Nigeria’s Cock and Bull Tales Need Fixing
Nigeria this season is characterized by a particular type of adventure story with credibility punctures.
During electioneering, you hear so many sugar-coated stories because in politics candidates, no matter how bad, have to be sold to the electorate. That is why “buyers” are warned to beware.
Last week, the national media space was awash with stories with no connecting dots–so rampant to warrant interrogation. Even in their love for exaggeration, Nigerians could not easily swallow much of the numerous servings. These stranger-than-fiction tales by moonlight still did not meet the standards of non-fiction.
Senator Stella Oduah from Anambra State started it all in October when she defected from Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, to All Progressives Congress, APC, calling us critics of President Muhammad Buhari “blind and ungrateful”. Buhari did well for Igboland, she insisted. She also commended the president for the level of infrastructure executed by his administration there. Recall that in 2017, Sen. Oduah was in the All Progressives Grand Alliance, APGA, from where she went to PDP and now APC.
If her story resonated well with the electorate, she would have been able to deliver her area to APC in the recent (November 6) gubernatorial election in her home state. She lost woefully.
Perhaps, as a corollary to Senator Oduah’s abusive labeling of and the poor strategy of saying what is not until it becomes, President Buhari in France last week told international investors a story of Nigeria looking like where everything is coming back to normal to his administration’s credit.
Just two days after returning from Saudi Arabia, the President jetted out to Glasgow, Scotland, this time to attend the climate change conference code-named COP26. From there, he went to France to address the investors and said, “The Nigerian economy remains bright, with sustained investments in infrastructure, particularly ICT, that favour global business and a friendly regulatory environment that supports Foreign Direct Investments (FDI).
“I can assure you that our administration is on the right path to achieving multi-sectoral progress. We have revitalized the economy by increasing investments in capacity building, health, infrastructure, women’s empowerment, climate change, and food security.
“Today, these actions are yielding self-employment, expanding our human resource pool and strengthening our national productivity for sustainable development.’’
Most Nigerians at the meeting except, perhaps, those who crafted the lies in the speech must have been wondering if the President was talking about Rwanda where Paul Kagame is doing wonders.
The President’s story could not connect to the realities on the ground in Nigeria that they know. They could not fill the loophole. How can they when they know the unemployment figure and the havoc the social malaise was causing in the security sector? How can they know that in the country in question being robbed in such an economic Eldorado, their currency is almost of a tissue paper value when compared to international currencies? How can they when they know as a fact that shipping goods from China to Nigeria costs about ₦900,000 for a 40-foot container while moving the same container from the Lagos seaport to Trade Fair Complex, also in Lagos, costs ₦700,000 and if you are going to South-East Nigeria it will cost ₦1.2 million. Why? Blame it on the twin problems of corruption and obvious decay in infrastructure like roads. But the President’s speech painted a fake picture of an idyllic and sublime country in an economic paradise. I had thought, hearing the President, that we were taught to tell our doctor all the truth so that he can know where to start treating our ailment.
But why are we even amazed, did that great French leader Charles de Gaulle not say that since a politician never believed what he said, he was quite surprised to be taken by his words?
Besides the President’s larger-than-life story, the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) also had two curious stories on trending crimes, the botched invasion of Justice Mary Odili’s home in Abuja and the missing Vanguard reporter Tordue Salem who was last seen on October 13, 2021.
The mixup in the Odili saga, since it broke out, had left Nigerians with a series of posers. One of them is whether a court warrant could so easily be obtained and the team raised to search a home of a Supreme Court Justice without the federal government’s involvement?
The frantic denials by the initial prime suspects in the saga, the Minister of Justice and Attorney-General of the Federation, Mallam Abubakar Malami, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, and the Department of State Security, DSS, did not blot out the suspicion in the public space of a possible devious work from the government.
But last week the efficient NPF spokesman, Frank Mba, opened a fresh angle to the story. He paraded 14 suspects allegedly connected with the aborted invasion. The team that also included a journalist was said to have been led to the ill-fated operation by a fake police officer Lawrence Ajojo.
As beautiful as Mba’s story sounded, holes were still picked by some discerning minds, especially as the ring leader claimed he works as a consultant to the Minister of Justice. The Minister’s arrogant denial that good brains and well-qualified heads are abundant for the Minister to pick from as consultant, not a fake police officer did not resonate with a lot of people, particularly as it never addressed the issue or disentangled him from the saga. In other climes, the AGF would have thrown in the towel with apologies whether he was aware or not so long as such huge public embarrassment emanated from his office.
Dirty and underhand jobs as invading the home of a Supreme Court Justice cannot be for the PhD holders or the well-endowed brains as the Minister would have us to believe. The police may have done a good job trying to unravel the matter but some gaps are still yawning in their story. This fake police and now fake consultant has a history which if police go further can establish more facts that will help enrich the story. Unless they have all already and are keeping it to themselves as their way of playing along.
Faking means a lot to Nigerians in this dispensation bearing in mind that it was fake security agents that attacked the home of the then-Senate President and it was also fake security operatives that stole the mace of the eighth Senate.
Mba’s story as it is may not survive the scrutiny of a good lawyer when the chips are down.
The other police story which also has holes is on the missing reporter whose body was recovered by the police a month after the reporter’s sudden disappearance. According to the police, one driver was arrested and he confessed that his vehicle knocked Salem down on October 13, 2021, but he ran away because he thought he was an armed robber. The story did not connect logically.
For his body to be intact after one month means that it was taken to a hospital mortuary the same day. By who? Which hospital? How did the police eventually determine that the body was the reporter’s because the family was reported to have said they were not invited to identify his corpse? Nigerians need to know more about this case particularly about the so-called hit-and-run driver. An independent autopsy being demanded by the Nigeria Union of Journalists, NUJ, is appropriate here.
Another curious story with a lot of loopholes also is about the drama with lawyers in court during the trial of the IPOB leader, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu. The American lawyer to Kanu, one Bruce Fein claimed lawyers were locked out of the courtroom because the system didn’t want to see him there. This narration cannot be stretched further than this because the case is sub judice but it does not stop discerning minds from picking some holes in the entire saga. If anybody is afraid of an Oyibo lawyer, why? If not, why should lawyers and journalists be locked out of such a very high-profile, public interest case that is at the point of grounding the economy of the entire region of the country?
A critical review of all the narratives above shows that gaps exist to be filled for proper connection with the people. If these fissures are not filled, the gullible public will have no choice but to be buying into the X theory of the stories indicating that the last of it is yet to be heard. After all, there is nothing like a complete story, every story is infinite.
It’s the journalist in me that informed this week’s conversation, especially bearing in mind that almost always, all information particularly from politicians and Nigerian security agencies need to be thoroughly scrutinized as they often turn out incomplete, sometimes false, mendacious, and misleading.
In this discourse, therefore, from Senator Oduah to our beloved President in France, to NPF and the Attorney-General of the Federation are imaginatively constructed stories that are not resonating with their audience. Such tales turn discerning minds to the ‘blind and ungrateful’ not for picking holes in the story but, perhaps, for taking politicians and their acts seriously.
May God help us.
