ANOTHER BOMBSHELL FROM DELE MOMODU

 

 

President Buhari As a Public Relations Nightmare

By Dele Momodu
Fellow Nigerians, these are not the best of times for our dear President, Muhammadu Buhari. And it must be much worse for his media handlers. Let me state matter-of-factly, from the onset, that President Buhari gets into regular trouble, indeed, too frequently, because he has invested heavily in a media team but lacks a public relations team. In Nigeria, most leaders fail to realise that being a good journalist, Editor, Publisher, Broadcaster, and what have you, does not make you a good or excellent public relations guru. The other problem is I’m not sure the President is surrounded by those bold or brave enough to look him straight in the eye to tell him the honest truth. His earlier persona as a military ruler has also not helped matters in this respect. The fear of a military dictator is the beginning of wisdom, according to the view of an average Nigerian.

I must confess that I have been a latter-day convert and ardent fan of President Buhari. I signed up only after he decided to contest the 2015 elections for a record fourth time. I took the view that he was the best man for the job particularly because the Jonathan administration was fumbling and not prone to correction. I played my part in articulating the President’s attraction for me and those like me who felt that he was what Nigeria required at the time, a stop-gap in the mould of Mandela option. Without being immodest I can say that I successfully played my own part in the eventual victory of APC and the Buhari/Osinbajo ticket.

I first had a significant interaction with Buhari in 2011, when he asked Dr Lanre Tejuoso to bring me to his house in Abuja and we got on quite well. The camaraderie was palpable. And he disarmed me with his candour and passion. Prior to the 2015 election, I met Buhari in London at a flat in Mayfair, the day he spoke at Chatham House. He sprang to his feet as soon as I walked in and appeared happy to see me. We chatted briefly and took several pictures with Rotimi Amaechi, Hadi Sirika, Festus Keyamo, Hadiza Bala Usman and others. He was as effervescent and excited as everyone else at the prospect of becoming Nigeria’s new leader. His optimism for the country was infectious and I believed I had made a wise decision in deciding to follow and publicly support him.

I vividly recollect my meeting with President Buhari shortly after he assumed office in 2015. This was at his behest. I found him very relaxed and jocular. We again got on well.  Contrary to the public misconception and rumours about his taciturnity, he was witty, chatty and freely spoke his mind. He certainly did not appear dictatorial or aloof.  Many of those who saw our interaction on television, as well as the pictures in different media, could not believe how freely we had bonded. I was surprised when a few Ministers asked what I did to make him feel so comfortable with me. Even before I went in to see him, a few people had pleaded with me to help talk to him frankly. I started getting the feeling that they considered me a suicide bomber who should carry away the sins of the earth. But the Buhari I met was not as difficult as he was made out to be. Everyone says when you hold meetings with him, it is a monologue, you are forced to do the talking while he does the listening. And that you never know whether he has heard you or what is on his mind. That was not the Buhari I met. He was receptive and we exchanged ideas on the various issues of national and social interest that we talked about.

It is one of those inexplicable ironies that the same man who generated and galvanised so much love and passionate affection has lost and squandered most of that uncommon goodwill. No one since the June 12, 1993, election, which was clearly and undoubtedly won by Chief MKO Abiola, has had such monumental, widely acclaimed and fair victory as President Buhari did in 2015. The youths of Nigeria were so much in love with him that they studiously ignored all his shortcomings and embraced him warts and all. The same youths are so angry today that I’m almost certain it would take some magic and miracle to get them to reconnect with our President like they did in 2015. There was nothing anyone could have said negatively to Buhari that they would have believed at that time. As a matter of fact, the youths said if Buhari presented NEPA bills as his school certificate result, they would accept it as genuine and further, that they were ready to march for Buhari all the way to Aso Rock.

So what went wrong? It is difficult to point at just one thing. It has been an amalgamation of conflicting issues and signals. The first was the attitude exhibited early in the life of this government that there was no real urgency and Buhari could take forever to handpick his team. The government lost the much-needed steam at that moment. And when the team was announced, it was déjà vu, because there was no difference and no big deal about their composition. Next was the witting or unwitting decision to start a war of attrition within his own party.  I warned against this very quickly, but was dismissed as raising false alarm. The APC became a house divided against itself. Till this day they couldn’t hold regular meetings, they couldn’t make most of the necessary political appointments, they couldn’t select their board of trustees, they couldn’t even hold a convention to celebrate their victory not to talk of one to elect a new national executive and so on.

The Party’s highfalutin campaign promises soon became its albatross. The grandiloquent manifesto had been packaged to entice everyone like babies to lollipop but when the day of reckoning and delivery came, the chocolate boxes were suddenly and strangely empty. The schools feeding programs could not be achieved. The social security and welfare packages of arranging stipends for the unemployed youths reached a cul-de-sac because government could not muster such resources. The President’s avowed fiscal policy target of parity between the Naira and the US Dollar – One Naira to one US Dollar proved to be a pipe dream that all discerning members of the public knew it would be. Indeed, it was much worse as the Naira slid to its lowest ever price against all currencies including African ones.

Buhari’s biggest attraction was the belief that he would easily wipe out, or at least significantly reduce, corruption in Nigeria. Those who believed the hype saw him as the only saint in Nigeria, but they forgot that sinners are probably the only ones capable of catapulting the saint to power. He tried his best in fighting the demons of Nigerian democracy, but they were much smarter than he ever bargained for. Pronto, the demons lined up in a long queue and migrated from PDP to APC where they are now comfortably ensconced and protected. Several corruption allegations and scandalous revelations involving members of the government or trusted aides and associates have either been ignored or swept under the carpet. Thus it has become difficult for the ruling party to stand on any moral ground and sermonise or pontificate about fighting corruption. For every finger pointed at others, four fingers pointed back at them. The sacred cows, otherwise known as the cabal, and other members of the Politburo have remained mysteriously and monstrously powerful and untouchable.

The most nauseating to many people has been the blame game. This has irritated so many people, including former Head of State and President, Olusegun Obasanjo, who exploded and told Buhari frontally to deliver on his promises instead of his regular lamentations. He effectively said everyone knew the former government did abominably badly and that is why it was sacked. The blame game seemed to have backfired as Nigerians are bored sick of hearing the same jejune tales over and over, instead of government telling us the good news of their own kingdom, and juxtaposing their own achievements against that of former President Goodluck Jonathan. The government should have known that hungry people hardly listen attentively to preaching and sooner than later would request for the way forward. Using the past as an excuse can only work up to a point. The people want action and not this litany of woes.

The other problem, and this is grave, is that the President hardly talks to Nigerians in Nigeria. And when he speaks, the words are so scanty and not much can be grabbed from them. Our President was critically ill and had to domicile himself abroad for several months cumulatively, yet no one knows what was wrong till this day. A public figure cannot afford to be too secretive in this manner. It only fuels curiosity and promotes ugly rumours. Significantly, the President who does not speak at home picks the wrong places and occasions to talk abroad and attracts controversies and public ridicule to himself and his country. The headlines have always been for the wrong reasons rather than the right mileage for the country and himself from the international media exposure and interest. On those trips, we’ve expanded the lexicon with such phrases as “the other room”; or as the latest gaffe goes “young people who want to sit and  want to be paid free money and free health…”

I have been inundated by calls since President Buhari made his latest remarks in London in answer to a question at the end of his keynote address at the Commonwealth Business Forum. To say most of the comments have been quite bad is an understatement. To properly understand I listened to the video and transcribed it myself, although I also had access to my dear brother, the Special Adviser Media to the President, Femi Adesina’s transcription. Below is my humble effort:

“We have ah, a very young population. Our population is estimated conservatively to be ah, a hundred and eighty million. Ah, this is a conservative one. More than 60 per cent of the population is below the age of (sic) thirty. Ah, a lot of them haven’t been to school. They are claiming ah, ah, you know, that Nigeria has been an oil producing country, therefore ah, they should sit and do nothing and get housing, healthcare, ah, education free.”

The furore and fury the latest controversy has generated on social media is almost unprecedented. It is like touching the tiger by the tail. A seemingly harmless statement credited to President Buhari has ignited a huge conflagration everywhere. I felt bad for Femi Adesina as he struggled to defend, explain and transliterate what the President said or meant to say to an unwilling and unyielding audience. It has become a very heavy cross he must carry every time his boss speaks these days and it cannot be easy. It is true the President did not use the word lazy or say that all Nigerian youths sit at home and do nothing. It is also not true that he used the word half-educated. However, what he said about the youths suggests something worse, although that is clearly not what was meant. “a lot of them did not go to school”, translates to a lot of them are uneducated which is even worse than half-educated. One may pardon the President because empirically this is true of the educationally disadvantaged States with which he is very familiar, but it is blatantly false about the south where education is much advanced. Similarly, to say somebody sits down and does nothing and wants to claim freebies is to say that person is irresponsible.  In my view, this is much worse than laziness. Factor in the fact that free health, free education and affordable housing for all, were the campaign slogans of the APC and no one begged for it. So you can see a public relations disaster right before your very eyes.

President Buhari indeed has become a public relations nightmare. He is seriously in need of experts and coaches in public speaking and etiquette, especially now that he has decided to challenge fate by aspiring for a second term in office. If the plan is to throw in combatants, trolls and internet warriors to bully his opponents into submission, it would not fly. He needs all the gentility in the world to cajole, coax and convince Nigerians that he means well; that he knows what he is doing; that he is tackling the difficult challenges; that he is not a religious bigot or ethnic supremacist or jingoist; that he would reduce the menace of, if not wipe out, Boko Haram; that he would destroy the rampaging invaders called herdsmen wherever they are coming from; that he would revamp and improve the economy; that he would create opportunities for all Nigerians including jobs for our restive youths; and above all that he will keep all the brightest people closer to him …

I pray it is not too late…

PPSMB ENUGU ANNOUNCES RELEASE OF RECRUITMENT EXAMINATION RESULT!

  EN/PPSMB/CM/SMG/VOL.2/64              12th January, 2018.

ANNOUNCEMENT

The Result of the Written Examinations conducted by Post Primary Schools Management Board (PPSMB) has been released.

All candidates who scored 50% and above are invited for an oral interview slated for 29th, 30th and 31st January, 2018 at their respective Educational Zones with the following;

Two office files containing the original certificates and photocopies respectively.

Evidence of registration with Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria (TRCN).

A copy of their Examination Slip with a passport photograph affixed thereto.

TAKE NOTICE THAT THE EXERCISE IS MERIT BASED AND FREE. DO NOT PATRONISE FRAUDSTERS.
For more details visit our website w.w.w.ppsmbenugu.com.ng.

NESTOR EZEME
Executive Chairman

MASTER PIECE BY DELE MOMODU! MR PRESIDENT, MAN SHALL NOT LIVE BY POWER ALONE!

    

My dear President, please, permit me to wish you and your family a very happy new year. Let me also offer my words of prayers, and intercession, on behalf of your very handsome son, and his friend, who, according to reports, were involved in a terrible power-bike crash. I pray that God almighty will grant them full recovery and I believe my prayer is already answered because of my presence in the Holy Land of Jerusalem.

Now to the business of the day. Kindly permit me to be as brutally frank as possible. As a stakeholder who made his modest contribution to your emergence as President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, I owe you nothing but the truth. I was not a member of your party when I volunteered to support your mission and ambition in 2015. I was elated when Nigerians succeeded in chasing away the profligate and reckless government of the PDP, led by President Goodluck Jonathan. I was one of those who unleashed terror on that government and I subsequently presented you with a compilation of my articles in which I criticised and advised the then President, free of charge. I never expected that our situation could ever get worse under the APC government that almost literally promised heaven and earth. But it has become evident that it is easier to govern by words of mouth than by force of action.

It is indeed shameful that those like me who supported you so vociferously have become butts of jokes everywhere we go. Sir, I plead with you to ignore your acolytes who may be telling you that all is well in Nigeria. My unequivocal verdict, without any fear of contradiction is that things are very bad. While I will not, in all honesty, totally heap the blame on you, there is no doubt that your government has been less than competent. I’m reasonably convinced that you have not availed yourself of the abundant talents it has so pleased God to endow Nigeria with. Rather, you’ve chosen to saddle yourself with hungry lions and deadwoods that you’ve resurrected from penury and oblivion. Leadership should be about managing people and resources. Most of the people you are working with are already retired or tired and with little or nothing new to contribute.

It is grossly unfair that it was very convenient for us to lampoon and scandalise Dr Goodluck Jonathan, yet most of us have remained funereally silent and unreasonably complicit in the evil that the current men of power are perpetrating and perpetuating under your watch. Unknown to you Sir, some people are merely using you to rule by proxy. There is no evidence of discipline in your team, one of the greatest things you preached so fervently about in your first coming as military Head of State. Your acolytes are virtually getting away with murder. Someone, somewhere, sat down with birds of the same feathers, to conjure and compile the most disgraceful list of political appointees ever and yet nothing has happened to those who brought such perfidious insults on our nation. Instead, we are being regaled with tales by the moonlight to gloss over serious maladies in the polity and damning treachery against our nation. No serious apologies. No penitence. Only some foolhardy cockiness from those who will repeat the same nonsense when tomorrow comes.

Your Excellency, it has become very difficult, if not impossible to defend the excessive shortcomings of your government, please, permit my oxymoron Sir. We definitely want you to succeed but it seems some demons are desperately determined to make you fail by all means. The more your administration unravels, the more ridiculously hopeless it seems. You have waltzed from crisis to crisis instead of from glory to glory, as most of us expected. We thought you truly possessed the magic wand and talismanic effect to make all our problems evaporate and vamoose in a jiffy. We did not expect to be regularly mesmerised by impotent excuses galore.

I sincerely doff my hat to your wonderful wife for her rare and uncommon courage. Regardless of what her detractors may say, she is the only insider who has been trying to say it as it is. Even if some of her critics feel she’s seeking for relevance in your kingdom, it is still within her rights. I’m sure that when the day of reckoning comes, you will remember and appreciate her timely warnings. Without mincing words, what Madam Aisha Buhari has been trying to tell you in clear terms is that this government is swimming in a big foul mess and that you should not be carried away by the fake adulation and false adoration you see all around you.  There is no government in Nigeria that did not enjoy the services of praise-singers who disappeared as soon as the government itself collapsed like a pack of cards. Ask President Jonathan!

I’m aware that your foot-soldiers are already warming up for the next election. I really do not know what they hope to tell and sell to the electorate this time, particularly after the colossal failure of the last three years. I do not see how they expect to fund your campaign without resorting to the same type of extravagant jamboree we witnessed in the dying and last days of the PDP’s prodigality. As a result of your decision to contest again, you are being forced by circumstances beyond your control to compromise and capitulate on your known principles. Is it not better, and more profitable, to return home, triumphantly, with your reputation intact than to win a pyrrhic victory with everything you ever stood for wasted on the altar of vainglorious aggrandisement? What guarantees do you have that you will win the next election even if you agree to sell Nigeria to the political gladiators?

Sir, I’m pleading with you in the name of God, the Merciful and all-powerful, that you don’t need two terms, or eight years in power, to prove your greatness. Nelson Mandela spent only one term in power and retired to superlative glory as the world’s most respected and revered and idolised statesman. Robert Mugabe spent about four decades in power, yet he returned home in total infamy and unenviable disgrace. It is a lesson of life that we must all learn, sooner rather than later, that man shall not live by power alone. I know my preaching is not likely to touch you and your hardened supporters but, at the very least, I want it to be on record that I spoke publicly, out of genuine love and concern, while you were being goaded on by those who stand to gain more if you win a re-election next year. For most of those asking you to continue, by fire and by force, it is always about their personal agenda and survival. They know their political careers would come to a shuddering halt and abrupt standstill should you fail in your bid to come back. In their desperation to come back at all costs, they are going to do exactly what PDP did, or even much worse. What moral authority would you then have to justify the continued detention and harassment of some of the PDP operatives accused of wasting government resources on Jonathan’s truncated re-election bid. Who amongst us can in good conscience say in the market place that you won the last election on pure merit and that no substantial government funding went into your campaigns.

This year promises to be an interesting one. You will soon discover how treacherous human beings can be when some of those hailing you today as the authentic messiah begin to show you their true colours. Our country is bleeding dangerously while some over-pampered politicians can only think of winning elections by hook or by crook. The quality of your appointees in recent time points to how directionless your government has finally become. In a country overflowing with so many amazing brains and talents, it is incredibly shameful that those are your best representatives for our country. The easiest way for a leader to fail is to continue to attract those much worse than himself. Conversely, the best way to succeed is for a leader to recognise and attract and surround himself with those much better in all aspects of human endeavour. This does not erase or take anything away from the leader but it actually enhances his personality and how he is perceived by everyone. The late sage of blessed memory, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, was a veritable example of how a leader can effectively tap into the collective brains of some geniuses and add to his own in a way that makes him appear super-human.

Nigeria has never been in short supply of whiz kids at home and abroad but Nigeria started dying when our leaders stopped respecting merit and preferred to enthrone mediocrity. The truth is mediocrity begets further mediocrity. The few good leaders in your government have not been able to display their wizardry out of fear and trepidation that some cabal would mark them out and hack them down so ruthlessly. It is a sign of the times, that the courage, astuteness and brilliance that made them stand out in the political crowd has suddenly taken flight and they are now little more than wimps in your insipid government. The bureaucracy in Abuja is enough to suffocate and disorientate any fertile mind.

If I were in your shoes, I would consider that it is not too late to groom and propel some of the best brains in APC or even those living beyond the shores of Nigeria to succeed me. You do not need to look far in this regard but I will not make any suggestions today, lest it be misinterpreted that I am touting any particular individual as a worthy successor. I’m reasonably convinced that you have worked very hard and seem to have reached your peak. To God be the glory. In a country of nearly 200 million people, God has been too kind to you. Apart from former President Olusegun Obasanjo, no other Nigerian has been given a second chance so miraculously. You will be able to justify this unmerited favour by leaving Nigeria much better than you met it. The only way you can do that in the next remaining year is to sacrifice your own personal ambition and hand over the country to proven and tested modern and cosmopolitan technocrats. The world has moved beyond the backwardness that we are being saddled with in Nigeria today. The world expect us to be the true giant and leader of Africa not by words but in deed.

My appeal to you is to urgently do a self-assessment to determine and decide on whether you are what Nigeria needs at this time and age for our country to join the comity of other nations in their march towards technological advancement, political stability, social security and economic prosperity.

With all due respect, Sir, if your answer is yes to the above, you may go ahead and contest but if in all honesty, the answer is no, my prayer is that you will find the courage and selfless spirit to quit the stage while the ovation is loudest. That in itself would be a deserving legacy. I’m watching and waiting for your patriotic decision with bated breath.

Thank you, Mr President, for your usual attention and kind consideration of my latest memo to you, albeit so early in the year.