ONANUGA EXPOSED: How Onanuga Hired a Wailer — But Lost the Fight Against El-Rufai — by: Mohammed Bello Doka
ONANUGA EXPOSED: How Onanuga Hired a Wailer — But Lost the Fight Against El-Rufai – By: Mohammed Bello Doka- December 11, 2025 – Part 1
A presidential spokesperson is not merely a messenger. He is the custodian of state credibility, the interpreter of national priorities, the gatekeeper of governmental truth. When such an office is cheapened by desperation, compromised by incompetence, or weaponised for petty cartel battles, the result is what political philosophers call “the collapse of the public mind.”
And nowhere has this collapse been more visible than in Bayo Onanuga’s reckless deployment of an unvetted, inconsistent, and previously anti-Tinubu writer in a failed attempt to tarnish Nasir El-Rufai.
As Nietzsche warned: “Whoever fights monsters must take care not to become one.”
Onanuga, in fighting El-Rufai, did not merely become the monster—
he became the evidence El-Rufai was right all along.
THE ONANUGA OPERATION: WHEN DESPERATION REPLACES PROFESSIONALISM
In what passes for the modern communication structure of the Tinubu Presidency, Onanuga, in a moment of panic, reached not for seasoned communicators, not for policy experts, not for credible APC thinkers—but for a proxy writer whose public archive contradicts everything she was hired or encouraged to defend.
In amplifying Sa’adiyyah Adebisi Hassan as the authoritative voice against El-Rufai, Onanuga committed the cardinal sin of public communication: he outsourced state messaging to an unverified mercenary pen.
This is not spin. This is not strategy.
This is institutional malpractice.
And it proves something deeper:
Tinubu’s media machinery is no longer a national platform—it is a cartel of panic-driven loyalists clutching at anything that looks like a lifeline, even when it is a double-edged sword.
THE WRITER ONANUGA CHOSE: A HISTORY HE DID NOT CHECK—or DID NOT CARE ABOUT
The woman deployed to attack El-Rufai, and by extension the Muslim North, is no stranger to political writing. But her history is not what Onanuga pretended it was.
Here is what Sa’adiyyah, the “defender of Tinubu,” has publicly written:
1. “STRATEGIC SUICIDE” — She accused Tinubu of acting as France’s puppet.
She condemned his foreign policy as dangerous, unintelligent, reckless, and colonially submissive.
2. “TINUBU CAN FIND SOLDIERS FOR FRANCE BUT NOT FOR NIGERIANS DYING IN THEIR HOMES”
She declared Tinubu’s leadership “treason by priority.”
3. “THE SECURITY ARCHITECTURE OF A CLOWN REPUBLIC”
She described Tinubu’s national security structure as a joke, demanded the NSA be fired, and accused the administration of rearranging “chairs in ruins and calling it Renewed Hope.”
4. “TERRORISTS AREN’T INVISIBLE—OUR SYSTEM IS USELESS ON PURPOSE”
She accused Tinubu’s government of lacking political will, mismanaging intelligence, and enabling terrorists through incompetence.
These were not whispers.
They were not private notes.
They were published, bold, furious indictments of the same administration she suddenly defended to attack El-Rufai.
So the question becomes:
**Did Onanuga know—and still use her?
Or did he not know—and still use her?**
Both answers are catastrophic.
TWO POSSIBILITIES — BOTH DAMNING
OPTION 1: ONANUGA HIRED HER
If he recruited or paid her (as many influencer-payment rumours suggest—$3,000–$5,000 per hit-piece plus data-boy amplification), then:
Onanuga knew her inconsistency
Knew her previous anti-Tinubu writings
Knew her lack of ideological stability
Yet still used her as an attack weapon
Why?
Because in Tinubu’s media cartel, tribal comfort trumps competence, and loyalty trumps truth.
This exposes the very thing El-Rufai warned about:
Tinubu is governed not by institutions, but by a small Yoruba political cartel—not all Yoruba, just the cartel—where membership, not merit, determines influence.
