Guests, particularly government officials, and especially the Nigerian variety, do not often appear on such programmes to answer questions; they come to tell their own story and paint a particular profile.
By SONALA OLUMHENSE
In the end, last week’s Arise TV interview with the Minister of Works, Mr David Umahi, ended somewhat productively. I had moments when I feared an outbreak of fisticuffs across the airwaves.
Was Rufai Oseni combative?
Not at all. His job is to ask hard questions. Guests, particularly government officials, and especially the Nigerian variety, do not often appear on such programmes to answer questions; they come to tell their own story and paint a particular profile.
And so, in a programme that was basically the continuation of a previous confrontation, Mr Oseni arrived with his gloves strapped on. If he stuck to the subject and the facts and was not insulting, being tough and relentless is exactly who he is supposed to be and what he is supposed to do. He did his job.
Minister Umahi, flaunting his MAGA, sorry, “Renewed Hope”, cap, appeared to have sought the interview because he wanted to clear up what he perceived as “misinformation” by Oseni on a previous programme.
The hand-to-hand combat was good, but it was co-host Ayo Mairo-Ese who framed the moment by asking Umahi: Is there a website or any platform that Nigerians can track progress on the road projects (of the Ministry of Works)?
I had advocated this in April 2025, challenging the Minister “not simply to make speeches and give contracts, but to establish a tracker on his Ministry’s website, with hyperlinks, so that Nigerians can track each contract, contractor and expenditure.”
Umahi clearly did not listen. I do not think he cares. Here is how he fumbled the reporter’s question:
“We have a website, and we have directed the governors of these states to deploy the state commissioners so that they will monitor what we are doing. I have directed that in these major projects, we should list out major TV stations that will be able to go and be part of the operation.
“They will video the operation, they will video the [incoherent] and they will deploy to social media…”
He might as well have said, in that same arrogant tone with which he dismissed Oseni as “too small” (that is, unimportant): “Tracking? You want to track my work? Who are you?”
Because he did not answer the question. How is a Minister more important than a journalist whose questions he cannot answer?
First, Umahi has no control over what the states do or do not. And he has no business listing TV stations to become part of some government “operation.” Private news organisations such as Arise do not work for the government.
They will therefore not shoot videos of anything at the direction of the government or “download” to social media like a Ministry of Works contractor mobilising to a work site. If the Ministry wants that done, it should do it itself.
But Umahi was clearly confirming what Nigerians fear the most: these infrastructure contracts are what Nigerians call “as-man-know-man” deals: the government announces the contract with almost no planning and no firm funding arrangements, and then plays for time until it leaves office. That is why we have hundreds of thousands of abandoned projects.