Nigeria suffers from internal and external perception issues. Internally, we have never fully recovered from the annulment of the June 12, 1993 election. We were a nation before that annulment. We became a geographical location after that incident. Now, we need to become one nation under God again.
Whereas the military used force since that challenge and failed to make us one nation under the gun, successive civilian administrations have not been sufficiently aware that there was even an issue.
And so characters, like secessionists in the Southeast, militants in the South-south, insurgents in the Northeast, and bandits in the Northwest and North-central, have been able to bamboozle their captive audiences with varying degrees of anti-Nigerian brainwashing. Only the Southwest of Nigeria has maintained a constant level of pro-Nigerian sentiment since the return to civil governance on May 29, 1999.
Externally, we have allowed a cartel of a few unscrupulous Nigerians to earn us an undeserved reputation for drugs, fraud and finance scams.
Essentially, these mean that we have a perception problem left to fester too long.
And you solve perception problems, especially the confirmation bias that some Nigerians have of believing lies about Nigeria floated by unpatriotic media, like Arise News and Sahara reporters, without evidence, by understanding the human mind.
Humans do things for emotional reasons and justify them using logic. Therefore, you must capitalise on that to benefit Nigeria and the government in power. Now, I will go into the nitty gritty of how this can be achieved.
Nigeria’s most effective minister of information to date was Chief Tony Mommoh. Why? Because he understood communication. Every month, he wrote a ‘Letter To My Countrymen’. It was detailed and written in everyday English and sometimes in pidgin. And most importantly, it contained what the administration he served had done.
You see, effective public relations is a function of projecting your positives. Nature abhors a vacuum. If you don’t project your positives, your opposition will overwhelm the narratives with your negatives.
Tinubu’s Information Minister, Idris Mohammed, gets this. And his use of regular, personally signed statements has gained some of the media’s buy-in. But now, he and other information managers within the administration could consider reviving Tony Mommoh’s strategy. Especially now that social media has democratised communications and extended real-time reach.
A weekly post on their social media platforms, tentatively titled, ‘Seven Great Things Happening in Nigeria This Week’ will be ideal. Seize control of the narrative and infuse positivism into the polity and the confirmation bias for negative news about Nigeria will gradually cease.
Make your writing style engaging. Be honest. Use street lingo occasionally, like, no gree for anybody, las las, no capping, etc. Do not write above the heads of the Nigerian people, or try to wow them with highfalutin language. Your objective is to communicate, not to impress. Make this about proper agenda, not propaganda. Make it about national pride, not about the APC. Add pictorial and video evidence every other time.
And when you do, Nigerians will begin looking forward to the next episode of your weekly letter, post, broadcast or podcast. And when that happens, there will be a mind shift in our country. People will start anticipating good news, not bad. And once you get to that level, positivism will trickle down to the masses, down to the grassroots, and no propaganda on Earth will be able to turn the public against their government, barring any traumatic experience like the June 12, 1993 election annulment.
If the information managers of this government remember nothing from what I have written, let them at least remember this: Effective rebranding is achieved by a projection of positive things that are already happening.
