It’s understandable if you have not have been following the trending story involving Dominic Cummings, chief adviser to Boris Johnson, the British Prime Minister. It’s not like there hasn’t been enough drama with our own government officials. Just last Sunday, the Chairman of the Nigerians in Diaspora Commission, Abike Dabiri-Erewa, and the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr Isa Patanmi, took to social media to fight. Dabiri-Erewa had maintained that NIDCOM staff members were evicted by gunmen, on the minister’s orders, from an office given to them by the Nigeria Communication Commission in their (NCC) building. Sadly, this isn’t the first-time government officials would be having a public ‘roforofo’ fight. And as we have come to expect (or not expect), there was no higher authority calling them to order. Instead, other key government agencies took sides.
Back to Cummings. He was accused of breaking lockdown rules when he travelled 260 miles from London to Durham, where his parents’ farm is located, in March. His defence was that he travelled across the country because he needed care for his four-year-old son as his wife was showing coronavirus symptoms. Amidst calls for his resignation, Boris Johnson is standing by his senior adviser, seen by many as the brains behind his government.
What do you think would have happened if Dominic Cummings were a Nigerian government official? Firstly, there’s no Nigerian government adviser who would be bothered by something as domestic as childcare. Not to mention one as powerful as Cummings, who was appointed as Chief Adviser to the Prime Minister, a new role that replaced the position of Chief of Staff. Yet, Cummings has been constantly pursued by reporters and protesters calling for his resignation. The President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.)’s former Chief of Staff, the late Abba Kyari, after testing positive to COVID-19, reportedly left Abuja for Lagos. No one demanded an explanation even though the Lagos State Commissioner for Health, Prof Akin Abayomi, denied knowing Kyari’s whereabouts in Lagos. And aside from social media banter, it never was asked why Lagos was better than Abuja, why he couldn’t use the Aso Rock clinic in spite of all the money that’s been supposedly pumped into it, or whether it was even advisable to have travelled that far during a lockdown, with increased chances of spreading the disease?
Unfortunately for Cummings, he’s not a Nigerian government official. Although he soldiers on for now with support from his boss, there’s no guarantee that if it comes to saving his own job, Johnson would not give Cummings up.
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