One PR Stunt Too Many for Her Honourable
It’s been chronicled times without number on the pages of print media and other media, but her honourable seems unperturbed. From the inception, when the President Umaru Musa Yar’dua-led government appointed Prof (Mrs) Dora Akunyili, the erstwhile Director General (DG) of NAFDAC as minister, not a few people spoke out against it. It could be unequivocally submitted that though the Prof had performed excellently well as the DG of NAFDAC, her appointment as the Minister of Information and Communications might turn out to be an antithesis of her good performance at the food and drugs agency.
Undaunted, like a gallant soldier that she truly was at the agency, she seems to have taken squarely the perennial hydra-headed challenges of Ministry Of Information And Communications. Before her, Chukwuemeka Chikelu, Frank Nweke Jnr and John Odey, all honourable Ministers, led the ministry at different times and all worked on one form of rebranding Nigeria or the other.
The painful aspect of these efforts is that successive leadership of the ministry succeeded in rubbishing whatever structure, if it can be so called, that the predecessor had in place.
In this wise, Akunyili is no exception. “The Heart of Africa Project” became an apt interpretation for the age-old “throwing out the baby with the bath water”. She invented a new “Re-branding Nigeria” campaign to replace the “Heart of Africa project” that was running before her assumption of office. And what have we seen? Your guess may be as good as mine: Motions with little to show for it.
In some instances, the signs of success are so ominous that it becomes a daunting task to determine the impact of the communications or stunt on the populace or external target audience.
As is usual with PR stunts, an ill advised or mismanaged stunt can be detrimental to the overall objective or wellbeing of a project. The Minister of Information and Communications’ penultimate week’s effort at spinning off a great PR boost for the government through Enrique Amundell, the Venezuelan Ambassador to Nigeria, is a misadventure in PR management. But for the country at large, I think it is the tonic needed in building some level of integrity and self confidence. These ordinarily should be the focal point of the government’s popular “7-point Agenda.”
Akunyili in her usual audacious character and gait would have challenged the Ambassador, “I want you to use your good offices to send a message across to your people that Nigeria is a goldmine for genuine investors. We want them to come and invest just as other investors are doing in the telecoms sectors.”
A national daily reported that the minister told the ambassador that President Umaru Yar’adua’s administration was working hard to transform the nation through the 7-point agenda and vision 2020.
True or false as that may sound, Amundell did not mince words as many others before him have done while on courtesy visit to the minister. Candidly, he advised the government, through the minister, to learn from the experience of Venezuela by making its refineries work. His words: “In Venezuela, since 1999 we’ve never had a raise in fuel price. We only pay $1.02 to fill the tank of a car. What I pay for with N12000 here (Nigeria) in Venezuela, I will pay N400.
For the ambassador, what is happening is simple. If you don’t control the industry, your development will be in the hands of foreigners. You have to have your own country; the oil is your country’s own.
Right or wrong, some people tend to worry about what sort of car the Ambassador rides that he has to cough out N12000 to fuel? While not trying to establish the veracity of this claim, the fact however remains that the government of this nation has left too much of the Nigerian economy to the whims and caprices of the foreign powers. That is why, he could not avail the nation of candid advice or a true and genuine appraisal of the situation.
The minister has the right to selective perception and the capacity to select what she hears and reacts to. But if truth must be told, this is a once in a live time strategic advise coming pro-bono, which could determine a change of fortune and wellbeing for Nigerian.
Your PR effort would thrive better and yield better ROI if they are based on truth, otherwise the phony claims and unrealized dreams will continue to be your albatross.
Truth, they say, is always bitter. I think the ambassador meant well for Nigerians.
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