Twitter: @farooqkperogi Read below a sample of reactions to my last week’s column . I am a political public relations professiona...
Twitter: @farooqkperogi
Read below a sample of reactions
to my last week’s column.
I am a political public relations professional in Nigeria. While I
agree with most of your submissions, I disagree with others. You said those of
us who are “quick to dismiss Nigerian politicians’ newfound fascination with
American political consulting firms in this year’s election as the product of
an inferiority complex” are being “simplistic.” I think you’re being unkind to
some of us. While it is true that many of my colleagues understand their role
as attack dogs of politicians, there are some of us who have recognized that
political public relations is about creating goodwill for clients, not always attacking
opponents. But the politicians we work for want us to attack their opponents,
hurl the most vulgar insults you can come up with in rejoinders to negative
articles about them. Trying to convince them to use kind words in response to
negative stories or articles will cost you your job; they will get someone else
who will attack, deride, disgrace, and even lie against opponents. As you
rightly said, such an abusive approach to public relations only pleases the
politician and those who passionately support him. It can never win new hearts
and minds.
Our politicians allow American public political consulting firms to
practice scientific public relations because they feel inferior before
Americans. If my firm were to take the exact PR proposal that AKPD Message and
Media and the Potomac Square Group took to APC and PDP respectively, they will
reject it. So it’s not simplistic at all to say that Nigerian politicians’
fascination with American political consulting firms is a result of inferiority
complex.
Abdullahi Musa (not real name
not to cause offence to my clients)
I love the way you tactfully responded to that ignorant rejoinder to
your beautiful and insightful column on dumbo Sambo. That was classy. I thought
you would deploy your powerful pen (or is it keyboard) to crush the idiot.
Having said that, I am shocked that Daily
Trust would publish such an ill-informed personal attack on one of its most
outstanding columnists. The paper’s editors know you’re not Nupe, that you’re
not a “grammar journalist,” that your Notes from Atlanta column, which started
as Notes from Louisiana, preceded your Politics of Grammar column in Sunday
Trust by six years, that your grammar column is one of the, if not the, most popular column in the Trust
stables, and that you’ve been writing sizzling political commentaries in your Weekly Trust column for years, yet they
allowed an article that said you’re just now publishing political commentaries
because you want political appointment from APC to be published. Haba!
The writer is clearly as dumb as dumbo Sambo and Jonathan or is, to use
the expression of one of your readers, part of the “confederacy of dunces” that
the Jonathan/Sambo regime represents. The writer also wanted to divert
attention from Sambo’s embarrassing inability to recite Fatiha by talking about
your so-called “Nupe-accented prayers.” Well, first, those of us who have been
reading you unfailingly for over one decade know you are not Nupe; we know you
consistently say you’re Baatonu from Borgu in Kwara State. But even if you’re
Nupe, so what? What is “Nupe-accented prayers”? The dullard has certainly never
heard you speak. How does he know your accent? In any case, in several of your
past articles, you have said your father was an Arabic teacher and that you
learned to read Arabic before going to Western schools. Although I don’t know
you and have never heard you speak, it isn’t difficult to imagine you being
“accentless” (if such a word exists) in your prayers. But that’s even by the
way. The writer’s ultimate goal was to cause a friction between Nupes and
Hausa-Fulani. Fortunately, no one took the bait. It’s sad that VP Sambo’s
aides, in defending their boss’ divisive statement about Muslims and
Christians, sought to create another division between northern Muslims. Can
these idiots stop this divide-and-rule nonsense already? If this is public
relations, I want no part of it.
Sabi’u Umar
Certainly, the professional foreign PR firms will do a better job
although I don't know if the poor-quality PR in Nigeria should be blamed on
professional local firms or on the use of non-professionals like Abati, Okupe
and Fani-Kayode. The point you made about crudeness is accurate because it
seems that people like Fani-Kayode and Okupe got appointed by this government
because they did well in the crudeness department under Obasanjo. However, one
strange thing I've observed about Nigeria is that what I dismiss as crude is
often what sells very well. I was told that producers in Nollywood make more
"crude" films (with lots of adult tantrums, exaggerated display of
emotion and witch-craft) because they actually sell better. Also, I have
labeled the messages of some politicians in Nigeria as crude only to be forced
to admit that the messages resonate with large segments of the population.
Raji Bello
Thank you Dr. Kperogi for this very educative piece. I'm a fan of the
Roman politician Cicero, having read not only his real-life history, but also
fictionalized accounts of Roman society in which Cicero featured prominently. On
the point about the crudeness of Nigerian politicians and their henchmen, no
doubt, Okupe, Abati and Fani-Kayode all owe their current appointments to the
crudeness they manifested in times past. I remember Fani-Kayode, the crudest of
the three, engaging in verbal fights with civil rights activists and even
clerics opposed to Obasanjo's third term agenda during 2005-2006. Fani-Kayode,
who was the presidential spokesman, used abusive language and threats of
violence against everyone opposed to his boss, so much that former US Asst
Secretary of State Mike Cohen once compared him to Tariq Azeez, Saddam
Hussein's information minister.
Yet, we must also remember a country called Nigeria where politicians
behaved in a more mature manner than what we have today. When Buhari contested
against Obasanjo in 2003, and against Yar'adua in 2007, neither NTA nor AIT
aired the distasteful anti-Buhari propaganda that they now broadcast on a daily
basis. That means the crude politics we see today owes more to a difference in
attitude between Obasanjo's and Jonathan's governments than the intrinsic
crudeness of ordinary Nigerians as Raji seems to believe. The damage the
Jonathan government has caused Nigeria is indeed beyond measure, but I’m
consoled with the fact that it will soon end, even if the ill-effects will last
for generations to come.
Nura Alkali
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