Chris Ngwodo wrote:....... If ever an administration was defined by self-inflicted public relations disasters, then it is surely this one. It took roughly two weeks after the abduction of the Chibok girls and the attention of foreign politicians, celebrities and journalists for President Goodluck Jonathan to issue a response via a lackluster media chat. It took about a month for him to set up a “fact-finding committee” to investigate what actually happened in Chibok (because there was still evidently some disbelief that the abduction really took place). It took a further month for this useless committee to make the “astounding” discovery that the abduction had actually happened – essentially reiterating what the world had known for two months. And now three months into the captivity of the Chibok girls, it has taken the visit of Malala Yousafzai, the 17 year-old Pakistani education campaigner to inspire the President to meet with the grieving parents of the kidnapped girls. In the past three months, the Bring back our girls protesters in Abuja have been harassed, assaulted, abused, accused of being proxies of the opposition, and treated as subversives, all for simply ensuring that the Chibok girls are not forgotten as they surely would have been without international attention. We saw government officials, clearly dazzled by the brave Malala’s erudition and intelligence, shamelessly making the most of the photo op – even those who have libeled and slandered the Bring Back Our Girls protesters – not realizing that the missing Chibok girls are all potential Malalas. Incidentally, Jonathan has never actually met the protesters in his own backyard but speedily granted Malala audience. It may be a mixture of racial inferiority complex, self-loathing, and self-contempt. Perhaps, it really does take foreign activists, especially the light-skinned variety, to get our governments to recognize the bleeding obvious or to get political leaders to demonstrate elementary compassion. (Perhaps, we should start working on bringing Angelina Jolie or Desmond Tutu or Princess Kate to build on Malala’s work and see this campaign through.) It even took Gordon Browns prodding to do something about the basic necessity of protecting schools even though the terrorists have long targeted schools and have been slaughtering teachers and students. No foreign PR firm, no matter how expensively retained, can repair the chronically self-inflicted reputational damage to which this administration is addicted. No amount of op-ed pieces in foreign newspapers will change the impressions it has created. The president can begin by sacking some of his media people. There is more to doing PR than shouting down Isha Sesay on CNN or embarrassing the country on BBC or renting fake demonstrators to intimidate legitimate and peaceful protesters. Indeed, retaining a foreign PR firm at such expense is already an indictment of the president’s media handlers just as setting up that “fact-finding committee” to find out what happened in Chibok was effectively a vote of no confidence in the military, the security services and the police. Sacking those functionaries responsible for the president’s (and Nigeria’s) terrible PR won’t solve the whole problem. But since the president isn’t expected to sack himself, we will just have to begin with what can be done in the now. Thank you, Malala. #Bringbackourgirls#
Posted on: Wed, 16 Jul 2014 11:54:25 +0000
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