Wisdom is knowing where to go and where not to go. My beloved father of blessed memory often reminded us that “common sense is not so common.”
I do not belong to the army of citizens gloating over the disastrous international outing of a government official. Even when the individual in question appears to embody many of the debilitating traits that have come to define the unprincipled character of our politics, public humiliation of a national representative should never be a source of celebration.
My reaction is different. I feel only sadness. Because once again we have been reminded of a deeper and more troubling reality: the persistent decline in the quality of our leadership recruitment system.
The recent international media appearance involving a presidential aide has generated predictable reactions across Nigerian public discourse, yet the real issue goes far beyond the individual or the spectacle of social media mockery.
When a representative of the Nigerian presidency appears on a major global platform such as Al Jazeera in conversation with a rigorous interviewer like Mehdi Hasan, the encounter is not merely a television moment; it is an exercise in strategic national communication in which the official effectively becomes the voice of the Nigerian state before a global audience. That responsibility demands far more than political loyalty or rhetorical enthusiasm;
it requires intellectual preparation, message discipline, historical awareness, and the ability to navigate adversarial questioning with composure and strategic clarity.
Sadly, what we witnessed reminds us that the gap between what the office demands and what we sometimes send to occupy it is widening.
This in turn raises a broader and far more consequential question about the quality of institutional recruitment into sensitive communication roles and indeed, all positions within government.
Since our return to civilian rule in 1999 under Olusegun Obasanjo, each political transition seems to produce public officials whose competence, discipline and intellectual preparation appear weaker than those who came before them.
This deterioration cuts across institutions and offices, with the result that governance increasingly resembles a burlesque performance rather than a serious national undertaking.
For a country with Nigeria’s scale, complexity and potential, this trend is not merely embarrassing; it is tragic. A nation that desperately needs the best minds to steward its aspirations instead finds itself repeatedly represented by individuals who struggle to meet the demands of the moment.
Consider, for instance, the trajectory of presidential media representation over the years: under Olusegun Obasanjo there were Doyin Okupe, Tunji Oseni and Remi Oyo; under Umaru Musa Yar’Adua there was Olusegun Adeniyi; under Goodluck Jonathan there were Ima Niboro and Reuben Abati; under Muhammadu Buhari there were Femi Adesina and Garba Shehu; and today under Bola Ahmed Tinubu the communications structure has expanded into a broad architecture populated by multiple advisers including Daniel Bwala and others. The contrast speaks for itself.
This is not about personalities; it is about standards and PEDIGREE. It is about the institutional seriousness with which a country recruits those who speak for it before the world.
International media platforms are arenas where national credibility, diplomatic perception and narrative power are constantly negotiated, and when representatives of the Nigerian state appear before such audiences they carry with them the weight of the country’s credibility, intellectual depth and diplomatic maturity.
Where those attributes are absent, the consequences are immediate and the reputational cost is borne not by the individual alone but by the state itself.
For a nation of Nigeria’s stature, that reality should concern us far more than the fleeting spectacle of social media ridicule.
Nigeria deserves better, and until we confront the deeper problem of how we recruit, prepare and deploy those who represent the state in sensitive communication roles, episodes like this will continue to remind us sometimes painfully, that common sense, indeed, is not so common.
