CONTENT ANALYSIS OF DOCTORED TAPE OF CHIBUIKE AMAECHI’S AUDIO SPEECH: THE FINGERPRINTS OF POLITICAL PROPAGANDISTS AND MISCHIEF-MAKERS
By Hezekiah Kunle
Even as reactions by patriotic and objective observers have shown, not many Nigerians are surprised or can easily be deceived by the pranks of the emerging phenomenon of fake news in the country.
Nigerians cannot also be fooled by the rising incidence of this malaise and the huge investments by their facilitators especially during electioneering campaigns or periods leading to elections.
What rather worries greater number of Nigerians is why it is the very politicians who are seeking to govern the country that are encouraging and funding this counter-productive adventurism, although they may hide behind the scene and deploy the services of surrogates and syndicates in the media community. Because these political desperadoes and commandoes of conquered battalions pathologically see politics as “a dirty game”, their indulgence in character assassination and misinformation for cheap political scores is a proof to that obnoxious disposition.
This brings to the centre-spread the recent vain-glorious attempts by some masked and bare-face politicians to undermine the impeccable character and cumulative, enviable clean-bill of dedicated public service record of the Honourable Minister of Transportation and Director-General the Buhari Campaign Organization, Rt. Hon. Chubuike Rotimi Amaechi. Because this calibre of politicians have elevated politics to fine art, it was almost immediately known that the audio was doctored by those who are envious and uncomfortable with the robust relationship that has existed between President Muhammadu Buhari and the Minister and the towering achievements that have resulted in the last three and half years.
As patriotic and objective Nigerians supporting and championing the cause of good governance, we have taken special interest in this matter because of its high propensity to deceive and mislead the credulous segment of the citizenry.
We are not unconscious of the novelties advancing technology has brought to the world. Nor can we easily be carried away by the innovativeness of smart Nigerians when political interests seem to clash.
As it is already obvious, there can be no pretensions that the despicable video may have been sponsored, facilitated or brought to public domain by a former aide to former President Goodluck Jonathan, Mr. Bamigbo Reno Omokiri and a Member of the Atiku 2019 Presidential Campaign team, Mr, Phrank Shuaibu. This backdrop, by and large, can be vital in determining in advance the motives and ultimate targets of the video.
In the ill-advised and ill-fated tape, the Minister of Transportation is allegedly quoted to have said certain things that not even a kindergarten or congenital moron can be convinced to believe.
Accordingly, for the mere sake of reference and expediency, it is pertinent to quote tersely parts of the awkward versions of the said video for clinical content analysis that easily exposes its inherent weaknesses, incongruities, clear fallacies and evil intentions of those who fabricated it: “…Farmers are crying, journalists are crying. There is poverty in the land…the president is an ignoramus. The President does not read…”, the Minister is alleged to have said perhaps in his response to a question.
Can anyone expect a serving Minister of Hon. Amaechi’s standing and with greater prospects in the Nigerian project to be so unguarded even if he were under a spell or at gunpoint?
Of course, on January 6, 2019, Aide to the President on Digital Media, Tolu Ogunlesi, an ICT expert confirms that the video has been clinically edited in a carefully managed setting that omitted where Mr. Amaechi bared his mind on the transforming dynamics of the Change Mantra including achievements of the President in core areas of national development, such as corruption and why Nigerians have no option to the APC-led government.
According to Ogunlesi who juxtaposed one of the fraudulently edited versions of the tape with the original clip, “You haven’t heard of the last from the Amaechi tapes. We are dealing with Principalities and Powers who will go to any lengths to fight dirty”.
Of course, in a superior logic, a chieftain of APC, Prince Tony Momoh, had reasoned, “There are three ways people express themselves: in their thoughts, words and in their deeds. Many people say thoughts are free…No matter what they say, Amaechi has been damn effective and we have no reason to be unhappy with him. He is a fighter. So if people just want to use thinking aloud which he is entitled to undo him, then they are using wrong means because it cannot affect Amaechi’s output. Let people look for more credible ways of undermining the APC campaign. The campaign has taken off and as you can see, it is a movement that is looking at issues of what APC has done in the last three years in attending to the human condition in Nigeria which PDP didn’t do for 16 years”.
It is instructive that, on Thursday 10th January, 2019, two of the principal journalists who led the media team that conducted the said interview out which facts and logical statements made by Hon. Rotimi Amaechi have been grossly distorted were on the ITV and Youtube to strongly discountenance and express shock at how the tape has been manipulated by a misguided food-is-ready quack journalists to gratify cabals.
According to them, the tape is a creative but mismanaged manipulation by some persons to suit certain purposes and agenda of their paymasters. It is ad hominem fallacy.
They said it embarrassing how certain bold statements made by Amaechi in defence of the blueprint and philosophy of the Buhari administration were unconscionably twisted and edited with a “cut and paste” process enhanced by technology.
First, the journalists in their opinion in the authentic interview asserted to the Minister that farmers in the country are crying, students are crying, journalists are crying and there is poverty in the land and wanted to know from him what APC is doing. Amaechi by his style of speaking merely repeated what they said and finally concluded that all those problems they listed had been on ground long before President Buhari came on board and he is progressively addressing them. But what the doctors of the tape did was to hammer on Amaechi’s repetition of their own words in the few leading sentences and clearly omitted his conclusions.
Second, the journalists during the interview also drew the minister’s attention to many critical headlines and contents in the media against the President. In response, the Minister is said to have responded jovially that the President is usually too busy to be too concerned with sensational headlines or reports in the newspapers because he has a specialised media team that manages such matters and only debrief him accordingly. It was in that context, which of course is a fact, that the Minister in his complementary response said, “The President doesn’t care. You can write what you want to write.” But what did the school drop-out audio manipulators do? They went straight to the minister’s dismissive opinion that the President does not read.
Third, our independent investigations also revealed that the part which the Minister was quoted to have said that former President Olusegun Obasanjo was the best President were lines carefully lifted from his extant remarks in 2012 as then Governor of Rivers State on the occasion President Obasanjo commissioned some projects in the state. But the tape fabricators, in collaboration with syndicates in the press, went back, lifted those complimentary lines in honour of the former President and carefully inserted them in a current interview with the Minister. Experts have agreed that the “leaked”
Omokiri-inspired tape is a montage, farrago, assemblage or hotchpotch of about three to four interviews carefully distorted but synchronised by the mischief-makers to give a semblance of originality, hence, the hanging sentences.
Otherwise, we are compelled to ask: Why are sentences in the concocted audio disjointed? Why would an interview not have an introduction and conclusion? We therefore challenge these jobless syndicates to produce the full length of that contrived interview.
Four, it was further gathered that in their contrivance and build-up to their evil-plan, the greedy journalists had sought in vain to enforce a bargain, demanding N5, 000, 000 naira from the Minister, lest they would present the bargain to some strong members of the PDP, a needless threat and proposal the Minister bluntly rebuffed. But they later collected N250, 000 from the PDP and worked on the tape as campaign stratagem.
The wild-goose tendency in the audio tape therefore might be indicative of this antecedent.
Not long ago, the “Jubrin of Sudan” invention as an incarnation of President Buhari was in the air; not long ago, although he later apologized, the incredulous but sanctimonious Fani-Kayode sought the sympathy of Nigerians to resurrect him from ignoble irrelevance when he said that Asiwaju Bola Tinubu slumped, whereas nothing like that ever happened.
The cumulative summary is that the audio video attack on Amaechi, and many like it, is a facet of the war of attrition championed by the opposition against President Buhari’s re-election. The aim, it is obvious, is to possibly cause bad blood and perhaps give wrong impressions to the electorate who already have openly declared their support for President Muhammadu Buhari in the 2019 election.
For a fact, Bamigho Reno Omokiri’s disdain, hatred, narrow-mindedness and meanness to the President Buhari has not been in doubt since PDP’s loss in the 2015 Presidential election. He is well known for using social media for political purposes.
It cannot be denied that President Buhari’s discreet choice and subsequent appointment of Hon. Rotimi Amaechi to lead the charge as Director-General of his Campaign Organization in 2015 that led to landslide victory for APC, his appointment as Minister of Transportation that has come with great changes in the sector as well as his unquestionable reappointment and retention of the office of the DG, Buhari Campaign Organization in 2018 speak volumes of his pedigree and trust the President and progressive Nigerians have in him. With what we already have seen in the make-belief manipulations of pictures through the use of what is commonly referred to as photo-shop in computers and phones, the future should be of greater concern to us.
We want to say that today it is Amaechi; tomorrow it may be another net-worth individual in critical government position.
Apart from the tension the fake tape has already generated in the polity, think of what would have happened had Amaechi not convincingly proven his integrity, loyalty to superiors, and commitment to national cause in all the positions of authority he has held.
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It is for this reason we call on the National Assembly, Civil Rights Organizations, Non-Governmental groups and any other appropriate government agencies to rise and look beyond the questionable and unfortunate tape erroneously associated with the name and person of Rt. Hon. Rotimi Chibuike Amaechi for a safer tomorrow.
Our thinking is that appropriate laws should be enacted to curb this menace and severe penalties recommended for defaulters. Nigeria is too big and promising to be left in the cursed hands of dubious, self-seeking me-first politicians and their cohorts to whom any negative narrative against the country mean nothing.
Sponsored by Concerned Nigerian Citizens Group
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