What the heck is going on here? Is Buhari about to prove some Nigerians wrong too soon? He has dropped the sticky title of ‘General’, something that resonates with Nigerians in negative timbre. He played smart by appointing two accomplished editors and seasoned journalists to manage his reputation. The appointment of Femi Adesina and Garba Shehu as his spin doctors has further placed President Muhammadu Buhari above his predecessors in the eyes of the Nigerian media. Whereas past Nigerian presidents had a penchant of appointing publicists and sundry media gate-crashers as media aides, Buhari took a different path. He chose two crested members of the Nigerian Guild of Editors (NGE), the highest professional body of journalists in Nigeria.
Instructively, both Adesina and Shehu had been Presidents of the Guild with Adesina the extant President until his appointment. Shehu, President of the NGE about 15 years ago, is now a Fellow of the Guild. Buhari has followed the style of contemporary American Presidents who pitch their media aides from the core American press, not just any political jobber who could cobble words together. Political communication has its peculiar dialectics, nuances and flavour. It is even more so in an emerging democracy like Nigeria with its foibles and gross shortcomings.
For a President like Buhari with a history of despotism, the choice of media managers is critical in repositioning a yesteryears tyrant as a 21st Century, digital age democrat. Whoever advised Buhari to make his choice of media men did him much service. And it seems to be paying off. Members of the State House Press Corps are already celebrating what they termed as a broken jinx. Buhari dropped the usual but utterly needless Presidential airs which blighted the era of his predecessors to meet journalists covering his day-to day activities. It was a no-holds-barred meeting devoid of the presence of mean-looking swashbuckling security personnel. It was a copy from the style book of the White House where journalists covering the US seat of power are given permissible access to the President and where information is not hoarded, well not as it’s incubated and branded ‘official secret’ in Nigeria.
Notwithstanding, White House reporters still complain. They want more time with and access to the US President; they want the President’s media spokesmen to be given a little more liberty to freely express themselves in the course of briefing the journalists; they want to travel more with the US President and be given ample time to ask questions of him on burning issues.
Politico Magazine, a US-based influential political journal in 2014 conducted a survey among the White House Press Corps. It asked reporters covering the White House (regarded as the most prestigious beat any journalist could cover in the world) what they would like changed to ease their job worries. Some were damn forthright: they want White House officials to be more forthcoming with information. They said it is easier to get information about happenings in the White House from Capitol Hill, the Pentagon or from highbrow politicians than from relevant officials of the White House. They also complained about the ‘front row’ syndrome wherein only a particular set of journalists are allowed to ask questions at briefings.
Now, that is America, the wonder Union which prides itself as the chief promoter of civil liberties. But there is a sense in which the White House press relations could be said to be very liberal. It is not so in the UK, Germany and France, for instance, where reporters are more often than not fed with readouts. Executive stonewalling often by key operators of Government Houses poses its own danger to information management. It gives room for reporters to speculate, often running to enemy territories to extract information that could just as well be provided by the Presidential media aides. The dark side of this scenario is that such information tends to be skewed, slanted and tweaked in favour of the opposition.
This is a landmine the duo of Adesina and Shehu must avoid. They have started well by connecting the President to the day-to-day reporters who are capable of sinking him or adding more wind to his wings. For real, Buhari needs all the help he could garner from traditional media to counter the acrid reportage he would get from social media and the growing community of online news merchants some of which are nothing but watering holes for lazy journalism.
Buhari made the right choice in Adesina and Shehu. Ordinarily, a President with such powerful influential media aides need not worry but that is only in normal times. We live in abnormal times, in the days of sword and dagger, in the era of new media flourishing in a brave new world. They must steel their hearts for the inevitable turbulence in the media space. Adesina, a total gentleman and fine writer has never walked this path. He will be shocked first by the level of fictitious journalism prevalent in the country and then by the monstrous mercantilism that currently barbs the soul of the Nigerian media.
But kudos to Buhari for putting round pegs in round holes against the tide of exalting mediocrity above meritocracy; a disease most suffered by his predecessor, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan. Jonathan had a weak and dysfunctional media team which lacked coherence, strategy and commitment at critical times. Buhari seems to have learnt from his predecessor’s dour media outing.
In modern political communication, you must learn to stoop to conquer, never take your eyes off the ball and never hold in contempt members of the Fourth Estate of the Realm, no matter how niggling some may be. May the duo of Adesina and Shehu not get to the point where ‘deception becomes all too conventional’ to use the expression of Ben Fritz and Brendan Nyhan, two great writers that have profoundly exposed how President George Bush manipulated the US media to push through his war agenda. It is a tough job but you can make it easier by getting more media-friendly than your predecessors.
Author: KEN UGBECHIE
