Eluemunor: A Lousy Columnist’s Weak Punches Against Shuaib, Dahiru
By Salis Manaja
“Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point where he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”– – Fyodor Dostoevsky
My emotions switched between tragedy and comedy – and later ended up at tragi-comedy – reading a rejoinder by one Tony Eluemunor who hides under the nothingness of his obscure brand name to spew bile and venom on more accomplished writers in his lousy attempt to prove that he was a journalist before he became the defender and attack dog of the most notorious, stupendously corrupt public officer in the history of official looting, worldwide.
First, he went all out to attack the person of an award-winning crisis communicator, Yushau Shuaib unfairly and unjustifiably over his well-received piece that promotes peace and tolerance on the impasse between supporters of Air Peace and Emir of Kano, Aminu Ado Bayero. Rather than appreciating the spirit behind the patriotic piece, Eluemunor wrote an article titled “The Emir And Air Peace: Yushau Shuaibu’s Errors” in the Independent Newspaper among others.
It is very clear from his initial article, that Eluemunor fruitlessly attempted to defend the spokespersons of Airpeace when he wrote that he had every reason to believe that Shuaib’s piece was directed at Air Peace spokespersons. He added that “ I make bold to state that nothing in the statement the airline issued on that matter was “boisterous or confrontational.”
In an egocentric attempt to redefine “Strategic Communication,” Eluemuno childishly cited Wikipedia for what he considered an academic engagement and used derogatory remarks in condemning not only the article but the personality of Yushau Shuaib.
Not done, he penned another article titled: “Shuaibu on Emir and Air Peace: Teacher don’t teach me nonsense” in the Vanguard newspaper. With the same theme in attacking Shuaib and his article.
The rule of hole says when you are already inside a hole, you stop digging. But Elumuno has probably lived all his adult life overrating himself, so every opportunity he had on this matter, he kept on digging and digging and going down and down.
When an award-winning Fact-Checker, Dahiru Lawal, published a rejoinder to educate and guide him on some of his incoherent and illogical arguments, Eluemunor wrote another article this time with a title: “Dahiru Lawal on Yushau Shuaib: Less Sense, More Nonsense”. If the rejoinder he wrote to Shuaib was laughable, the latest one he wrote in response to Dahiru was just ridiculous.
A mere google search of his name reveals the stench and filth that comes with benefitting from illicit and illegal wealth, and erroneously thinking that you have earned the right to attack serious-minded professionals who are adding a lot of value to this noble field.
Like in his previous article, the rejoinder by Eluemunor simply exposed him as an antagonist and irredeemable misogynist who disrespect gender-based endeavours by attacking the work of a ThisDay female editorial staff who diligently conducted a personality interview with Shuaib and came up with a journalistic masterpiece that cast a spotlight on Shuaib’s style, accolades and pace-setting tracks in the PR World.
In his unfortunate prejudice against the female journalist, Eluemuno who claimed to have been a journalist all his life, could not differentiate between an editorial and feature piece written by editorial staff from an opinion article written by outsiders.
Without any substance, sound argument or logical thoughts, the self-acclaimed writer merely sustained the attack on Shuaibu, on Dahiru as well. He wrote that “When Dahiru reacted to my column I was shocked. It lacked civility and was uncoordinated because he rambled on and on, jumping from one issue to another. It was an unfocused, chaotic clutter, a total mess!”
In a nutshell, the columnist lacks the comprehension skills to understand Shuaib’s strategic communication idea on the need to take result-oriented decisions in crisis communication in resolving the impasse between Air Peace and the Emir. “Strategic” moves do not have to be conventional, theoretical or textbook-based! Hence the refrains by Shuaib in his article when he stated that “Beyond theory, strategic communication doesn’t seek publicity in whatever ways through the media.” This singular phrase was the major offence of Shuaib in the eyes of Eluemunor.
Eluemunor also proved his lack of comprehension when he mixed up Dahiru’s charge on him to use credible scholarly works to buttress his arguments rather than use FREE online resources, like Wikipedia, which is editable by every Tom, Dick and Harry. The man simply doesn’t understand these things.
For one who communicates to an audience, it is worrisome that Eluemenor’s inability to keep an eye on the ball, comprehend and decipher is legendary – the reason why he attacked Shuaib in the first place and later attacked Dahiru in another rejoinder.
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For Eluemunor to have the time to come up with the same line of thinking and the same pattern of argument in response to a response, proved that he is a hack hustler who has another illicit interest to protect in the matter, probably from his friends, the Airpeace Spokespersons. He has been doing it for ages before landing the contract on whitewashing Nigeria’s most corrupt and convicted political office holder.
Probably intimidated by Shuaib’s numerous awards at the university, during his national youth services, in the communication industry and various appointments some automatic employments on merit at the federal level, Elumunor claimed that in worked in the PUNCH for two weeks and left and that he was contributing articles in Sketch in the 70s. On his claims of being a 1990 Nieman fellowship, the publicly acknowledged list for that year does not include his name but other notable personalities such as Andrew Drysdale, Teru Nakamura, Elaine Shannon, Olusegun Osoba, Yong-tae Kim, Sheryl Fitzgerald, Curtis Matthews Jr., Ranjan Gupta among others.
Since his name is conspicuously missing from the list, it is left for him to tell us why. But what bothers me more is the question that beggars belief. Should we begin to scrutinize all Eluemunor’s claims? Like his contributions to ThisDay editorial, Punch newspapers, etc? It is curiously amusing that Eluemunor claimed to be on the Editorial Board of ThisDay between 1995 – 96 yet no publicly available information to substantiate this.
It is one thing to make an impact in practice, it is another to be a benchwarmer. Eluemunor should show us evidence of the impact of his decades of wielding the pen. An online search of his name and that of Yushau Shuaib and Dahiru Lawal would prove one fact: The Difference is CLEAR.
In a rush to make false claims, Eluemunor again failed to comprehend or even understand the Global Creativity Index, the yearly index, produced by PRovoke, formerly Holmes Report, ranks the most awarded PR campaigns and firms in the world, weighing their impact, while taking cognisance of their staff size. The ranking goes two ways, both by staff size and financial weight. The result he found was those ranked by bigger staffing and bigger pockets, yet he thought it was Eureka for him, pathetic! The list is there in the Provoke Media and Statista on the ranking of Yushau Shuaib’s Image Merchants Promotion Limited, which has also bagged multiple awards in communication, especially from the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations (NIPR), African Public Relations Association (APRA) and International Public Relations Association (IPRA).
While Shuaib has deliberately refused to join issues with him, I advise reputable media houses, especially the Vanguard and Independent Newspapers he deployed to attack innocent personalities, to be wary of contributors that could put them in litigation trouble of defamation suits for libel and slander.
With relentless attacks on his person by Eluemunor, may I advise Mr Yushau Shuaib to issue a strongly worded rejoinder to teach him a lesson in journalistic writings? Even though the PR scholar often advocates that “Silence is golden against dignifying frivolities,” he can also sue him in a court of law.
Useful References:
Air Peace, Kano Emir and Unwarranted Attacks by Yushau Shuaib
https://prnigeria.com/2022/03/02/air-peace-kano-emir/
Shuaibu on Emir and Air Peace: Teacher don’t teach me nonsense by Tony Elumunor
https://www.vanguardngr.com/2022/03/shuaibu-on-emir-and-air-peace-teacher-dont-teach-me-nonsense/
On Emir and Airpeace: How Eluemunor Goofed on Shuaib’s Interventions by Dahiru Lawal
https://prnigeria.com/2022/03/23/emir-airpeace-eluemunor-shuaib/
Dahiru Lawal On Yushau Shuaib: Less Sense, More Nonsense by Tony Eluemunor
https://independent.ng/dahiru-lawal-on-yushau-shuaib-less-sense-more-nonsense/
Most creative PR agencies worldwide weighted by staff size in 2020, according to Global Creative Index in Statista
https://www.statista.com/statistics/276889/the-most-creative-advertising-agencies-in-the-world/
2021 PR Agencies of the Year in Provoke Media https://www.provokemedia.com/events-awards/agencies-of-the-year/2021-agencies-of-the-year/emea
Yushau Shuaib: A Publicist with Panache by THISDAY
https://www.thisdaylive.com/index.php/2022/02/06/yushau-shuaib-a-publicist-with-panache/
Salis Manaja, a graduate of Information and Media Studies, Bayero University Kano writes from Kofar Dukawuya Kano City via [email protected]
