Talk to the people, Mr President

Democracy thrives on open dialogue, or communication, if you like, between the rulers and the people. Democracy is an open government. It has no room for opacity. Rulers must talk to the ruled because accountability is both a legal and a moral obligation intended to make the people live the full meaning of Abraham Lincoln’s definition of democracy as the government of the people, by the people and for the people.

Honest and constant dialogue between the rulers and the ruled dulls the edges of misunderstanding, staunches rumours and kills fears. It helps to build the people’s trust in their president and his government. Such a dialogue is the only time-tested process by which government carries out its essential duty of marketing hope in the polity.

It seems such a dialogue between the government and the people does not rate highly with President Muhammadu Buhari and his administration. He is not talking to the people. We more or less get to hear his views on national issues when he travels abroad. And sometimes he puts his foot in it, as when he spoke dismissively of our youths in London last week.

Nigeria is passing through particularly difficult times. The virtual siege of Benue State, the killings in neighbouring Nasarawa, Zamfara, Taraba and other states have put the country on the edge, sending shivers down the spine of all Nigerians. We live in fear. We live in uncertainty. Despair and desperation are crushing our hope in our future and our confidence in our rulers.

At times like these, the people want to hear from their president. They want to be re-assured that they can trust the government to pull them through the difficult times. They want to know that the government has the capacity, the competence and the determination to make our country safe and Nigerians their brothers and sisters keepers. Press releases or statements by media aides of the president do not just cut it. The president must address the nation from time to time because only he has the authoritative voice of re-assurance. And only he can really be believed in marketing hope to the people.

There is nothing complicated or magical about this. The Obasanjo military administration initiated such a dialogue with the people through the monthly media briefings attended by editors and other media chieftains and addressed by the then Chief of Staff, Supreme Headquarters, the late Major-General Shehu Musa Yar’Adua, perhaps the most media savvy soldier we have ever had. The head of state, General Olusegun Obasanjo, attended the briefings quarterly. Those briefings were not press conferences. They provided essential background information to the editors on government decisions. Indeed, the government sometimes used them to fly kites in order to gauge public reactions to their intended actions and decisions. They served the government so well that if you check it you would see that that administration had the best government-media relations in the country. Nothing beats taking the media and the people into confidence.

This practice was continued by both the President Shehu Shagari civilian administration and the Buhari military administration. The late Vice-President Alex Ekwueme held forth in the Shagari administration while the late Major-General Tunde Idiagbon did the same in the Buhari military administration. Like Obasanjo, Shagari too addressed the media briefing quarterly. The practice was not continued in the General Ibrahim Babangida administration but we did not notice the difference because the general was his own most effective media-cum-public relations man. As far as it was possible in a government of generals, Babangida ran an open government and dialogued with the people in a variety of ways.

The man who made other rulers see and appreciate the place of dialogue between the leader of a country and the people was the late American president, Franklin D. Roosevelt. Only six days after his inauguration as president, he initiated a series of evening radio addresses to the people in what came to be famously known as fireside chats. These series lasted from 1933 to 1944. He used them to talk directly to the people on issues that mattered to them from the fireside in the White House. He made the people imagine their president warming himself by the fire and talking to them at a level of familiarity unprecedented in their political history.

The first thorny issue he dealt with in the series was the crisis over a new law known as the Emergency Banking Act. He also chatted with the people over the recession, the New Deal and World War II and tens of other important issues in which he believed the people needed to hear directly from their president and commander-in-chief. And in the opinion of experts, they “kept him in high public regard throughout his presidency (because) on radio, (the president) was able to quell rumours during times of despair and uncertainty.”

In other words, he marketed hope to the people, using the simple art of talking to them in a manner that re-assured them. Here is how the American novelist, Saul Bellow, described the effect those fireside chats had on the people: “drivers … pulled over, parking bumper to bumper, and turned on their radios to hear Roosevelt. They rolled down the windows and opened the car doors. You could follow without missing a single word as you strolled by. You felt joined to these unknown drivers…. not so much considering the president’s words as affirming the rightness of his tone and taking assurance from it.”

The only other American president who came close to doing what Roosevelt did was that equally great communicator, President Ronald Reagan, with his brand of dialogue with the people he initiated sometime in 1982. What is important to note here is that both leaders recognised and appreciated this: nothing beats the re-assuring voice of a president in times of despair, uncertainty, fear and frustration in a nation. These are the wrenching times we are passing through in our country today. Talking to the people is certainly not rocket science. It is the simple act of the president marketing hope to the people by letting them hear him from time to time in order to rebuild their confidence in him and his administration. He, and only he, can market hope to the people. He, and only he, can staunch the rumours, the misinformation and the half-baked analyses that have now taken over the country, deepening the fear, the despair, the uncertainty and the frustration of the people.

Talk to the people, Mr President. And reconnect with them.

This article was first published on April 29, 2018.  Agbese will be back next week with a fresh piece.