WHEN WILL ABUJA BAN THE INTERNET?

Regardless of what anybody may say, I like Femi Adesina. I believe he is a good man. Femi, as General Editor of the Sun once interviewed me. He did a professional job. If Femi tells you he will call you, he sure will call you. If he says "good morning", you do not need to check your watch. Since becoming Aso Rock spokesman, I have been to Femi's home where I met his wife and children. They were exceedingly nice to me.

I know Lai Mohammed too. While he was the spokesperson of the opposition party in Nigeria, I was a great admirer of Lai Mohammed. He was crisp, sharp and always on point. He made sense. Since becoming Minister of the Federal Republic, Alhaji Lai Mohammed has hosted me many-many times in his Abuja office. In his office, I have repeatedly shared boiled corn and coconut with his staff all of whom have treated me like a dear friend. The minister once honoured me with an official visit at COSON House, accompanied by practically all the Directors in his ministry.  

Please do not listen to anyone who tells you that either Femi Adesina or Lai Mohammed is a fool. They are not. That is why these days I worry about these two people I consider my friends. I watch them every day as they twist and turn and try very hard to sell goods that very few want to buy. Their principal, who gave them their job, says things that none of them would say and it becomes their call to make sense out of that which does not make much sense to sensible people.   

I once had a discussion with Femi on the very changed nature of the media and how information is now received. Today, practically everyone with a smart phone is a writer and a publisher. Before now, there was one very important guy between the writer and the publisher. He was the king of the newsroom. He was called 'Editor'. His job was to make sure that whatever is dished to the public was checked with a tooth comb and was as much as possible factual. There had to be balance in the story too to make sure that all the critical sides are heard.

Every great newspaper or news station is built on its credibility. It is the job of the editor to protect that credibility and ask the critical questions: What? Who? Where? How? Why?

There was also a time when no matter where you were, you would be heading home not to miss the 9 0'Clock news on NTA. The other important news of the day was the Radio Nigeria news at 7 am and 4 pm.

I have many friends who work at both NTA and FRCN but if the truth be told, there are many people who believe that the days of NTA and FRCN are gone. I do not know how many people still depend on these stations for reliable news which is why I wonder if the huge amount spent to maintain these behemoths which have served their purpose cannot be deployed more meaningfully elsewhere.

Fact is that very few people get their news these days from any newspaper. Very few people watch TV except Telemundo, Zee World, African Magic, HipTV, SuperSport, etc. Now, there is more news than you can ever consume on WhatsApp. For those who are stuck on TV News, the station must be sassy and seen to be independent - CNN, BBC, Aljazeera or Sky. At home, it is Channels or Arise. Everyone else is struggling.  

Go to any social gathering these days and everybody is typing on his little machine, 'snapping' photos, posting on Facebook, Instagram or WhatsApp or 'chatting' or tweeting. Everyone is spreading information for good or for bad with all the biases that human beings have. Everybody has a camera and there are no rules and anyone can be as nasty as he wants, as raw as he chooses and as hateful as he decides to be. That is the new world and we are not going back to the old.

I am sure Femi remembers our discussion. The fulcrum of our conversation was this: Times have changed. The infrastructure for managing government information must change. That infrastructure must be designed, the people to operate it well trained and adequately resourced. This is the moment of the 24-hour news cycle when the news either breaks live or goes viral a few minutes after the event. I had said to him that the days of the odd press release sent to the newspapers may also be gone. The news manager goes where the people are: Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Snapchat, Tik Tok, Twitter, etc. Indeed, the language of the news has also changed.

Once on a visit to OBJ at Aso Rock Villa, I met the late great Stanley Macebuh who was then Special Assistant for something to the President. Stanley told me that there was so much he did not know that he learnt at Aso Rock. It appears as Rueben Abati once intoned that there is a certain spirit at Aso Rock that makes people associated with the place speak strange languages. I have tried but I do not understand the languages spoken lately from Aso Rock on the absolute necessity for cattle to continue to maraud across the country. I do not understand the inexplicable ban on Twitter, making nonsense of what remains of our international image. Do Femi and Lai agree with this strange Language? Did any of them coin the term, 'dot in a circle'?   

When I hear that the government banned Twitter in Nigeria because enemies of the government have deployed the platform to make Nigeria ungovernable, I am amazed. Did the government believe that it would not have enemies? Did the government not realize that there are people who would work tirelessly for it to fail?  That is the way it is in every democracy. A modern government must be ready to match its adversaries with intelligence everywhere including social media. Afterall, the government has far more resources than anyone else.

The truth is that because most of the people in our government still live in the past, do not quite grasp the velocity of the change around them and have not adapted, the government has been badly 'out-tweeted', 'out face-booked', 'out Instagramed', 'out-whatsapped', outmaneuvered and outsmarted. In reaction, rather than look in the mirror and see the enemy in front of it, our dear government is dazed and flaying its arms, banning everything and everybody, threatening to prosecute millions of Nigerians who have not committed any offence known to our laws. Somebody is even suggesting the banning of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Snapchat, Tik Tok, etc.      

Won't it be easier to ban the Internet altogether because without it you cannot do Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Snapchat, Tik Tok, Twitter, internet banking, internet fraud and all these many stupid things enemies are using to make Nigeria ungovernable and to give our dear government many sleepless nights?!  

See you next week.

THE POWER OF WORDS AND THE BUHARI PRESIDENCY

I am a sucker for words masterfully put together. I believe that words used the right way can move mountains. They can make men fight like hell in war. The right words can bring peace where strife reigns. The architecture of change is words. The building is action.

I am one of those who believe that Nigerians have had to endure the excruciating pain we are suffering today because we have a president who has very little skills in the use of words.

President Buhari was elected practically, without saying anything to anybody. An avalanche of people like Adams Oshiomhole, Festus Keyamo, Bola Tinubu and co., hugged the microphones at campaign events and spoke for Buhari and made promises on behalf of Buhari. Please check, Buhari personally promised Nigerians very little. With hindsight, Nigerians never really had a chance to measure Buhari.

Masterfully, the minders of Buhari scattered the presidential debates organized by BON during the elections. Across the world, the political debate has become a critical platform for assessing politicians and their abilities, their communication skills, their temperaments, their mastery of the issues and their readiness for the job. That is why nations do not joke with debates and nobody gets elected without a debate. Words matter.

On the debate stage, Buhari would have been on his own. There would have been no Garba Shehu, no Femi Adesina or Lai Mohammed to tell him what to say. There would have been no press release to tell us what he means. We would have heard him unfiltered and left to make up our minds.

If you think that Donald Trump lost the last U.S. presidential election on the day of voting on November 3, 2020, then you were not quite following the events. Joe Biden won the Presidency fair and square on September 29 on the debate stage in Cleveland Ohio.

Words matter. Just imagine how many people have been moved by the immortal words of Martin Luther King Jnr in his 'I have a dream' speech. What of the unforgettable 'Ask not what your country can do for you' speech of John F. Kennedy? Without 'Yes we can' would Barack Obama, the young man of Kenyan ancestry, have become President of the most powerful nation on earth?

As a Nigerian, I keep scratching my head in search of the memorable or inspirational words of our leaders. Of course, the lack of appreciation of the use of words by those who purport to lead us, to paint their picture of tomorrow and to inspire us to dream big dreams, has something to do with the level of our underdevelopment. President Buhari's inability to lift us up with his words and heal our wounds at this time of distress, is a sore in the heart of many Nigerians. Words do matter.

In the last one week, US President, Joe Biden had a press conference almost every day in Europe. At his last Press Conference, just as he was about to leave for the airport, he snapped at a question asked by 29 years old CNN Whitehouse correspondent, Kaitlan Collins. When he got to the airport, he refused to board "Airforce 1" until he had gone to the foot of the aircraft where the journalists were gathered and publicly apologised to Kaitlan. Words matter.

I am sure everyone remembers that during his first inauguration, President Buhari said these words: 'I belong to everybody and I belong to nobody'. The words practically caught fire. They were repeated over and over across the country. Those nine words conveyed deep meanings of which a major book could be written. I had hoped thereafter to hear from our President such deep words that can exalt Nigerians and elevate the desire of Nigerians, man and woman, to do the work necessary to uplift our nation.

 

Why is it important? No general fights a war alone. He must inspire his commanders and foot soldiers to feel what he feels, take on the enemy with gusto and lay down their lives if it becomes necessary. A good army is like an orchestra. All the instruments are in tune and every instrumentalist follows the slightest gesture of the conductor. My gut feeling is that Nigeria is at war but the foot soldiers necessary to win the war are not engaged. Our Commander-in- Chief has not properly articulated the war so Nigerians can fight with him. So, President Buhari and his handful of people are fighting the war alone. I do not know how they are going to win. I know not where it has happened before. No conductor plays a symphony all alone.

 

Recently, our President who has very little experience talking to us, spoke. The recent Arise News interview of our President has been very revealing of the mindset of the man who makes life and death decisions on our behalf. Did he calm our nerves, or did he pour more fuel on the fire burning across the nation? Words like "the dot in a circle" matter.

 

Words and the way they are used matter at every level of leadership, at home, at work, in religion, in politics, everywhere. The greatest salesmen are those who know how to use words. The greatest preachers are those who know how to use words and definitely, the greatest leaders.

 

Words wrongly used can set off a fire like they did in Rwanda. 'I am not a magician' once credited to Dr Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu, former Minister of State for Petroleum caught fire across the country. I am not sure that it caught the kind of fire Dr Kachikwu would have wished. How many remember the words credited to the late Umaru Dikko: 'Nigerians are not picking food from the dustbin' or 'telephone is not for the poor' allegedly uttered by the former Senate President, David Mark? Such regrettable words hit the people below the belt at their most vulnerable. By the way, I once watched Dr Kachikwu take on some very difficult questions on CNN after a failed OPEC meeting. I was proud.

 

As I watched Barrack Obama on TV speak with uplifting panache at the 2004 convention of the Democratic party in Boston Massachusetts at which John Kerry was nominated candidate for the US presidency, I had no doubt that I was watching history unfold. Obama has since been elected a US Senator. He has twice been elected President of the United States. John Kerry at whose Presidential convention the magic of Obama became clear, served Obama as Secretary of State. Kerry never became President. The power of words!

I am in anguish wondering whether our President truly understands the power of words.

See you next week.