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As Malagi, Ngelale depart from Lai Mohammed’s infamy

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By Farooq Kperogi

The Information and National Orientation Minister, Mohammed Idris Malagi, and the Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Ajuri Ngelale, started their jobs by inaugurating a refreshing and applaudable departure from the primitive information management strategies of their predecessors. But can they sustain the moral high ground they signposted in their initiatory speeches?

On his first day in office on August 1, Ngelale took deserved and carefully targeted potshots at the rude and crude informational tactics of his predecessors. “Gone forever, by the grace of God, are the days when government spokesmen and women would speak down to Nigerians, would use condescending language with Nigerians, and would display some form of institutional arrogance toward Nigerians,” he said. “That will NOT be tolerated under my leadership.”

His message resonated with a broad band of Nigerians, especially on social media, because since the return of civilian rule in 1999, Nigerians have come to associate incivility, crudity, arrogance, and insults with the job of presidential spokesmanship. To have a presidential spokesman disavow this template of relating with Nigerians is pleasantly surprising.

For his part, Malagi, in what seemed like a veiled dig at his immediate predecessor, assured Nigerians that lies and propaganda would no longer be instruments of information management. “This time around, a process of restoring popular confidence and trust in government and its policies shall not lie in the domain of propaganda,” he said. “In other words, the era of relying on propaganda to propagate government programmes is now over.”

This is music to the ears, especially coming after Lai Mohammed whose entire career as Minister of Information and Culture was defined by a bewilderingly extravagant fondness for willful and easily falsifiable lies. Lai’s first name doesn’t just share an uncanny phonemic kinship with “lie”; he actually embodied lies in the most audaciously disreputable way imaginable.

All government information managers lie, but Lai’s lies were unmatched in their coarseness, brazenness, vulgarism, and disdain for the intelligence of Nigerians, which once caused me to wonder if he was the victim of a psychiatric disorder called “pseudologia fantastica” or “mythomania,” that is, chronically compulsive lying that causes liars to believe their own lies. A successor who repudiates this reputation is worthy of our attention.

I have written several past columns on the ineffectiveness of lies, intimidation, insults, and propaganda as means of official communication. In a February 28, 2015, column titled “Why Nigerian Politicians Now Prefer American Public Relations Firms,” for example, I wrote:

“Nigeria’s political public relations is crude, vulgar, and intellectually impoverished. No one who desires to change the hearts and minds of people should rely on it. Nigeria’s brand of political public relations, for the most part, does no more than attract enemies, scare away potential converts, and ossify negative opinions about candidates.

“It consists in barbarous, impulsive, sophomoric insults against real and imagined political opponents—and cloying, hagiographic defense of principals. It lacks nuance, is childish, and seems unconcerned with logic and persuasion.

“The performance of Reuben Abati and Doyin Okupe (who in fact describes himself as an ‘attack lion’)—and several others before them—in the defense of their bosses and the demonization of their bosses’ real and imagined political enemies is a classic example of the kind of primitive political public relations that holds sway in Nigeria. In this kind of political public relations, not only ‘political enemies’ come under heavy fire; facts, truth, and logic also become casualties.”

As spokesmen for Olusegun Obasanjo, Doyin Okupe and Femi Fani-Kayode trafficked in what I called an “unprecedented display of ill breeding and rudeness to our elders” and everyday Nigerians and “reckless and irresponsible juvenile bravado.”

Although Olusegun Adeniyi was urbane, responsible, polite, and guarded in the performance of his job as Umaru Musa Yar’adua’s spokesman, the ease with which he defended the obvious lies and fraud of the administration, especially in the last days of Yar’adua when governance basically ceased, made it difficult to take him seriously.

Then Reuben Abati came and started the trend of inventing group slurs for critics of the government. He infantilized and pathologized critics of Goodluck Jonathan as “collective children of anger.”

Femi Adesina built on Abati’s collective slurring of critics. One of Adesina’s most notable “achievements” was the invention of a vacuous, unimaginative, and idiotic insult for critics of Muhammadu Buhari. He called them “wailing wailers.”

As I pointed out in past columns, “Wailing Wailers” is a historically positive term because it is one of the earliest names of the reggae band formed by Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, and Bunny Wailer in Jamaica. The band took the world by storm with the irresistibly lyrical force and anti-imperialist content of its music. It betrays a spectacular creativity deficit to insult your opponents with a term of esteem.

Outside its creative use as the name of a music band, “wailing wailer” is an unintelligent waste of words. It’s akin to saying “writing writers” or “singing singers.” It takes unbelievably remarkable stupidity to think that “wailing wailer” or “wailer” is an insult, but it bespeaks an even more astonishing height in the ignorance index to hurl it at an opponent and imagine you have done something great.

Most importantly, though, why should a presidential spokesperson who is paid from the public purse vituperate all critics of a government with a crude slur? What does that achieve?

Well, I can tell you what it achieves. It creates a condition psychologists call reactance. Reactance occurs when people are motivated to persist in or double down on an opinion or course of action that caused them to be threatened with insults.

For example, I didn’t set out wanting to be a Buhari critic. In fact, like previous presidents, I wanted him to succeed for the benefit of the entire country. When I started calling out his missteps in 2015 in the most sympathetic ways possible, I got unwarrantedly violent pushback from people who thought Buhari was worthy only of worshipful admiration and not even the mildest censure for even his most obvious infractions.

The Buhari Media Center (BMC) was created to attack, smear, and libel me for merely daring to call out Buhari at a time when most people were scared of pointing out his weak points. But instead of cowing me, BMC’s attacks emboldened me and activated a motivational state of reactance that compelled me to reveal things about Buhari that I probably would have kept under wraps had BMC minions not set out to serially defame me for exercising my right to comment on the government.

Most critical, independent, self-aware people react the same way if their freedom of thought or action is violated with threats, insults, or other tools of emotional blackmail. In other words, it turns even fence-sitters into sworn enemies and hardens the opposition of opponents. The fact that Malagi and Ngelale appear to appreciate this elemental truth in persuasion and information management is admirable.

To my utter embarrassment, I had no knowledge of Ngelale until his appointment by Tinubu. I now know that he is a young man in his 30s (making him probably the youngest presidential spokesperson since 1999) who earned a political science degree from the University of Kansas in the United States in 2011 and had worked as Buhari’s Senior Special Assistant on Public Affairs (where he defended many indefensible things).

Perhaps, his youth, transnational experience, and awful experiences in the Buhari regime have helped to shape his new approach to interfacing with Nigerians.

Malagi’s position doesn’t surprise me. As I wrote in a casual May 18, 2022, article when he ran for APC’s governorship nomination in Niger State, I have known Malagi since the late 1990s when I worked for the Weekly Trust. He is by far the best credentialed minister of information that Nigeria has had in recent memory.

After teaching at a college of education for years, he ventured into public relations, advertising, marketing, and finally publishing. Apart from being the publisher of the Abuja-based Blueprint newspaper, he is also the proprietor of WE 106.5 FM Abuja, was general secretary of the Newspaper Proprietors’ Association of Nigeria (NPAN) and has been a major player in the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations (NIPR).

So, unlike past ministers of information, Malagi has deep intellectual and experiential familiarity with both public relations and journalism. Of course, this is no guarantee that he will succeed—or be better than his predecessors. Power both changes and reveals who people are. I know of no one who has remained the same after stepping foot in the corridors of power. I’ll be pleasantly shocked if Malagi is different.

For all you know, the praiseworthy words of Malagi and Ngelale may be no more than the ephemeral whispers of honeymoon sweet nothings. But the fact that they are unprecedented should invite us to pay attention and monitor how their actions match their words.

 

*Kperogi is a Professor of Journalism and Emerging Media at Kennesaw State University, Georgia, United States, and a notable columnist

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Hurricane Tinubu sweeps 12 PDP, YPP senators, reps to APC

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11 additional senators and house of representatives members from the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP and one from Young Peoples Party, YPP, are set to decamp to the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC.

While 10 of the decampees are from Akwa Ibom, two are from Edo and  Nasarawa- Neda Imasuen and Ahmed Wadada respectively.

This happened just as the ruling party admitted it was working to bring four other PDP governors into its fold despite accusations it was working to turn Nigeria into a one-party state.

The APC National Vice Chairman (South-East), Dr Ijeoma Arodiogbu, affirmed the lawmakers’ plan to defect to the ruling APC in an interview.

The PDP lawmakers who have pledged allegiance to the APC are Senators Ekong Sampson (Akwa Ibom South) and Aniekan Bassey (Akwa Ibom North-East), and House of Representatives members Okpolupm Etteh, Paul Asuquo, Alphonsus Uduak and Ime Bassey. Others are Martins Esin, Unyime Idem and Mark Esset.

Emmanuel Ukpongudo, a member of the YPP, is also reported to have chosen to throw his lot in with the APC.

The development comes on the heels of the defection of Governor Eno to the PDP last Friday. He cited the need to align the oil-rich state with the government at the centre.

Eno followed in the steps of Delta State Governor Sheriff Oborevwori, who dumped the PDP for the APC in April.

Leading the APC delegation, which received Eno into his new party, was Imo State Governor and Chairman of the Progressive Governors Forum, Hope Uzodimma.

 

 

 

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“Ndume lied, I was not attacked by Boko Haram,” says Buratai

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Former Chief of Army Staff, Retired Lt.-Gen. Tukur Buratai has dismissed the report that he was attacked by Boko Haram terrorists in Borno.

Nationwide Reports had Monday morning reported an interview granted by the Senator representing Borno South, Ali Ndume on Channels TV where he narrated how Buratai narrowly escaped death in an attack by Boko Haram which he said happened in Borno State.

But in a statement by his spokesman and former army spokesman, Retired Brig.-Gen. Sani Usman on Monday, Buratai  described the purported report of an attack on the general as “mischievous and utterly false.”

According to him, the former army chief was not attacked in any way, contrary to what has been falsely reported by some online media outlets.

He said: “For the avoidance of doubt, he celebrated the Eid festivities peacefully in Abuja in the company of family, friends, and well-wishers and has remained within the Federal Capital Territory since then.

“This baseless rumour is a product of the reckless imagination of the purveyors of fake news, individuals whose sole aim is to malign him, spread fear, confusion and misinformation.”

Usman accused the fabricators of fake news, saying that they were not only mischievous but also deeply irresponsible and must be condemned in the strongest terms.

”I sincerely extend my heartfelt and profound appreciation to the countless patriotic and well-meaning Nigerians, friends, associates and admirers of His Excellency, who reached out with genuine concerns, prayers and goodwill.

“Your overwhelming show of love and support is deeply cherished and speaks volumes about the enduring respect and affection we are privileged to receive from across the country and beyond,” he said.
Usman reminded those he referred to as harbingers of fake news that truth would always prevail.

According to him, no amount of falsehood or malicious propaganda can tarnish the image of a man who had devoted his life to the service of this great nation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Sallah: Umahi felicitates with Muslims, says Tinubu’s inclusive leadership fostering interfaith unity

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Engr. David Umahi, the Honourable Minister of Works, has conveyed his profound felicitations to the Muslim Ummah on the commemoration of this year’s Eid-al-Adha celebrated all over the world.

Speaking during a ceremony hosted by him to celebrate the festival with Ebonyi State branch of the Hausa/Yoruba Muslim community in Abakaliki on Sunday , the Minister emphasized the need for all faiths to cultivate a sense of love, sacrifice, devotion, charity and humanity which are the values of the festival being celebrated.

He described the growing interfaith relationship in Nigeria as a product of the inspiring leadership of the President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, which he said is truly inclusive and progressive.

Umahi said- “Barka da Sallah to all Muslim faithful and to the entire Nigerians. You’ve said it all, that the interfaith relationship is much much better now. I would say that it is at an excellent level now under President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, GCFR.

Surprising to Christians, Mr. President led a delegation to the Pope’s inauguration. That was very unique and the first of its kind. I’ve always said that we are serving one God in different ways.”

According to a statement by Hon. Barrister Orji Uchenna Orji, Special Adviser to the Minister on Media, Umahi urged Nigerians to leverage on the shared values of Eid-al-Adha to deepen our commitment in fostering religious tolerance and social harmony, which are the hallmarks of nation-building

He commended the President of Nigeria for the manifest willpower of his Renewed Hope administration in unlocking the economic potential of each Geo-Political Zone through massive investment in infrastructure development.

He called on all Nigerians to rally round Mr. President in his efforts to provide enduring development and secure a shared future of social justice for our nation, noting that the rewarding stewardship of Mr. President would speak for him in the 2027 general elections.

He said- “The performances of the President will definitely see him through in 2027. We will stand with him. South East will support him. When I was governor, we had herdsmen problems. Do you still encounter the herdsmen problem as it was? That is one thing the President has done for the people of the South East. Today, we are being gradually integrated into the mainstream of the nation’s governance. What an Igbo man never had before, he is beginning to have it,courtesy of Mr. President.

“Once again, Eid Mubarak to all the Muslim faithful.”

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