The announcement by presidential spokesman, Garba Shehu, that rodents invaded President Buhari’s office while he was away in the UK for treatment thus necessitating a renovation even as Buhari works from home gives one serious cause for concern if there is not a devious agenda to keep shaming, ridiculing, and embarrassing Nigeria by Shehu and certain individuals in the presidency all in the seeming bid to protect Buhari’s interest at all costs even if by hook or crook.

If this wasn’t the case, why on earth, for goodness sake, would Shehu, descend so low and lie in such blatant manner? Is that how insignificant and inconsequential this presidency takes Nigerians? Has it degenerated to such level? This was a man who earned the respect of Nigerians as spokesman of former Vice President Atiku Abubakar.

I will openly confess that the way some officials of this government have carried on, the temptation to ignore them with silence due to their continuous disappointing acts, is high. The flip side of that, however, is that one cannot afford to, for love of one’s country as a concerned stakeholder like every other citizen.

As a journalist, the job to hold government accountable is one I have committed to whatever its pains or gains. But one occasionally wonders if Nigeria is really worth the trouble after all when supposed public officials paid with public money treat citizens as fools and zombies who they assume have no understanding  of national issues whatsoever and thus deserve no modicum of respect in how they relate with and communicate to them.

With the likes of Shehu around the President, our country certainly deserves better. He is not fit for his position. This, he has demonstrated on many occasions. His latest gaffe only further compounds it. And those who have argued in the past that public relations professionals and communications specialists might be more suitable for the jobs of presidential spokesmen than journalists may have a point after all with the experiences we have had with those assigned such responsibilities in the last few years. Or perhaps, they are just exceptions who didn’t fully grasp the weight of their choice of words or understand the best way to go about doing their tough jobs?

Whichever, how many Nigerians today are proud of their country with officials like Shehu at the corridors of power? And how many more are truly proud of the overall conduct and performance of this government?

We refuse to set minimum standards of expectations from our leaders. Yet, we need such. If a president is sick and his treatment will have to be borne by our collective wealth, shouldn’t such president and his team be honest in telling the citizenry what ails the number one citizen? I honestly find it personally worrisome and puzzling that despite the much-vaunted integrity and honesty of President Buhari, no sincere explanation has been made to Nigerians on the true state of his health despite the country being responsible for this treatment in the UK at a cost that remains yet undisclosed.

And is it not embarrassing, disgusting and utterly shameful for us as a country that whenever a Nigerian President is sick, he has to be flown abroad for treatment? Are we not scandalised? Must a president continue to be treated abroad at such colossal expense? Is that what we have finally come to accept and endorse as a country? Is that how low we have sunk? What is the fate of other citizens who are sick but can’t afford treatment overseas? What stops us from fixing our own medical facilities to become world class like it is in Germany, UK, US, the United Arab Emirates or India?

And we simply assume all VPs will be as loyal and dependable as Yemi Osinbajo. We think a time will not come when a subordinate might have his own ideas and want to unseat his boss at the slightest opportunity and damn the consequences when he thinks the main man is no longer able to perform the functions of his office.

We can choose to learn from the current experience. We can choose not to. However, I fear this type of scenario might repeat itself in future if we don’t do the needful now. How long, for instance, can a president be constitutionally allowed to be away from his duty post with the latest experience we are having as a country after the sad experiences of the Umaru Musa Yar’Adua presidency?

The point I am making is that for no reason must presidential interest be allowed to trump the national interest no matter what. Under such situations, individuals and sectional interests win while the country loses.

Meanwhile, it appears this APC government has successfully blackmailed the whole country into accepting its way of doing things simply on the basis of the president’s avowed fight against corruption and corrupt former public officials. Of course, the administration must be supported in ridding the country of corruption. However, this shouldn’t excuse knocks from the media and true patriots on the government or any of its officials when it is erring.

I should add that there are many citizens of various classes today who believe the Nigerian media has lost its voice in boldly speaking out against the shortcomings of those in power compared to its exploits in fighting military dictatorships and its selfless contributions to the emergence of democratic governance in our fatherland.

I also find it baffling that the APC chairman, John Oyegun, and the information minister, Lai Muhammed, don’t equally feel scandalized having the president travel abroad for treatment despite the much-hyped stance of their party being against such conduct during the 2015 electioneering campaigns.

But it’s glad to read in the newspapers that the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) has openly announced that its doctors are able to professionally treat the President no matter his medical challenges and there is no need for him to be going on medical tourism abroad. I believe them. The high numbers of Nigerians doctors working abroad where there are better equipment, world-class facilities and necessary backup infrastructure have distinguished themselves and continue to prove their mettle. They can do better at home if well supported.

Moving forward, one of the things I expect President Buhari would be concerned about within the limited time he has left in his four-year term is leaving an evident legacy at primary, secondary and tertiary levels of Nigeria’s healthcare system. However, it appears the government doesn’t seem to see this as critical on its to-do list.

But I digress.

To the main focus of this intervention, if Shehu still has any self-respect and honour, he would by now know, without being told, that it’s time to excuse himself from this government. It’s time to pack his bag and baggage and go home. His service to the President is certainly not in the best interest of Nigeria. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be spewing out what’s nothing but pure bunkum, bringing the country international opprobrium, and making Nigeria a butt of jokes around the world with his untenable excuses of rodents in the president’s office.

I do not know how far the outright incompetent communication at Nigeria’s Presidency would get before the people speak up to its inappropriateness.

I agree that it ordinarily should not be the people’s responsibility to complain about those who speak for the President; that should, in fact, be the prerogative of the one who hired them. However, this can only happen when the one who should make the call understands his own communication needs. Where he does not, as is the case here, and now, the citizens have a right to protest. They, after all, pay these people, their principal and the whole machinery of government. And more importantly, every form of mis-communication or no communication at all brings a measure of ridicule on us all.

Take Monday’s offering of the Senior Special Assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari on Media and Publicity, Mallam Shehu Garba, that his principal would not function from his office for three months because rodents had taken residence of the apartment in the President’s absence.

Every one with a modicum of intelligence would wonder what this is all about. Is the President’s office at the Aso Rock Villa part of a huge deserted space that no one had visited since Buhari travelled in May? Where did his chief of staff and ancillary staff, which includes Garba himself, ply the comedy that they regard as presidential spokesmanship when the “big man” was away? Did they share the space with these rodents or were the rodents big enough to have taken over from men?

Even if rodents took over, what happened to those who had foreknowledge of Buhari’s return that they could not quickly prepare the office ahead? Why in the world does it take three months to clear rodents?

That infantile proposition, which suggests that those who were listening were incapable of fathoming the awkwardness of it all came from the same place from which they told us half-truths and insulted our sensibilities in the past two years or so. Obvious incompetence that Nigerians have condoned and justified all this while.

But most of those who explain these things away do not understand the basics of effective public communications and what it entails, so we may excuse their ignorant enthusiasm. However, citizens in a democracy must also realise that information is a major instrument of national emancipation and when they do not know, it is better to avoid speaking. But I shall return to this shortly.

Garba and his friends in the media office go about their job without requisite skills and we need to let them realise that communication for public office holders especially the President of a nation, transcends media purposes into a more robust public relations configuration with the understanding of the people at its centre. Without this, the purpose of a communications office for a person of a President’s stature is totally needless.

And here it should be stated that public relations is neither lie nor spin. In fact, a basic tenet of the discipline is that you must tell the truth all the time and at the right time. A delay in coming out with what is true could be as fatal to retaining the trust of the public as being caught at telling a lie. Let those who speak for the President know this and stop bringing shame unto us as a nation forthwith. These men should tarry a bit, drop their impulsive reactions to issues and employ the tools of public relations in doing their job.

By the agreement reached at the World Assembly of Public Relations in 1978, Public Relations “is the art and social science of analysing trends, predicting their consequences, counselling organisational leaders and implementing programmes of action which will serve both the organisation’s and the public interest.”

These are the men who should counsel the Nigerian leader on what is expedient for him to say on his arrival from a three-month medical vacation such that he does not end up saying the exact thing that should have been unsaid. There could be arguments that the President is so cut in his ways that he possibly would not have condoned suggestions to show a little bit of more appreciation to Nigerians and respect their rights to react to the evident structural imbalance.

If they dared to analyse trends, predict their consequences as is expected of practitioners in the offices that they occupy, they would be able to tell their principal that the nation needed nothing more than the empathetic words which would help him recover the prospect for a united country that he met in 2015 but lost shortly after.

Nigerians will recall the tension that gripped this country ahead of the 2015 elections and certain unverified predictions that the country might fail. Not a few of our compatriots fled the country at this time.

But contrary to all expectations, the 2015 elections ended the way a majority of Nigerians wanted and then President Goodluck Jonathan conceded defeat. Before our eyes, the cloud of fear which permeated the land dissipated like smoke from dead fire. Peace descended on Nigeria like a dove and confidence in the survival of the country rose to an all-time high.

Expectations were that President Buhari, being a retired General and a one-time head of state, who was in the middle of the bitter civil war that the country fought over 40 years ago, would build on this moment and encourage national cohesion and integration. But what did we see? Nigeria has not been more sectionalised than now. The country haemorrhages from the action and inaction of the Buhari government and there is a need to tackle these issues head-on in the interest of the nation.

An analysis of the communication of the Presidency would show that they have contributed in no small measure to the situation at hand. It started with the President when, during one of his trips to the United States, he indicated that those who voted for him five per cent should not expect to get the same treatment with those who voted for him 97 per cent. This presidential gaffe received widespread condemnation from the southern part of Nigeria although his supporters drew all sorts of alibis for him. He went ahead to threaten to bring war to the Niger Delta militants and things took a nosedive which nearly paralysed the economy.

Were we blessed with a communication team sure of its onions, the presidential speech on Monday, August 21, should have come with an analysis of where we were coming from, how we got here and what the people really desired. One thing we can tell them for free for instance is that no ethnic nationality is really serious about leaving this country. Not even the theatrics of Nnnamdi Kanu should be so seriously taken as the ultimate separatist intent if we were in a country where communication has any pride of place.

However, the Nigerian citizen has himself condoned this incompetence for too long and he still does. For instance, the impression one gets from all the triumphalism and pettiness that reigned on the Nigerian social media space over Buhari’s return is that Nigerians have learnt no lessons from the handling of the President’s health situation since the beginning of the year.
The implication of not learning these lessons is that the same mistakes and lack of regard for the feelings of the people will continue to remain the modus operandi of the government and its communicators.
And we cannot deny citizens of a free country the liberty of expression. And when those charged with the responsibility to win the confidence of the citizenry are bereft of the very basic requirements of effective communication, these liberties literarily snap and become licences which lead to reckless conjectures that help nobody but are a natural consequence of a lacuna in communication.
What is wrong with telling the people the correct situation of President Buhari’s health? What is wrong with owning up that the President had chosen to work from home to complete his healing process? What is wrong with passionately seeking the support and understanding of Nigerians about the illness of a 74-year-old man who means well for the country and is trying to prove the point? Did rodents inspire the calling off of the Federal Executive Council meeting on Wednesday as well?
In case anyone is under some illusion, it is a great tragedy that a government that swam in the sea of goodwill just two years back is now the object of ridicule across the world. And that an essentially predictable function as communications plays a significant role in diminishing that brand equity. It is in fact, unforgivable.

Twitter: @niranadedokun

Source: thecable.ng