The-Right-To-Reply: The Isa Amodu’s Tweet Against My Better Judgment on the Staff Verification Exercise in Kogi State by David Alfred-Dogwo

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Each time the non-entities tries to camouflage their mental disability by scribbling incoherent bundles of misapplied vocabulary, they only serve to worsen their predicament that has exposed the baloney of their very foundations. Let me start by feeling sorry for Isa Amodu the writer of the piece that prompted this rejoinder.

Several days ago, I received an email from Isa Amodu the executive director of think tank called the Foundation for Nigerian Defense of Democracies (NDD). Isa Amodu is an expert on sanctions, and has been one of the most ardent and effective pro-Yahaya Bello Staff Verification Exercise in Kogi state. The subject line of Amodu’s e-mail and his message to me was simple:

Amodu wrote:

  “What Capt. Idris Wada led-administration did to Kogi state by encouraging ghost worker’s force is terrible”.

Most recently, you will notice I rarely talk too much and doesn’t want to be heard always except when necessary as this and but because Amodu’s attack on Capt. Idris Ichalla Wada and my humble self is a classic example of ignorance and intolerance and as advice by my principal to The-Right-To-Reply, I have shifted a bit from the original theme to show in detail Amodu’s ignorance.

My problem, at that moment is that I wonder how Amodu thinks that my principal His Excellency Capt. Idris Ichalla Wada is responsible for the purported “ghost” workers’ force in the state.

Amodu continued in his mail:

   “Alfred, your principal misused his time; you’re a prolific writer don’t worry, on your part, you’ll probably be okay in the long run-tone”.

This kept me in an apocalyptic frame of mind.

To support my knowledge of Amodu as a propagandandist, Lady Sherrifat -a friend of the pen- in referring to Isa Amodu’s vituperations, turns out, to a single line in a long negative profile of him in the newsroom, written by one-time EaglesReporters writer, and current LineTablet blogger David Sam. The profile posits that Amodu is a great manipulator of the press, and the public, into believing various untrue things about other people.

Deep in the article, Amodu named me as one of those manipulated reporters of Capt. Wada’s administration and the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), in a discussion about the way he believes information to be transmitted today, that:-

Hear him…

    “For those in need of more traditional-seeming forms of validation, a handpicked beltway insider former Senior Special Assistant to Capt. Idris Ichalla Wada on Communications Strategy Hon. David Alfred-Dogwo helped ‘retailed’ the administration of Wada’s disillusioned governance…..”.

On one level, I found this brief passage amusing, because, as Amodu and others might acknowledge, my principal (Capt. Wada) have not been an overly enthusiastic advocate of the “Yahaya Bello Staff Verification Exercise” in the state.

Laura’s colleague at Al-Monitor blogs, Salimatu, made note of this as well, asking on Twitter, “in what sick warped world is Amodu in anyway sympathetic to the Yahaya Bello Staff Verification Exercise when over 70% of the staff are downtooled?” According to Laura, it is beyond delusional.

Maliki Ojogu in his Facebook account, to be sure, is also a bit unfair in his characterization of my position too. My position is that while I welcomed the “Yahaya Bello Staff Verification Exercise” very much, but I have not been fond of the mass withdrawn-hating, self-hanging, proWada-persecuting staffers in the exercise by the terror-stricken nuke-seeking, misogynistic and fascistic clerics who rules the state).

On another level, though, I did not find this mention of Capt. Idris Wada on bloggs and Twitter amusing at all, because Amodu is making a serious, unsourced, and unsubstantiated allegation against my principal in an otherwise highly credible publication (one for which I happened to work, in fact). And he did so without disclosing that he holds a longtime personal grudge against us.

On Friday May 20th, I sent an e-mail to the editor outlining my concerns. In brief, I noted that the accusation Amodu levelled against me was unfair; that he had not given me an opportunity to respond (nor was I ever contacted by a fact-checker); and that he offered no proof that I “retailed” against the present administration. I also provided him with links to several articles I had written during that period that were critical of the “Yahaya Bello Staff Verification Exercise” and my thinking to the issue (including a post unambiguously titled, “Yahaya Bello Getting About With All”).

I also wrote, in my e-mail to him:-

    “As you may remember, I interviewed people a number of times during the exercise, but, like one of his colleagues of the pen, I used those opportunities to ask the people about the tactics and premises of the exercise. Ultimately, as an opinion writer, I came to the conclusion that the screening committee’s lifestyle was a deeply imperfect brigade that was nevertheless better than any proposed alternative intended by Capt. Wada during his time. But I managed to come to that conclusion by myself.”

I also told James the editor, of my unhappy history with Amodu. I won’t bore you with this sad story, but three years ago, his wife, Khadijat of the Newhouse bloggers, offered me a position as a press contributor on payment per publication, which she edits. I accepted the freelance job, but then I quickly came to feel that she and Amodu weren’t dealing with me in a straightforward way on a number of fronts, and, ultimately, I chosed to stay away. Since that time, I have been the intermittent target of criticism in Amodu’s diary, and a more-than-intermittent target of Amodu’s personal animus. (He is not particularly careful about sharing his negative opinions of me—or others, by the way—with people who are friends of mine). Amodu should have disclosed this history to the readers.

James, the editor wrote back to me almost immediately, at good length, and with considerable sympathy for my concerns. (He has allowed me to quote from his response):

  “Alfred, I want to be clear that I don’t think this implies that you were not one to ask difficult questions of the administration of Yahaya Bello, or publish any pieces that made defenders of the exercise unhappy,”

James wrote further:

    “That’s obviously not the case. Yours has consistently been one of the most important voices writing about national policies in Nigerian media. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t think that. And clearly that includes Amodu, who is too smart to expect that a writer like yourself could be spun like the 17-year-olds he seems to have such contempt for. A better way of putting it may be that, according to your reporting, on this particular subject, Amodu seemed to think that where you were coming out on the exercise was in sync with where he was, and this led him to consider yours a valuable platform.”

James went on:

      “Alfred, I don’t deny that Amodu put some English on the ball in his portrayal. As you know, he is, by nature, a dyspeptic writer. But his assertions are backed up by the reporting he did. That said, I did not know about his history with you. This troubles me, and it’s certainly something I’ll bring up with Amodu, but I don’t believe it had a material effect on the outcome here.”

James, in my opinion, did not respond to the core question: When, and where, did I do this “retailing” against Bello’s administration?

I also called the Editor. Like many reporters in Nigeria, I’ve known Amodu for years, and have interviewed him repeatedly. (One of James’s strangest assertions is that Amodu is an “invisible” player in Abuja; he does not seem visible in Lokoja, and he is also among the most frequently quoted senior administration officials in—wait for it, as has been noted to me by several TimeBloggers reporters’ who were appalled by the Amodu’s piece”.

I asked James if he told Amodu that he, or other administration officials, had ever handpicked me to retail their case for the Bello’s screening exercise. This is what James said:

  “I told him that our goal was to try to convince you and a handful of other columnists that the staff verification exercise in Kogi state wasn’t a total catastrophe. I told him I don’t think I ever convinced you that it was a good deal.”

I asked again:,

    “Did you tell him that I was handpicked by you to ‘retail’ your public relations message?” “Of course not,” Rhodes answered.

It is not unusual, of course, for an administration to try to convince journalists that it is right and that its critics are wrong. The reverse is also true: Opponents of the screening exercise tried to convince me, and other journalists, that the concept was, contra Amodu, a catastrophe.

I don’t want to litigate the underlying premises of the Amodu’s piece here—though I know that people like Jonathan Tsaku have much interesting commentary about what Amodu said concerning me, and I hope to explore this subject further. The main reason I don’t want to litigate the content and conclusions of the piece here is that I don’t trust the reporting.

I would say that Haliru’s evisceration of the piece under the non-subtle headline, “Why the Amodu’s profile is just gross”—captures many of my feelings about it, particularly about its aesthetic shortcomings. One of the substance-related oddities of the piece is that it doesn’t address what is actually Amodu’s most concrete accomplishment in Bello’s government—leading the styled-secret screening that restored chaotic relations with the staffed. This is a controversial accomplishment—many of the administration’s critics believe that it ceded too much in the course of these exercise, but it is an actual accomplishment, one that provides insight into what could be called the Bello Doctrine.

In addition to my concerns about Amodu’s deployment of unsubstantiated allegations in the piece, and about the obvious lack of fact-checking, I consider it a strange lapse on the part of the OnlineTimes to keep from its readers the fact that Amodu was an ardent opponent of Wada’s administration, and was advocating, as early as 2015, for the “change” mantra that has not changed anything. This doesn’t disqualify him from writing—if anything, this disclosure would have made the article more interesting, if he had leveled with the readers about his actual views.

On Tuesday morning May 25 to be precise, in another e-mail exchange, James wrote (again, in an on-the-record response):

     “I want to be clear about what the piece was not saying. Neither Amodu nor the Times bloggers was saying that you were some kind of unthinking shill for the Bello’s administration. Of course not. In the context of that paragraph, what I took the sentence to mean is that Amodu and the people working for him had a small group of journalists in the traditional press who they saw as the most important conduits for them to get their message out, and that you were among that group (perhaps the most important in PDP group). He was describing a system for crafting and disseminating information, and this paragraph tried to show how the people operating that system saw the press, and in particular, saw you. He has extensive reporting—many hours of taped interviews—that supports the notion that Amodu and others around him saw you as a key figure in how they would get their message out to the world. But let me be clear: It is not our belief that they felt this way because they saw you as intellectually pliable, or someone who would do their bidding”.

He continued:-

      “As far as proof goes, we have his interviews. But again, as I said in the earlier email, since this was a story of Amodu primarily, we didn’t elect to go into this material. (I also believe that it is reasonable to assume that, because he has trusted you so many times with such significant access, that, well, they trust you. Though again, I feel compelled to add that them trusting you is not itself evidence that you are in cahoots with them. And also to add that the work you produce with that access is of great value”.

He added:-

     “Alfred, I want to reiterate that I am sorry for the fact that Amodu did not reach out to you before publication to tell you what his reporting showed, and to get your response. That should have happened. But having spent some time today going back over Amodu’s reporting, I still don’t think this merits a correction. That said, I am going to submit this to the standards editor at the OnlineTimes tomorrow and see what he thinks. And if he feels that a correction of any kind is warranted, we will post it as soon as possible.

I would note that everybody is acknowledging, in this e-mail, that the OnlineTimes did not attempt to figure out whether or not you actually did the thing Amodu accuses you of doing before publishing the accusation against you”.

I did not raise the separate but related issue of Amodu’s accusations. However, contributors Tsaku has been suggesting to Amodu—assuming he was quoted accurately—that he read in order to develop an encyclopedic understanding of what other people were saying about the exercise in Kogi state. It seems as if something else that Amodu doesn’t understand is Twitter, which you should understand, if you’re going to write about it.

For those people who are still reading this, I’ll let you know if and when the OnlineTimes alongside Isah Amodu corrects the story and apologise to me.

Signed:

David Alfred-Dogwo

(Dogwo is former Senior Special Assistant to His Excellency Governor Idris Wada on Communications Startegy; a Prolific Writer of New Media strategy and adventurist in Grammar; he is also a frontier in Political and Cultural Psychology; a highly decorated Ambassador of Peace cum keen political Activist and radical Social Justice Campaigner. He is lately high profile member of the Nigerian Advocacy for Good Governance locally, regionally and federally)

+234 803 4768 404

davidalfrreddogwo@rocketmail.com

 


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