We should all stop pretending that recording people’s telephone conversations is ethically wrong. The legal requirement for consent only applies to journalists and spies performing lawful duties in the overall public interest. However, in the age of social media, the line on who or what constitutes journalism or public interest is blurred.
The societal moral compass depends on who is doing what, with whom and to what end. The famous video clips of Farouk Lawan and Kano governor, Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, readily come to mind. You could argue that these two were done in the overriding public interest. Lawan, a lawmaker was allegedly coveting cash to subvert a probe. Ganduje was pocketing cash from a contractor. Lawan received sentencing while Ganduje blocked an investigation into his.
When Abubakar Atiku, Wazirin Adamawa and last presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) employed Michael Achimugu as his personal assistant, he must have believed in the rules of confidentiality. Achimugu must have impressed Atiku so much that he opened up his political and private flanks to his hire. Big mistake?
Late last year, Achimugu revealed secretly recorded tapes of Atiku’s conversations with him and some members of the man’s family. From that leak a new word – Special Purpose Vehicles, SPVs – entered the political lingo. Before then, we could have thought SPV’s were the new SUVs.
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Apparently, that was not the only time that the snooper would be recording his boss or members of his family. Another clip emerged where Atiku’s daughter was talking about the potential of eternally breaking the cycle of poverty should her father become president. It must have been a conversation she hoped neither her dad nor the Nigerian public would ever get to hear.
To the general public, a slice of the salacious details of public officials is always a welcome dessert to the well-garnished course from their political kitchen.
To date, there’ll be no way of evaluating the level of damage of Michael’s clips to the Atiku political gamble. In the Nigerian political landscape, nothing seems to diminish the fame of a loved politician. Indeed, sleaze would seem to sometimes enhance their chances. They tend to raise an army of supporters in the defence of their hero.
What is now common knowledge is that Atiku, while still popular, fell short of the required number of votes needed to fulfill his lofty presidential ambition. His children would have to fend for their future with little or no help from Aso Rock.
Like the suave politician that he is, Atiku apparently opted not to drag himself in the mud with his former hire. It is a tested tactic in public relations to ignore bad press in the hope that it would go away. It is a strategy that works best in Nigeria and perhaps Italy. It is a defence that both Boris Johnson and Donald Trump would wish they had.
In the West, if the little hammer of a scandal chips enough at the mountain of a political behemoth, it could do immense damage with reverberating aftershocks. For those old enough, former Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi survived so many scandals while Bill Clinton hardly recovered from his affair with the then intern Monica Lewinsky. Berlusconi loved raunchy parties with underage damsels that somehow never seemed to diminish his popularity.
These politicians might be wondering how Atiku kept a straight face while a simple Watergate scandal brought down Richard Nixon. They’d be curious to see how a Saddam Hussein and a Muamar Gadaffi faced judicial execution for their alleged crimes while the duo of George W. Bush II and Tony Blair that dragged the western world into a senseless war with their fake dossier survived as living heroes.
Isn’t it curious that Vladimir Putin and Russia is suffering ignominy and bashing from Western media and sanctions for a reason similar to what made Bush and Blair eternal heroes? There are hardly any hard and fast rules to what is likely to pull down a political juggernaut except of course the powerful West decides they have overstepped their bounds.
Atiku will not be the first person to dust off the smear of a political scandal like water off a duck’s back. The latest casualty appears to be the Labour Party’s candidate and leader of the Obidient Movement, Peter Obi. An audio clip of an alleged conversation between Obi and Pastor David Oyedepo emerged late last week. It was asking the collar to influence the votes against the turban in a country where volatile religion garners more curiosity than life and living itself.
In the unverified audio, Obi was heard asking the bishop for endorsement to swing the Christian votes in the south and Kwara particularly. There is no timeline on the clip to help us decipher whether this was made before the general elections or in-between the two national polls.
Oyepedo is an influential leader in the Nigerian Christian circle, but his pastoral influence is no bigger than other pastors whose voices count on national issues. A Kwaran, Oyedepo has spent his ministerial sojourn mostly in Kaduna, Lagos and Ogun and made politically partisan statements in past polls. This time, he denied ever being swayed by politics.
Political pundits have rightly observed that Kwara is as important to a presidential win as any American swing state to a US presidency. It has lately been observed that no president ever emerged without winning Kwara votes. However, like Lagosians, the Kwara voting population is a religious mix. Apart from Cornelius Adebayo, no Christian has ever won an election to govern Kwara State.
A conversation between a political aspirant and the leader of his professed religion ought to be guarded by privilege. From all indications, nothing is as sacred as the law defines them in our country. A bizarre conversation warning was issued by Nigeria’s spy agency against the imposition of an interim government instead of an ‘elected’ one. No further clues were given. Days later, an independent TV station gets a fine for running a live programme. Foul appears to be fair in any sting operation aimed at perceived ‘enemies’ of democracy.
Nigeria’s spy agencies had forewarned us that they would be infringing on our rights to privacy in the national interest by monitoring our social media posts and listening to our secret conversations. They don’t have to work too hard for access to them. The gadgets we carry are open-secret snoopers. Anyone with curiosity and the right app is able to eavesdrop on those conversations with members of our families.
Buhari arm-wrestled us to statutorily register our SIM cards and link them to our banking details. He coerced social media companies to make their data available to spy agencies. Unwittingly and without opposition, we seem to have signed out our inalienable rights and civil liberties. In the world of information technology, humanity is faced with an unprecedented level of threat from state actors.
When the rights of public figures are abridged with impunity ostensibly in the public interest, a commoner’s right is easy picking. As we edge on the state – are we unwittingly heading towards full-fledged anarchy? The answer is either a ‘Yes, Daddy’ or ‘No Daddy’.
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