Former presidential spokesperson, Garba Shehu, has admitted that the 2017 story about rats damaging President Muhammadu Buhari’s office was a calculated ploy to divert public attention from the president’s failing health at the time.
The revelation is contained in his newly released memoir titled “According to the President: Lessons from a Presidential Spokesperson’s Experience,” which was launched Tuesday in Abuja.
In Chapter Ten, “Rats, Spin and All That,” Shehu pulls back the curtain on one of the most bizarre media narratives of Buhari’s presidency.
President Buhari had just returned to Nigeria on August 19, 2017, following a lengthy medical stay in the United Kingdom.
After returning, the presidency announced that he would be working from home rather than the presidential office — a development that stoked already growing public anxiety and suspicion about his true health status.
Online, the situation worsened with conspiracy theories, including IPOB leader Nnamdi Kanu’s viral claim that Buhari had been replaced by a body double named “Jibrin from Sudan.”
Amid the pressure from the media, Shehu recalled hearing a conversation in the Chief of Staff’s office about a damaged cable, during which someone offhandedly suggested rats may have been responsible since the office had been unused for months.
That comment soon became the foundation for what would become global headlines.
“When the surge in calls for explanation of why the president would be working from home… came, I said to the reporters that the office, which had been in disuse, needed renovation because rats may have eaten and damaged some cables,” Shehu said.
He admitted the claim had no factual basis but was instead designed to deflect from the president’s health concerns and reset the media narrative.
“To get them off my back, I referred them to the strange rats that invaded the country in the 1980s during the rice armada… Many critics disagreed with me, saying that we were covering up the president’s ill health. Some people had a good laugh… and an insignificant few believed me.”
According to Shehu, the goal was to redirect national discourse.
“I wanted the discussion to shift, to move to any other issue besides the president’s health and his ability to continue in office.”
The spokesperson acknowledged that not everyone within the administration was on board with the tactic. He recounted how both then-Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed, and Vice President Yemi Osinbajo challenged him on the story’s accuracy.
“Both of them disagreed, saying that this was well off the mark,” he wrote.
Elsewhere in the memoir, Shehu tackled criticism that Buhari was detached and uninvolved in governance.
In Chapter Six, “The Muhammadu Buhari Persona,” he argued the opposite, insisting the former president was highly informed and followed national developments closely.
“He took more than a passing interest in knowing what was happening in the country,” Shehu wrote.
He explained that Buhari routinely started his mornings with newspapers and kept tabs on the news via radio and television.
The former president even had a driver commute from Daura to Kano just to pick up physical copies of the newspapers.
Yet, Shehu also described Buhari as a man who shunned visibility and the spotlight.
“Even then, he had a disdain for public exposure, or, perhaps, the camera — still and motion,” he wrote.
The memoir offers a rare behind-the-scenes look at the inner workings of Nigeria’s presidency — and the calculated media moves deployed during some of its most controversial moments.
