Sokoto And The Sokoto Trouser By Chuks Iloegbunam Published in The Guardian on Sunday July 20, 2014. IN recent weeks, the major political parties have accused each other of hiring the services of foreign media advisers, to launder their images and make them eligible for election in next year’s presidential ballot. Reports claim that each of the foreign media firms in question is to receive in excess of $3 million for their troubles. That translates into about half a billion Naira for a company sitting pretty in London, New York, or Tokyo, to fix the image of a Nigerian political party and make it victorious in an election in which all voters will be Nigerians. Two things came to mind the moment the curious development began to assail my senses. The first is “Money Miss Road”, which is a phrase employed by Nigerian in dismissal of wealthy people who deploy their resources into quests that are ridiculous or downright shameful. The second is this Yoruba saying: “What you are looking for in Sokoto is right inside the pocket of your sokoto.” Sokoto in the northwestern fringes of Nigeria is nearly 1000 kilometres from Lagos. The Yoruba, and indeed every Nigerian ethnic group, cannot understand why any focused person should search for in faraway Sokoto something inside the pocket of his sokoto, the traditional trouser won under the jumper. In other words, what is obtainable through a stretch of the arm should not occasion a tortuous journey through difficult terrains and different linguistic zones. But, there is a distinction to mark in the Money Miss Road syndrome of old. That Money Miss Road was always thought to be foolishly wasting his hard-earned money. The situation cannot be the same with a Nigerian political party spending N500, 000 million in 2014, simply to rent the services of a foreign media expert. Such an action, described properly, can only be called a scandal. The key question is this: whose money is being so stupidly blown? Properly earned money can never be so prodigally expended. There are any number of projects that can be achieved with half a billion Naira. Part of the gargantuan sum could be deployed into achieving better air safety. Part of it could go into the provision of better medical services. Part of it could be used to clear the backlog of unpaid gratuities and pensions. Part of it could provide jobs for the thousands of jobless youths roaming aimlessly in utter alienation and frustration. To have such a huge sum of money lavished on some absentee smartasses underscores the apparent incorrigibility of the Nigerian political class, their utter thoughtlessness and the wanton disdain in which they hold the country’s citizenry. It has been said in some quarters that the “Clueless” tag was invented and foisted on President Jonathan by one of these so-called expert foreign public relations firms. It is left for Nigerians to decide whether what the country requires at this time is the importation of 21st Century versions of Joseph Goebbels, to come and further pollute the national political atmosphere with mordacious propaganda. That is all these dubious foreigners are capable of doing for Nigeria – to sow the seeds of discord, to distort the truth and to promote hirelings as instant and inevitable saviours of the entity. For, if truth be told, there is absolutely nothing new under the earth. Yes, Public Relations has its nuances and strategies. But it is not rocket science. Even rocket science itself is not outside the ken of the Black race. There is no innate or cognitive expertise in American or European public relations practitioners that is not currently manifest and self-evident in their Nigerian counterparts. The rush to the foreigner, therefore, is the product of a personality complex that encourages the fiction that the grass is always greener on the other side. There isn’t a height in political media campaigns that a party with Senator Uche Chukwumerije will not attain. If his proficiency in this department is not called into play, that would be because he is not being carried along or he is not allowing himself to be carried along. And there are many media wizards of the hue of Chukwumerije in this country. Definitively, the PDP requires no foreign input, however tiny, to guarantee President Jonathan a second term of office. What to do is not in Sokoto; it is in the PDP’s sokoto (trouser), except they are unaware of its presence in their clothing. Similarly, the All Progressives Congress (APC) does not need any foreign input, however minuscular, to shirk the tag of a Boko Haram affiliate. All it requires is for the party to desist from angling to score political points through the terrorist massacres of Nigerians; to have its Governors and Senators stand by traditional cum religious leaders, and rail in condemnation of Boko Haram, and to have such footages broadcast repeatedly in all media sequences. The central point is that the political media expert has his place, except that it is a place that stands drastically untenable if his product is middling in a highly competitive setting. Certain politicians are pig-like in both character and orientation. No detergent, however potent and expensive, can permanently rid them of filth and stench, an off-putting condition, which, in electoral terms, translates into tragically serial defeats. Look at President Barack Obama. He is a Harvard-educated lawyer, a former US Senator and a man who speaks in his first and native tongue. Yet, he never makes a public speech without the use of the TelePrompTer. But, in Nigeria, politicians with a smattering of English, a foreign language, address difficult questions without preparations or rehearsals, leading to needless faux pas that they consequently try to redress by paying billions into the coffers of foreign media practitioners. That explains why, in an interview granted Ochereome Nnanna in the Vanguard of November 10, 2013, Governor Sule Lamido of Jigawa State tried to explain Boko Haram atrocities by likening it to pressure of the sort a woman feels, for which she goes shoplifting to feed her hungry children! That explains why in 2003, the then Governor of Abia State, Chief Orji Uzor Kalu, apologized on behalf of Ndigbo for their “mistake” of the Nigerian civil war and asked the rest of Nigeria to forgive his ethnic group and “chart a new course towards integration”! (See Vanguard of September 8, 2003.) Outrages such as these can only be avoided when politicians chew their words well before uttering them, and when they weigh the possible consequences of their actions before taking them. They are not avoided by misapplying funds better deployed to the benefit of the citizenry; they are not mitigated by paying through the nose for the services of foreign media practitioners of questionable distinction. There is no doubt that the guilty politicians can do with some counsel. In all the cases in which media advisers are contracted for damage limitation, the injuries are self-inflicted. Still, the politicians conveniently forget that even after the injuries precipitated by their recklessness are healed, the scars remain. To save themselves from avoidable palpitation, and to protect the rest of society from the consequences of their wilder excesses, politicians will do well to embrace propriety and sobriety in every circumstance. They should carefully lick their lips themselves, to obviate the contingency of the harmattan doing the licking for them, and leaving behind wide, painful cracks that foreign experts cannot mend, despite their greedy collection of the nation’s patrimony. Iloegbunam (iloegbunam@hotmail) sent this piece from Cincinnati, United States.
Posted on: Mon, 21 Jul 2014 04:35:55 +0000
Trending Topics
© 2015