The Nigerian government is engaging the foreign media with the objective of shaping the world’s opinion about the Muhammadu Buhari administration, the government says.
The insight was provided on Sunday by the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, following an engagement at the Royal African Society in London.
According to the News Agency of Nigeria, engaging foreign media organisations, networks and think tanks is aimed at establishing the “true position of things” and to “correct the negative narratives” about Nigeria and the current administration.
To that end, the Minister also met with Foreign and Commonwealth Office officials and All-Party Parliamentary Groups, as well as with Reuters, African Report, New African and African Business, and appeared on Al-Jazeera television.
Mr. Mohammed described the visit as an opportunity to explain what his government has achieved in the areas of security, fighting corruption and in revamping the economy.
The Minister pointed out that no Nigeria administration, under any programme, has ever employed as many as half a million graduates as Buhari’s has done through the N-POWER programme, and that rice farmers have risen from 5 to 11 million, leading to reduction in importation.
He said the trip was also an opportunity to inform people about the insecurity in the North-East and how the government has succeeded in “returning normalcy” in affected areas.
“It offers us the opportunity to explain that the farmer/herdsmen clash is largely due to population explosion, climate change and criminality, as against the naysayers’ position that it is ethnic or religious.”
I have no objection to a government trying to attract the affection of the world. The trouble with the Nigeria case is that our governments often try to win the world without winning Nigeria.
Even if President Buhari were to be re-elected next year, he is not half the man he swore he would be, and his government not half the achiever he promised.
And he has not failed because the PDP poisoned the waters and looted the children’s milk and burned down the maternity hospitals, but because Buhari’s All Progressives Congress (APC) has proved to be no different, and those who hoped in Buhari now feel dirty and betrayed.
It is not the British who smell our stench, and so they cannot cover their noses for us; it is not the Americans who feel our heartbreak, so their eyes cannot overflow with our blood; it is not the foreign media who see Nigeria in all colours of despair and depression, and they cannot report or hurt. Why report or sell to them?
And the government has deliberately shifted the goalposts to suit its narrative. The vision that Buhari marketed was of a new country where the structures and values and practices that propped up the Nigeria mess would be eliminated.
The objective was to change a narrative which multiplies opportunities for the well-connected, no matter how negatively. Not only has Buhari left that Nigeria in place, he has consolidated it so much even he no longer mentions the concept of change.
Buhari and APC’s Nigeria is still the Nigeria of the PDP: there is only “them” and “us,” not right or wrong, legal or illegal.
Have Buhari’s “achievements” been downplayed? Let us examine the evidence.
First, security: A casual review of Nigerian states, roads and communities in the past four years by anyone intending to visit Nigeria is discouraging.
Speaking at a public event in Abuja last September, flag-bearing businessman Aliko Dangote warned that investors were being scared from Nigeria because of its insecurity, particularly kidnapping. “Most of the people that own large farms on the Kaduna-Abuja Road have abandoned their farms due to the menace of kidnapping, he said.”
Similarly, the United States reported in its ‘Nigeria 2017 Crime & Safety Report: Abuja’ of the serious risk of crime throughout the country. “Criminals are prone to use wanton violence, and resistance by a victim is often met with deadly force. Residents have experienced armed robberies, assaults, burglaries, carjackings, rapes, kidnappings, and extortion.
These two credible reports contradict the government’s self-serving affirmations of how secure Nigeria is. Outside an official jet or convoy, many locations in Nigeria are dangerous and inaccessible.
Of the militancy in the northeast, everyone knows that despite official claims, Boko Haram may sometimes or in some areas be degraded, but it is not defeated. It continues to attack populations and troops, to kidnap, extort and murder. Last month, they executed 25-year-old Red Cross nurse Saifura Khorsa, and only last week, 24-year-old Red Cross midwife Hauwa Liman.
Second: the herders-farmers clashes. From first suggesting that the killers were neither herdsmen nor Fulani, President Buhari has in the past half-year said the AK-47 wielders were trained and armed by the late Libya leader Muammar Gaddafi, and last month that they are “runaway fighters from Iraq and Syria.”
As bizarre as those sounded, Mohammed said last Sunday that the farmer/herdsmen clashes are “largely due to population explosion, climate change and criminality, as against the naysayers’ position that it is ethnic or religious.”
In effect, the government has shifted from Gaddafi to runaway Iraq/Syria fighters back to a new Nigeria theory in an effort to avoid any ethnic or religious explanation.
Finally, corruption. Mohammed appears to have made no comment, but this is the one subject in which Buhari has suffered the clearest collapse. He has set the poorest example, contradicted himself, failed to follow-up on his commitments, surrounded himself with some of Nigeria’s most corrupt, and refused to prosecute officials close to him who have been indicted. Farooq Kperogi calls it “corruption fighting corruption.”
Buhari likes to talk about corruption fighting back, but he only talks. Not since his “body language” was found to be an illusion within months of his arrival has corruption been wary of Buhari.
I offer three examples: That Buhari, in April 2016, prohibited medical tourism by government officials to preserve “hard-earned resources.” But only months later, he departed for London on his first medical trip. Not only has he made four similar trips since then, federal officials swiftly learned from his example, and have been actively patronized foreign hospitals since then.
That Buhari, by accepting the 45million naira contribution of the Nigeria Consolidation Ambassadors Network (NCAN) in his re-election effort has violated Section 221 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999; its Fifth Schedule on “Code of Conduct for Public Officers,” and Section 91(9) of the Electoral Act 2010.
That in February 2016, Justice Mohammed Idris of the Federal High Court (FHC) in Lagos ordered the government to publish up-to-date information on recovered stolen funds since the return of civilian rule in 1999, including on a dedicated website. And in July 2017, Justice Hadiza Rabiu Shagari, also of the FHC in Lagos, ordered the government to publish a list of the high-ranking public officials from whom it has recovered public funds and the sums recovered from them, since it assumed office.
In other words, the job to be done, and the things to be said, are in Nigeria. I would love to support the government in broadcasting the celebration to the world when that is done.
But not before, or instead.
• @SonalaOlumhense
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