Folks, where is Olisa Metuh, hitherto the loquacious Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) national publicity secretary? And why has he, all of a sudden, morphed from His Voluble Olisa to His Funereal Silent, Metuh?
Hardball feels constrained to ask, given the situation this time last year. O, it was the halcyon days of power and the desperation to retain it; and how the PDP duo of Metuh and Femi Fani-Kayode (now known and addressed as Femi Olu-Kayode) were in full charge. It was the scalding heat of electioneering, and did the opposing partisans feel the heat!
As desperate problems compel desperate solutions, Metuh and Fani bossed the PDP strategy of ultra-negative campaign: sensations, titillation, reckless libel and sometimes, outright lies.
But why this sudden quest for Metuh? Well, the controversial Ali Modu Sheriff (SAS) seems to have ridden the storm to stay as PDP national chairman. That’s okay, for it is PDP’s internal affair. By this time last year, SAS was swearing to be personally held responsible if he didn’t deliver his native Borno to President Goodluck Jonathan, then eyeing a second term, which proved to be doomed.
Before then, however, the same SAS had, perhaps as a satanic muse, inspired Metuh to hisJanjaweed partisan poetry. By the Metuh (il)logic, SAS was the “founder” of Boko Haram; since he belonged to the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC), APC must be an Islamist party, with aJanjaweed philosophy!
Needless to say, that crusading outrage, of resisting alleged Islamists like SAS in the polity, led Fani to growl and foam in the mouth, and quit APC. He won’t be party to Islamisation of Nigeria as long as he lived and retained his rather smooth and glib elocution. That, new darling, landed him a plum job as Jonathan’s campaign chief spokesperson. And boy, did he make hay!
It was the golden season of the tag team of Fani and Metuh, in strident and reckless electioneering. And the major plank was ethnic and religious baiting.
That, of course, was dangerous religious play, aimed at consolidating Jonathan, in the South, as the poor Christian about to be cruelly unhorsed by the Islamist North, but which spectacularly backfired in the North, forcing a pathetic Vice President Namadi Sambo to claim, on the hustings, that indeed PDP was the Muslim party, simply because he was personally a devout Muslim by name and by practice!
One year later, however, everything seems changed. SAS that was the APC Judas has become the new PDP saviour, the sole force to lead the former federal ruling party back to redemption.
But even for Fani, it was an irony he couldn’t stomach, hence his new found war against SAS’s new ascent. That has provoked a libel writ by SAS, who vigorously declaims the tag of founder of Boko Haram. The case is in court. But Fani insists he isn’t fazed a hoot.
And Metuh? Funereal quiet, aside from his initial terse announcement that party bosses had chosen SAS as new chair. Is the former flamboyant PDP spokesman quiet because of the rap he now faces in court?
Or is he chastened by the sheer folly of Janjaweed thinking, especially as it has come back to haunt him and his party with SAS’s ascendance?
Folks, whenever you see Metuh, please ask him exactly why. All Hardball knows is that his has been a rather dramatic transition from His Noise-some Olisa, to his Dead Quiet, Metuh!
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