ou would think that Garba Shehu, former MD of The Triumph, former President of the NGE and now indefatigable aide of Vice President Atiku would grasp how best to separate the Church from the State. Garba Shehu is, no doubt, an intelligent man. One of the high points of his glorious media career I noticed was when he delivered an elaborate address at an NUJ National Delegates Convention in Sokoto in 1995, addressing critical issues of governance, which the administration seemed to have either side-stepped or back-heeled. In making his points about the government Nigeria needed then, he was pungent, sharp and to the point.

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Where that brilliant Garba Shehu has disappeared to is my main worry. Do not get me wrong. My fret about this altercation between the president and Atiku who, to me, ceased to be Vice president, since he took his fight against his principal to the public domain, heightened with the arrest of Garba Shehu. Fortunately, his arrest and interrogation was short-lived and without incident, an out come which Garba Shehu himself seems pleased with, for want of an appropriate word.

My beef with Garba Shehu on this ground is that his role in this battle seems to be unrealistic and driven by infantile egoism. Consider his statements after his release and you’d understand what I am talking about. The Garba Shehu I used to know and respect would stake anything and sacrifice everything for God and country. But the Garba Shehu that we are confronted with here is one that is wasting everything for the inordinate ambition of one person whose every value is as warped as a mesh of cob-webs.

Here is what Garba Shehu said to the press yesterday as quoted by Thisday. “Let us therefore not derail from the fact that all this is about one man, Atiku Abubakar, whose aspiration to serve his country at the highest level should be defended as a right guaranteed by the constitution. This country needs a good man like Atiku Abubakar to lead it out of its present abyss of disillusionment brought about by poverty, greed, joblessness and the wickedness harbored by fellow citizens against one another.”

Garba Shehu might have been steeped in rhetoric but is definitely lagging in the logic department here. He might have been released by men of the SSS but his logic is anything but free. It is still in confinement. We agree that the constitution guarantees every man’s right to ascend the highest office in the land. But the same constitution also denies common criminals that right. To that extent, the right is not inalienable, if all things were not equal. Here is a man indicted for underhand runs. Instead of defending himself, he goes to town belatedly throwing allegations that incriminate him and his accusers. The whole thing is simply a mess. And what is Garba Shehu talking about? Nigeria does not need a good man to serve it. In fact good men have been known to provide the less than good leaderships that their responsibilities require of them. Good men have been in leadership in Nigeria, to bring the matter much nearer home and their records are there to see. General Yakubu Gowon is a good man. He leads Nigeria Prays. Shagari is a good man. His in-laws like Umaru Dikko took advantage of his goodness. General Ibrahim Babangida is a good man. If you doubt it, ask Chief Alex Akinyele, Professor Omo Omoruyi or the many Nigerians who continue to name their children after IBB.

The concept of a good man is fraught with a synthetic, not syntactic connotation of the principles of relativity. Good, in this context is a very slippery word. One man’s good is another man’s poison. Atiku may be a good man to Garba Shehu but to the Nigerian public his goodness cannot stand the test of national probity and the acceptable codes of moral rectitude. Atiku, records have shown, cannot be trusted with the public purse. No matter the white-wash, a rose by whatever name smells sweet. When Garba Shehu inundates us with the argument that the allegations against Atiku are true, but that the nation should look further than Atiku to Obasanjo, he not only is wrong, he becomes dangerous – because he lulls Nigeria into letting its guards down against the mortal enemy, who if left alone would deplete the national treasury for the benefit of his family, friends, acolytes and business associates. Obasanjo is at the end of his tether and Nigeria is still standing. Nigeria’s responsibility is to prevent those that will continue to pilfer from assuming office. Garba Shehu is blind to that collective public yearning. What Nigeria needs is a leader that will drag it out of the doldrums to reclaim its place among the committee of nations that focus on the emancipation of its people, by eradicating poverty and human bondage. Not a good man who pays for the spread of poisonous propaganda when it becomes apparent that his aspiration is derailing from its tracks.

So far, Garba Shehu has not worked to extricate Atiku Abubakar from blame but is working hard to send the president down with Atiku and if he is reading what Nigerians are saying, reading lips, and their body-language, his diatribe is not gelling with the public. The recent topic on paradigm shift is asking Nigerians to sweep aside the politically correct myths of leadership stereotypes. The type of leadership that Atiku is bringing to the table is not only antithetical in the current arrangement, it is backward, retrogressive, self-serving and of no value to the generality of Nigerians. Poor Garba Shehu, he just doesn’t get it.