It
was my baptism of fire into the workings of Nigerian governance.
Our
firm had just begun communication consulting for government departments and
agencies about six years earlier, and this was a very important client. Where I
thought my work would center on strategic planning and execution, it turned out
much of it would instead be focused on massaging egos, cooling passions and
dismissing innuendo.
In
a rapid-fire email thread, another innuendo landed one afternoon in 2012. A
story by an investigative media outlet had unfairly attacked the client, even
though its material facts were not exactly wrong. As I had come to expect, the
thread collapsed into a session of finger pointing as to external enemies, paid
by opponents, to discredit this government officer.
Because
our work has cut across many intersections including media and civil society, I
knew this was not the case, and I said so: this feature was the result of a multi-month
partnership between various bodies for a different goal having nothing to do
with the client.I really should have kept my mouth shut, because within an
hour, I was suddenly at the center of the attack, accused of being part of this
conspiracy and, it was implied, being a mole not fully committed to protecting
my client.This was surreal, but only at the time. The higher up I have worked
with Nigerian government and political circles over the past half decade, the
worse I have seen and heard.Nigeria runs on rumors. It runs on suppositions,
innuendos, assumptions and empty accusations. This is quite the epidemic. One
so ingrained every president since democracy returned in 1999 has accused an
inchoate “them” of sabotaging the efforts and successes of governments and
individuals in government. All of this often flung at supposed opponents
without fact, without the appearance of evidence, and without the pretense,
even, of investigation.
I
have sat in on complex meetings where we have wasted time identifying enemies
who must have “planted” a story in the media, or disparaging an endless parade
of figures for sponsoring critical social media commentary rather than focus on
accepting responsibility for error, shoring up weaknesses and engaging
strategically. In many of those cases, I knew for sure that the problem was
nothing more than a badly trained journalist, a lazy editor or, actually, the
absence of an editor entirely.
But
in a country where everyone thinks everyone else is paying the media, or has been
paid to speak, to criticize, to correct, to suggest, speaking this simple truth
can become a hazard.
I
am after all still traumatized by the fact that many insist, completely without
evidence of any sort, because it does not exist, that a prominent south-west
politician sponsored the historic Occupy Nigeria protests
when I am aware, having sat in myriad planning meetings, that this was in fact
a spontaneous gathering self-funded by several passionate groups, to revolt
against an insensitive government. But the appearance of a handful of
opposition politicians was enough to send the gossip mill buzzing.
Nigeria
is a country that doesn’t respect data. We have scant regard for evidence, and
actively enjoy the absence of rigor. We are very comfortable tossing off
accusations, questioning motives, attacking intentions, and engaging in a merry
go round of assumptions rather than doing the hard work of strategic thought
and engagement.
This
is surely why, in responding to baseless accusations that
the Nigerian president asked the World Bank to focus solely on development in
the North East of Nigeria, the presidential spokesman made a mountain of a mole
hill by attacking “ethnic champions”supposedly sponsored by enemies of
the government, where it was simply a matter of idle Twitter hands searching
for attention.
It
is in this way that I have seen several players in Nigeria’s political
establishment turn simple problems into major crises.
Often,
when Nigerians suspect Machiavellian manipulation in the statements and actions
of governments, there is often nothing but the most basic incompetence loudly
beating its chest. In my country, one must resist often the temptation of
attributing malice where simple stupidity will suffice.
This
is a real cultural problem, and not just in government. Indeed, stories of
corporate clients chasing shadows when confronting media will require another
piece of its own.
How
does the country solve a problem that eats so deep into our body politic that
it affects the formulation of policy, the assessment of feedback, the building
of coalitions, and the sustainability of visions?
The
first part of the answer is simple: a cultural overhaul that begins to prize
data over assumption, research over opinion, and rigor over instinct. This
cultural overhaul should filter from top to bottom and should begin to overturn
(and dis-incentivize) the foundations of secrecy, opacity and the disrespect
for empiricism that defines the leadership of the country across sectors. We
need to take seriously our responsibility to shine the light of knowledge and
evidence across Nigerian institutions.
Now,
how precisely will we be able to overhaul an entrenched 60-year culture that
has hollowed out the soul of a nation, and eaten into its capacity for
self-reflection?
Ah
yes, you just arrived at the second part of the answer.
Chude Jideonwo is a World Fellow at Yale
University. His new book is How to Win Elections in Africa:
Parallels with Donald Trump
Source: Quartz Africa
