Sokoto and sokoto trouser

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 Nigerians 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 north-
western 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 Roadsyndrome 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 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.
Without meaning to embarrass anyone, 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, apologised
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, politician 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
CHUKS ILOEGBUNAM wrote from Cincinnati,
United States.