts by
the governor at the back page of the paper. In April
2009, Mamu's Desert Herald also adopted
malicious and fictitious story about the assassination
of the late Kano cleric.
After a long tormented
journey, it was eventually revealed by the police that
the said publication was carefully hatched by the
publishers to cause mischief as Shekarau has nothing
to do with the allegation. Unknown to Mamu and his
cliques, when God has endorsed a man, no man born of
woman can do any thing. Shekarau's rising political
profile continued to blossom and he has now spent more
than seven of the eight years required in the office.
Is this not enough to teach Tukur Mamu a big sense? In
any case, a dog doomed to miss road does not listen to
the whistle of its owner.
It was August 5, 2010 at
the International Conference Centre in
Abuja;
Malam (Dr) Shekarau launched his official declaration
of aspiration to seek presidential nomination from his
party, ANPP for the forthcoming 2011 presidential
poll. Perhaps, contrary to expectation of the
opposition, the august occasion was highly successful
as the International Conference Centre; Abuja was
filled to capacity with men of timbre and caliber. The
public declaration of Shekarau's presidential
aspiration, which was televised live on radio and
television nation wide sent opposition jittering and
became nervous. Still, Shekarau's type of J.F Kennedy
speech dearly touched both the mind of the people that
were present at the august occasion and those that
watched the big event at home.
It now becomes clear that
Shekarau's 2011 success train is on the way to Aso
Rock and if the much talked about credible election is
going to be any thing to go by in 2011 poll, then, we
have seen and heard from our next
President of Nigeria and the opposition
knows pretty well that Malam (Dr) Ibrahim Shekarau is
on a mission assured. The next plan by his adversaries
was how they could assemble bumps on his way so that
he could 'fall.' The first shot came from one
misguided columnist with the Daily Sun, Mr.
Uche Ezechukwu who was perhaps contracted by the
opposition to castigate, using religious bigotry to
author some nasty things against Shekarau's
presidency. That was Monday. Ezechukwu has since got a
feedback of his own diatribe against the man of the
people. Then, it came to the turn of Tukur Mamu. On
Tuesday, August 10, 2010, his Desert Herald
came out with subterfuge and fiction. This time
around, it seems that Mamu and his newspaper have
exhausted their lies against Shekarau because for long
we have not red them. Now that they have come back
again, the only option for them was to assemble some
characters to create dramatic scenes.
The play has two live
characters (Amina and Fatsima acting as 'Mother' and
'sister' of Shekarau respectively) and a dead man
(Mohammed Sani, alias Tanko acting as 'Shekarau') with
Tukur Mamu and a PDP sympathiser, Jafar Sani Bello
Gama as script writers and narrators with additional
manipulations from a jester, Bala M. Makosa. The main
focus of the drama is to deliberately create false
impression that Shekarau is the 'Tanko' that
supposedly died in 1962 at Jos, having left his 'home
state'
Bauchi in that year. Curiously, in 2003,
Amina and Fatsima saw Shekarau's campaign poster and
suddenly realized that he was their son and brother
that allegedly died 41 years ago, especially now that
he is the Governor of a prominent commercial state as
Kano.
Having tried to reach Shekarau for assistance and
failed, they suddenly got to know Desert Herald
and no other medium, to tell their fake experience to
the public. At the end of the fiction, the script
writers who double as narrators were not able to
coordinate the various scenes for proper comprehension
of the readers because their work is pure invention.
Since it is a cook and bull
story, it lacks focus and originality. The pattern of
event and its narration were very clumsy, suspicious
and mischievous. You know that when a fool talks, he
thinks a fool listens. The questions which the writers
and characters in the play would find difficult to
answer are these. First, how can some one who 'died'
in Plateau state in 1962 resurrected in Kano in 2003
bearing in mind that as Muslims, resurrection will
only take place on the Day of Judgment (Yauma
takiyamma). Two, the family picture produced by the
actress Fatsima, included only her mother and late
father, why was Tanko (Shekarau) not in the
photograph? Was he not part of the family and when was
the picture taken and what is its relevance in the
drama? Three, Fatsima said, "It was in 2003 that we
are told that my brother is still alive and is the
governor of Kano State." Who told them? The writers of
the play should ask their inner conscience. Four, why
is it that all the characters but Mohammed Sani, alias
Tanko bear one name such as "Abubakar, Amina, Fatsima,
Danladi and Rufai?" These, to the readers, are not
enough names for description. For instance, one cannot
just say Tukur without earlier introduction of his
other name, Mamu.
Five, When Fatsima
allegedly went to emir's palace and Hisbah office, who
did she meet and talk to? Six, who are the insiders
that Desert Herald interviewed and are
skeptical about claim that one Dahiru Shekarau is a
blood brother? Are the insiders also members of the
alleged family of the actress and who they are? Why
did the Desert Herald refuse to interview the
alleged business man in Abuja, Danlami who is
mentioned in the fiction as one of the three surviving
family members of Amina and Fatsima? Why was the dead
Tanko, now 'alive' not interviewed by the writers?
Above all, the readers saw how the narrators cum
writers took side in the drama. How could they be
judges in their own case? These are what make the
story to be false, fake, fiction and worthless. It has
no consequence on whatever God has already destined
Shekarau to be and now that Tukur Mamu and his fellow
travelers have woefully failed again in their latest
attempt to rubbish a man of God, when will they come
out with another fiction on Shekarau?
Saka Raji Audu writes
from Kano and can be reached on his email,
sakaraj@yahoo.com
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EsinIslam.Com
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