Newsroom EXCLUSIVE: “I may never criticize the government again” – Tolu Ogunlesi
Tolu Ogunlesi is Special Assistant on Digital/New Media to President Muhammadu Buhari. Prior to joining the Presidency, Ogunlesi worked with several media organisations as a journalist, and in other capacity.
NewsroomNG had a chat with the presidential media aide on Tuesday. Here’s how the conversation went…in part.
Now that you work with the Presidency and should have deeper insight into the workings of government, do you feel you may have criticized past administrations blindly or without deep understanding of the challenges they faced? Do you think critics who don’t work with the government criticize the government blindly?
One of the things I always tried to do when I was a journalist was to get as much information on anything I was working on, to get all the sides to the matter. For anyone commenting on the government, it always helps to have information. I understand government can be opaque and so people are forced to comment on the knowledge they have, which is not always a lot, and it’s not always their fault.
With what you must have understood now, have you ever felt you blindly criticized a past administration on which you had “nothing much”?
Before joining government, I had come across a few books like Mallam Nasir El-Rufai’s “The Accidental Civil Servant”, and another very good book by Ngozi Okonjo Iweala. A few public officials have done some very good books that give quite good insight into government, and I was aware of all these and of all these challenges. It wasn’t that I was coming from a place of no knowledge. And I hope what I knew influenced the kind of opinion I made about government before I got to work with the Presidency.
When your days in the Presidency are over, do you see yourself ever criticizing the government again?
I’ve thought about that and I’m not sure I will comment on government on the same level I did before I ever worked with the Presidency. I will more likely focus on how I can support people I identify with the government to help them achieve whatever agenda, goals and ambitions they have. I think we overlook that a lot. When I’m out of government, that’s what you’ll see me focus more on than mere commentary.
This is an excerpt of a fuller interview. More to come.
