Garba Shehu, former media aide to ex-President Muhammadu Buhari, has said that the well-known story of rats invading the Presidential Villa in 2017 was never true, but instead created to take attention away from Buhari’s health condition at the time.
Shehu made the disclosure in his new book titled According to the President: Lessons from a Presidential Spokesperson’s Experience, which was launched on Tuesday in Abuja. In Chapter 10 of the book, he explained how the idea of a rodent invasion came about and why it was used to shift public focus.
At the time, President Buhari had just returned to Nigeria on August 19, 2017, after spending almost three months in the United Kingdom receiving medical care. Before his return, Nnamdi Kanu, the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), had made strange claims that the real Buhari had died and was replaced by a body double named “Jibrin from Sudan.”
When Buhari resumed duties, it was announced that he would be working from home rather than his usual office. This sparked more doubt and concern among Nigerians about his health and ability to continue in office.
According to Shehu, the situation became more serious when Buhari’s social media aide, Bashir Ahmad, tweeted that the President would not be using his office.
Shehu wrote, “So in the few hours of the president’s return, I picked up a conversation in the office of the CoS, where the chief, a few principal officers and the permanent secretary sat over lunch, a damage to a cable was noticed and it needed fixing. Someone speculated that rats may have caused that damage, given that the office was unused for a long time.”
When pressure mounted from the media to explain why Buhari was not using his office, Shehu said he told reporters that the President’s office needed repairs due to rodent damage.
“I said to the reporters that the office, which had been in disuse, needed renovation because rats may have eaten and damaged some cables,” he recalled.
The story quickly went viral and even made it into the BBC World News’ top stories. Journalists, including those from BBC Hausa, called Shehu for more details, asking what kind of rats were involved.
“To get them off my back, I referred them to the strange rats that invaded the country in the 1980s during the rice armada that came here aboard ships bringing the commodity from Southeast Asia,” he added.
According to Shehu, some people saw through the story and accused the government of hiding the truth about Buhari’s condition. Others found it amusing. However, not everyone in government agreed with Shehu’s approach.
“At a later meeting, the Minister of Information, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, and Vice President Prof Yemi Osinbajo asked me why I had toed that line of story,” Shehu said.
“I said to them that the choice I made was deliberate: I wanted the discussion to shift, to move to any other issue besides the president’s health and his ability to continue in office as the leader of the country. In my view, that spin succeeded. Both of them disagreed, saying that this was well off the mark.”
