Is the Presidency becoming desperate and jittery?

Posted by admin Goodluck Jonathan (2010-present), Presidency Thursday, September 6th, 2012

Three responses from the Presidency in the last one month have painted a picture of irritation, fear and desperation. The first was the response to the demand of the Islamic fundamentalist group, Boko Haram, on President Goodluck Jonathan to convert to Islam or resign as a precondition for their cessation of a reign of terror. The second was the cantankerous article by the Senior Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Dr. Reuben Abati, directed at the President’s social media critics. The third was the President’s comment at the 52nd Annual General Conference of the Nigerian Bar Association that he was the most criticised president in the world.

Starting from the first point, it is pertinent to ask: Did the Presidency need to respond to Boko Haram’s baseless demand for Jonathan to convert to Islam or resign? NO! By addressing the media on that issue, the Presidency created the impression that it did not have more serious and pressing issues to attend to.

That demand should have been completely ignored by the Presidency and all presidential aides and spokespersons. Even if Abati was asked by journalists to respond to that call, he should have replied that the President was too busy with important state matters to respond to such. The President should have left the matter to sympathetic groups and individuals to respond to. By responding to Boko Haram on the issue of conversion to Islam or resigning, Abati was simply according the faceless group authenticity and legitimacy and also telling the world that the Presidency was jittery and, even, petty. That was poor strategy.

If the Presidency responds to Jonathan’s arch-opponent in the April 2011 presidential election, Maj.-Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (retd), or Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the National Publicity Secretary of Nigeria’s leading opposition party, the Action Congress of Nigeria, or the Arewa Consultative Forum or Ohanaeze Ndigbo, he would be seen to be responding to people or groups with identity and fixed addresses. The case of Boko Haram was worsened by their demand. If the group had accused Jonathan of marginalising Northerners or Muslims or embarking on a Niger Delta or Christian agenda against the North or Muslims, then such a comment should necessarily have elicited a robust rebuttal by the Presidency with concrete evidence.

But the height of desperation and pettiness was displayed in Abati’s article, in which he used condescending and disdainful words on the social media critics of the President. Abati went further to defend accusations that no serious publication, broadcast station or individual had ever made. The accusations that Abati denied included that the President was not a drunk or a glutton. Unbelievable!

From where did Abati hear these accusations? From people that had no traceable addresses, people who gather on the web the way friends gather in beer parlours and social events to drink and exchange the latest jokes and gossips. Yet, the President’s special adviser on media and publicity spent several hours on an essay, simply meant to deny petty jokes against his principal and then pass the article to the media houses to publish. It was surprising that Abati did not also respond to all the jokes passed around about the President’s wife, to prove that he was an effective defender of the Presidency.

What Abati did was to publicise and give authenticity to beer parlour jokes and rumours. He simply made those who had never heard such jokes and rumours to hear them. And such people would begin to assume that there could be a modicum of truth in the jokes and rumours, given that the President’s spokesman went to great lengths to refute them. It was like the case of a man who was called impotent by another man when only two of them were present in a room. The man decided to go to court to prove that he was not impotent. In trying to save his name, he brought the news to millions of other people who never knew that such a rumour existed. Rather than going to court, the man should have ignored the man or asked the accuser to put him to test in the accuser’s household! End of story!

As if that was not bad enough, a day later, at the 52nd Annual General Conference of the Nigerian Bar Association, the President told the world that he was “the most criticised president in the world.” We never knew when the Guinness World Records conferred such an award on our President. That comment further confirmed that the President is very uncomfortable with the barrage of criticisms that he receives. It also confirmed that the President listens to all the gossips in the nation. His tone and words betrayed a president who is frustrated and irritated about the deluge of negative comments he receives.

The tragedy of this deficit of an effective communication strategy is that the Presidency has become reactive rather than proactive. Every time Jonathan or any of his spokesmen addresses the public now, rather than telling the nation the programmes and achievements of the President, they end up reacting to accusations upon accusations against the presidency. And the headlines of the media are usually taken from those reactive comments – which are usually open to many interpretations – while whatever programmes itemised are usually lost in the controversy generated by such hare-brained responses.

To say that the President’s communication strategy is middling is being euphemistic and charitable. It is known that the President does not have the gift of the garb. That deficit could have been compensated for by the quality of his communication team. But it is not clear if the problem is that Jonathan’s communication advisers are not advising him well, or that the President does not listen to advice, or that he is the one who decides what is to be communicated and how it should be communicated and simply directs his communication aides to execute such.

Whatever the problem is, the President’s middling communication has cost him much of the goodwill that saw him winning a presidential election in 2011 despite all the odds against him. Deep down the hearts of many Nigerians, they pray that President Goodluck Jonathan should succeed. The good news is that despite what the President has lost, he can still regain lost ground in a matter of months if he adjusts his communication strategy and makes it more proactive and inspiring than reactive and antagonistic or bitter.

•Azuka Onwuka is a brand management strategist and wrote vide: [email protected]

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