By Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D. Twitter: @farooqkperogi President Muhammadu Buhari obviously has enormous emotional investment in his pe...
By Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.
Twitter: @farooqkperogi
President Muhammadu Buhari obviously has enormous emotional
investment in his perception in the media— broadly conceived. His first
appointments upon being sworn in as president were media appointments. At the
last count, he has at least six media advisers and assistants.
He has a Special Adviser on Media and Publicity (Femi
Adesina), a Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity (Malam Garba Shehu),
a Special Assistant on Digital and New Media (Tolu Ogunlesi), a Personal
Assistant on Broadcast Media (Shaaban Ibrahim Sharada), and a Personal
Assistant on New Media (Bashir Ahmad). Last week, he added to the list by
appointing another Personal Assistant on Social Media by the name of Lauretta
Onochie. That has got to be a world record!
I teach and research
new media for a living, and know for a fact that "social media" is
just a component, the most significant component these days, of "new
media," which is synonymous with "digital" or
"emerging" media.
So it's not bad enough that the president has two people
"advising" and "specially assisting" him on “media and
publicity” and another person “specially assisting” him on “broadcast media”; he also
now has three people "specially" and "personally"
"assisting" him on exactly the same thing: new/digital/social media!
Trust Buhari’s gaggle of low-wattage, self-appointed social
media defenders to justify even the weirdest and wildest policies his
administration churns out. They said new media is vast and varied, and deserves
to have a multiplicity of people to effectively handle it for the president.
The PA on New Media, they say, monitors Twitter for the president, and that the
new PA on Social Media will devote exclusive attention to Facebook on behalf of
the president!
Well, how about the SA on Digital and New Media? What does
he do? Perhaps he supervises—or will
supervise— both PAs. And, maybe, the SA and SSA on Media and Publicity, though
active participants on Twitter and Facebook dialogic exchanges, don’t count
since they aren’t digital natives, as we call people who came of age in the
last two decades or so.
I have a better idea for the president since he wants to
cover all his media planks. You see, “emerging media” is a modern, trendy
synonym for “new media” and “digital media.” Another personal assistant should
be appointed and called “Personal Assistant to the President on Emerging
Media.” If people scoff at the appointment, as they are doing at the latest
one, the president or his unpaid social media automatons can justify it by
saying the president needs someone to monitor emergent, newfangled social media
platforms like Instagram and Snapchat to which a new generation of Nigerians is
now migrating. What better person to do that than a PA on “Emerging Media”?
But there is an even better idea. The president should
appoint another PA called “Personal Assistant to the President on Declining
Media.” You see, there are social media platforms like MySpace that are
declining but that are significant nonetheless. Although only a minuscule
percentage of Nigerians congregate in these declining social media platforms,
our president can’t afford to ignore them completely because they could bounce
back. Even if they don’t, who cares?
While we are at it, he needs another PA (no, an SSA
actually) on International Media, given all the unflattering publicity he’s
been getting lately from the international press. The Economist, which endorsed him in 2015, has suddenly turned against
him. Several UK and US newspapers now pooh-pooh him. One cheeky UK newspaper
called the Daily Mail had the nerve to remind its readers in a May 8, 2016 edition that Buhari, who said he took a
bank loan to buy his nomination form and added, for effect, that he “pitied”
himself, and who said he had “less than 30 million naira” in his account after
being sworn in as president, “sends his daughter to a £26,000-a-year English
school.”
So the president does need an SSA on International Media to
take on these “racist” (apologies to Lai Mohammed) international media that
think they can expose our president’s double standards without consequences.
Seriously, though, President Buhari’s media appointments
remind me of the lowest watermark of the Second Republic when former President
Shagari appointed several ministers for the same ministry and differentiated
them by crafty prepositions. One ministry could have a “minister of,” a
“minister for,” and a “minister on.”
This is frankly disquieting on so many levels. But I have
read people justify these ridiculous appointments by saying although former
President Jonathan had only three media aides, he did worse in other
appointments. This contrast is wrong for many reasons. Is Jonathan now the
baseline by which to measure Buhari's performance? Haven't we (those of us who
supported Buhari's emergence, that is) agreed that Jonathan was an irredeemable
disaster? What does it say of Buhari (who promised "change") that he
is now being compared with Jonathan?
What does it say
about Buhari that he is now perpetually being compared and contrasted with the
lowest common denominators in governance? The other day his supporters defended
his unprecedented decision to take his wife and daughters to the UN General
Assembly by citing the example of irascible Belarusian dictator Alexander
Lukashenko who took his then 11-year-old son (that he is grooming to take over
from him) to the UN. Do the president’s defenders realize that they are admitting
that their idol has failed if the only defense they can give of his policies is
that some tyrant or universally incompetent leader somewhere sometime did them
too?
Additionally, Buhari was sold to Nigerians as an uncommonly
modest and austere man who would lead by example, who would crack down on
corruption, who would eliminate waste, etc. Does the appointment of six aides
to do basically the same job square with that image? I leave that to your
judgment.
Finally, this is a time of excruciating recession when
millions vegetate in the nadir of suffering and hopelessness and when the
government has the cheek to exhort distraught and economically disaffiliated
people to "sacrifice" and let "change” begin with a deliberately
amorphous, ill-defined “me."
The big question is: Does the “me” exclude the president?
But the bigger question is: Is the president aware of the English saying that
“Too many cooks spoil the broth”? Well, let’s see how the president’s six media
cooks will make his media perception broth.
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