The President and Commander-in- Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of
Nigeria, Dr.
Goodluck Jonathan PhD, seems like a nice guy!
There, I have your attention.
There have been many rejoinders to the rejoinders of articles
emanating from the Presidency on the perceived financial profligacy of
the current administration, so I will not add my voice to them.
However, a certain aspect of the entire ‘show’ is to me very deplorable.
This is the part that concerns the performance, in the strict sense
of the word, of Mr. President’s supposed image launderers. They come in
different sizes, shapes and most importantly, titles. I must confess
that I had to do an internet search of the exact description of their
titles. We have the Senior Special Assistant for Public Affairs, the
Special Adviser
on Media and Publicity, the Special Assistant on New Media, the
Honorable Minister for Information and a number of other guys that come
up once in a while, speak for the Presidency and then withdraw.
I want to give Mr. President the benefit of doubt that each of these
titled men has different job descriptions. I have no doubt however that
their overall aim is to in the best possible manner, intimate the
public of the administration’s policies and obtain feedback on such. It
is only logical that if I were to choose a person to speak on my
behalf, it will be someone my audience would listen to and who most
importantly will communicate my actions in an acceptable manner.
Companies understand this concept so well that they earmark huge sums
of money for public relations consultants, advertising agencies, human
relations departments, customer care units etc. People’s perception of
your service is actually as important, if not more, than the service you
actually render. Despite the fact that a lot of customers have
lampooned BlackBerry (formerly Research In Motion) the manufacturers of
BlackBerry phones on the many flaws of its products, the company still
churned out $4 Million for advertisement during the super bowl on 3
February 2013. I will concede that this might justify Mr. President’s
expenses on a retinue of image makers.
Public communication boils down to the right choice of words, body
language, diction, aura, physical disposition and a lot of other
attributes that are actually taught in schools. It is not only the
ability to weave together a couple of English words that makes you a
public communicator. I do not doubt the individual qualifications and
achievements of Mr. President’s titled men but they have done everything
but positively launder his image.
I am not aware of the brief Mr. President gave each of them upon
engagement but with their daily utterances, it seems like all they
thought they were coming in to do was notify us of Mr. President’s
travels, his meetings, dinner dates and decisions. It is now so bad
that anyone that questions any of their press releases or criticizes the
acts of the Presidency immediately becomes a member of the opposition,
sponsored interest group or a political jobber. In response to such
people, they each release an article, a press statement or tweet that
says basically the same thing.
I agree that Nigerians can be very rude and annoying in communicating
their thoughts. While I try not to justify this bad attribute, can you
blame them? No one will experience what Nigerians go through each day
and not get aggressive. As a matter of fact, you cannot imagine the
level of aggression Nigerians exhibit towards one another on a queue, in
a
danfo bus, in traffic, on twitter and a host of other places.
What do you then expect when they converse with people they are of the
opinion are the cause of their woes. What stands you out as a good
communicator is not getting drawn into the frustration of your audience
and responding alike but sifting the salient issues and addressing
them. Name calling, mud-slinging and shameless comparisons are not
professional ways of fulfilling your mandate as a person’s spokesperson.
The funniest of the titled men is the Assistant on New Media
(basically facebook and twitter). On Twitter, he interesting follows
only 232 people and has at the time of this article a little over Four
Thousand tweets. Seriously? I would think he would be following the
most people on twitter to efficiently sample opinions and to civilly
engage them. If he is not calling someone a wicked step-mother today,
he is talking about how someone was homeless yesterday and a lot of
comments that are otherwise beneath a secondary school student. Another
titled man actually enjoys being called an attack dog.
A google-search of any of their names since they joined the
administration yields no positive post. Despite the fact that he had to
defend many policies that the public were against, Mr. Frank Nweke Jnr.
in his capacity as Minister for Information from 2003-2007 communicated
the
Federal Government’s position in such a civil, gentlemanly and decorous manner as would make you have a rethink about your stand on the policy.
No company will engage a PR organisation that has lost its
credibility. Why can’t we run government like a company? No matter the
extent of abuse rained on a customer care operator, he is NEVER allowed
to abuse the customer. I mean, customers are always right. As the
mouthpieces of the President, I would have expected very creative forum
for public interaction and not just the sarcasm ridden, abusive articles
and once in a while derisive tweets they send out.
They communicate every little achievement of the government like it
is a favour done us. We are not begging for these things. You are
there at our behest. When they intimate the public of what the
government is doing, rather than talk about the project, they first go
around abusing their ‘haters’ before passing across their message in a
“soon you will say we are not working” manner. These people need to
change the “it is my time in government” mentality and get really
professional in performing their duties.
The truth is, it doesn’t take too much to win Nigerians over. The Super
eagles can testify to this. Governor Raji Fashola SAN of
Lagos State
in my opinion has not done anything spectacular. All he has done is to
employ a part of the vast resources coming to the State and put them
into visible projects while consistently articulating and updating the
citizens of the progress, impediments, decisions and projections of the
government.
In the face of stringent criticisms, when he addresses the State,
there is the appearance that he indeed respects the sensibilities of the
people and this has earned him the title of the People’s Governor.
President Jonathan
might be doing some things right but the manner of communication by his
titled men is sincerely not helping. Oh, and this manner of referring
to Nigerian as ‘ordinary Nigerians’… Sigh. Are there super-Nigerians?
I know you can never please everybody and Nigerians are perhaps the
most difficult people to govern but dear Mr. President, it seems your
titled men have all slept and faced the same direction.
DailyPost
"These
powers go with the office, so they will pass to the next pope. Whoever
renounces no longer has the assistance of the Holy Spirit to guide the
Universal Church," Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said at a
briefing.