Former presidential spokesperson Garba Shehu has admitted that the story about rats damaging President Muhammadu Buhari’s office in 2017 was a deliberate attempt to divert attention from public concerns about the president’s health.
The revelation is contained in Shehu’s new memoir, According to the President: Lessons from a Presidential Spokesperson’s Experience, launched Tuesday in Abuja.
In chapter 10 titled “Rats, Spin and All That,” Shehu revealed that the story was a deliberate “spin” to shift focus away from the mounting speculation about the president’s medical condition and ability to govern.
Buhari had just returned to Nigeria on August 19, 2017, after spending several months receiving medical treatment in the UK. There was growing anxiety about his condition, especially after the presidency announced that he would be working from home instead of returning to his office.
The announcement raised questions, including the claim by IPOB leader Nnamdi Kanu that Buhari had died and been replaced by a lookalike called ‘Jibrin from Sudan.’ It was during this period that the rat story surfaced.
Shehu wrote that the idea came up during a routine discussion in the Chief of Staff’s office, where someone joked that rats may have damaged the wiring since the room had not been used in months.
“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 it wasn’t based on any actual report and described it as spin.
“To get them (journalists) 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 wrote.
“As was known of them, in their destructiveness, those rats ate just anything anyone could imagine. Many critics disagreed with me, saying that we were covering up the president’s ill health. Some people had a good laugh over the narrative, and an insignificant few believed me.”
The statement quickly gained international attention. News organisations like the BBC reported it, which helped shift public focus away from Buhari’s health—even if only for a while.
But not everyone in the presidency supported the move. At a later meeting, the Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed, and Vice President Yemi Osinbajo questioned his decision.
“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,” he wrote.
“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.”
