Critical national problems Jonathan’s PR fund could have solved
IN silence, her eyes raved. They uttered words that had no measure. Sitting on a corner bench in her shanty porch, she cut a perfect picture for a “save-the-needy” campaign. But Gladys Nenghe spotted no hope. She gave up on that two months before she turned 21in March 2012. That was after it became apparent to her that despite graduating cum laude from high school, she would not be able to proceed to a university of her dream. Nenghe had to forgo her ambition to study History and International Relations at the Lagos State University (LASU) because her father couldn’t foot her bills anymore. “I barely made it through secondary school,” she said.
Stoically, she counted her losses and cast them behind her. But just when she managed to secure employment as a sales girl for an Ikeja, Lagos-based air freshener producer, Nenghe became the victim of an unavoidable and long-drawn out battle of will and wit between the Federal Government and the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC). Sitting pretty on the bench in her filthy porch, Nenghe cursed the day the strike action began. According to the 23-year old, the strike action cost her too much, particularly her employment as guerilla marketer for the local air freshener producer.
“I prayed fervently that we are allowed to go back to work. It didn’t matter what the government and NLC decided. Me…I needed to make money for my schooling. I needed money to survive. I have no mother to assist me and my father can do nothing. He is an old man. He was a civil servant in Benue State before he was sacked. Now, I have three brothers and a father depending on me. The strike ruined us. We had nothing to eat,” disclosed Nenghe, adding that the hopes of her entire family currently rests on a paltry N240 she had been holding on to since she scrounged it off a childhood friend.
Cynthia Duru’s predicament also offers food for thought. Duru, a graduate of Industrial and Human Relations and Masters Degree holder in Business Administration (MBA) thought she had prepared herself well to compete in the country’s budding information technology industry. For five years, she studied hard. But after graduating in February 2011, Duru discovered that even those desirable qualifications mean little in Nigeria’s congested labour market.
Duru struggled to keep faith, sending a total of 58 résumés to different organisations but she hasn’t got a single offer. Today, she applies makeup on newlywed brides for a fee, but that industry itself has recently become congested with the massive influx of secondary school dropouts and undergraduates seeking to augment their allowances and unemployed graduates seeking to make ends meet. Predictably, Duru’s earnings can barely sustain her hence she still squats with her elder brother in his one room apartment in Ogba-Aguda, Lagos.
Miles from Nenghe and Duru’s peculiar problems, in faraway Kirfi Local Government, Bauchi State, Rabia Muhammadu, 30, struggles to feed her five children daily. In her drifting voice and tired gaze resonates the heartfelt wail of her 1,000-year-old village, Jagalwa. Lost behind a blur of withered flora and copious sand dunes, Muhammadu and over 2, 000 residents of Jagalwa struggle against intimidating odds every day.
“We dwell in destitution and abject neglect,” said Muhammadu Danladi, 50, the deputy Jooro (deputy chief) of Jagalwa. There are no industries, small and medium scale enterprises in the area. Hence, the major means of livelihood for the entire community is subsistence farming. Jagalwa lacks electricity, pipe-borne water, good roads and a functional health centre. The houses are built with mud and bamboo and planks are used as beams for support.
Due to government’s inability to provide basic amenities, the community, comprising “over 2, 000 people,” depend on a single well for their use. “Whenever it rains, we manage to get water from puddles that collect in a few potholes along the road. But we have to share the water in the potholes and the well with her cattle. Now that there are no puddles to draw from, the entire community depends on this single well (he said pointing to the well). The water is dirty but we are forced to drink it like that,” said Danladi, 50.
Danladi complained bitterly of successive governments’ insensitivity to their plight. According to him, the government does not care what happens to them. “It’s like we do not exist to them (the government)…this is very bad. This is not what they promised us. They come here to campaign and seek our votes at election time; they promise to give us electricity, fertilizer, hospitals, good roads, pipe borne water and they promise to build schools for our children. It’s all lies. They come here to lie every time. No sooner had they got our votes than they forget us completely,” lamented Danladi.
Farther from the local scenes of impoverishment and abject neglect, Ahmadu Bubaji, 74, grapples with grief he does not know how to make sense of. The resonance is bloodcurdling and replete with anguish and rage several months old. Bubaji’s misery is unbounded: the 74-year old lost his wife, Aminatu thus suffering a brutal and sudden end to a marriage of 52 years Lima, their only daughter and two grandkids in a bloody attack carried out by Boko Haram in Bama. This occurred one month after he received news of his son’s death in the Nigerian Joint Task Force (JTF)’s April 16 offensive against the Boko Haram sect in Baga, Kukawa Local Government Area of Borno State.
Umar, his son, was gunned to death as the JTF sought to rout suspected Boko Haram sect members at Baga, in a campaign that left no fewer than 185 people dead. Precisely 2, 275 buildings were razed to the ground while 65 motorcycles and 40 cars were burnt in the attack.
While Bubaji struggled to deal with his grief, Boko Haram insurgents dislodged from their camps in Sambisa Game Reserve by the JTF issued an ultimatum to residents of his community and Gwoza Local Government Area of Borno State. “They gave us one week to vacate our homes,” said Bubaji. Consequently, he fled with his daughter-in-law, Khadija, and Idris, his surviving grandchild, across the border into Cameroun.
With thousands of their neighbours and residents of Bama, Gwoza and other neighbouring communities, they sought refuge in Mokolo. While in Mokolo, Governor Awa Fonka Augustine of Cameroon’s Far North Region visited them and urged them to leave with him for a better organised refugee settlement in Garwa.
“We had no choice but to comply,” said Bubaji. According to him, his family and 2,997 fellow refugees had constituted great strain on their host Cameroonian community and it was only a matter of time before they encountered hostilities from their hosts who struggled to accommodate them and share their very scarce resources with them.
Nenghe, Muhammadu, Danladi and Bubaji without doubt are united by a common bondthey are Nigerians on the receiving end of what Danladi describes as abject government insensitivity and neglect.
But rather than get in the trenches to find lasting and humane solutions to their plight, the Federal government, led by President Goodluck Jonathan, contracted an image-laundering deal valued at $1.2 million (about N275 million) a year to Washington, DC, United States-based public relations firm, Levick Strategic Communications. Levick accepted the deal to help manage President Jonathan’s image, which has taken a beating in recent weeks over the Nigerian leader’s poor handling of the abduction of more than 250 high school girls in Chibok, Borno State by dreaded terrorist group, Boko Haram.
Levick Strategic Communications was engaged to assist with a range of government affairs and public relations matters. The agreement is with effect from June 16, for an initial term of 12 months. According to the contract, professional fees for Levick staff will be billed at the rate of $100,000 per month (about N15,573,000).
Levick is to engage Jared Genser of Perseus Strategies, “a lawyer in the international human rights and democracy community”, to assist in the firm’s objectives “to promote transparency, democracy and the rule of law throughout Nigeria”.
The sub-contract to Genser will attract additional $25,000 per month (about N3.9million) and “will be passed through in its entirety Perseus Strategies”. Levick will bill travel-related expenses and meals to the government. “We estimate these to average $22,500.00 per professional per trip,” the firm said.
Additionally, the government will pay a percentage of the fees upfront. “It is our policy to invoice our clients a flat 4.50 per cent of monthly fees to cover these costs,” Levick said.
Fees for other services, such as paid media, video production and web development, will be borne by the government in addition to the fees for Levick staff.
“Actual long-distance or conference calling charges incurred on behalf of the client will be billed separately, at cost,” the firm demanded. The government will also bear third-party vendor expenses, such as private newswire, outsourced printing, copy jobs, and significant costs for postage and handling.
Levick is to begin work upon receipt of advance quarterly retainer and interest of 1.5 per cent will be charged on all balances outstanding over 30 days. The government also agreed to indemnify and hold Levick and its agents “harmless” with respect to any claims or actions for libel, slander, defamation, copyright infringement, idea misappropriation or invasion of privacy arising out of the firm’s consultation.
It was agreed that work would begin upon Levick’s receipt of the signed agreement and initial payment. The funds are to be sent by cheque to Levick or by wire transfer to its banker, BB&T, Washington, DC, with account number 5156166334.
Nigerians express outrage over “window dressing” PR campaign
In the wake of the President’s action, concerned segments of the citizenry have condemned the PR deal, claiming it is hardly the needed palliative to the nation’s escalating security, political and socio-economic woes.
Yomi Sanya, a Lagos-based lawyer argued that no degree of image laundering could improve perceptions about Nigeria’s incumbent leadership in the eyes of the international community. “What the government needs to do is to get serious and start addressing the country’s several maladies with the purposefulness and aggressiveness they deserve.
“That PR initiative is just another sad case of window dressing by Mr. President. He is yet to rescue the abducted girls of Chibok and he is desperate to repair his severely battered image. I will say that is simply a misplacement of priorities,” said Sanya.
Corroborating him, Segun Lawson, a civil engineer, noted: “An atmosphere of distrust has submerged the trust we initially reposed in Mr. President. And it extends beyond his office to every other public officer. We do not trust our leaders anymore. And they do absolutely nothing to correct the situation. Life is scarier today than it used to be.”
A hashtag #SomeoneTellLevick is currently trending in Nigeria in response to the image laundering deal between the Washington, DC-based public relations firm and President Goodluck Jonathan. Some of the hashtag critics of the deal accuse the American PR firm of accepting “blood money” to help burnish the image of a Nigerian ruler who appears absentminded and disconnected in the face of a deteriorating security situation in his country.
True, the situation in the country presents a grim portrait of cynicism and hopelessness. And nothing accentuates this despondent state more than the scandalous episode of March 15, 2014; the incident involving thousands of traumatised and unemployed youths locked in a deathly struggle for the Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) jobs. The NIS had advertised vacancies for 4,550 entry level officer positions but in response, 6.5 million unemployed graduates applied for the jobs each paying the N1, 000 fee non-refundable fee for the application form.
Apparently swooning from the financial implication of registering applicants that exceed the number of advertised positions, the NIS proceeded to conduct a 35-minute aptitude test for half a million shortlisted job seekers, outdoor, in large city venues across the country, all in one day.
By the time the pandemonium was over, 25 applicants had been trampled to death and thousands more sustained grievous injuries. The nation watched in horror as the catastrophe evolved with many parents and guardians watching helplessly as their children and relatives were forced to engage in a humiliating scramble for survival. Besides losing their dignity as humans, all of the applicants also lost their non-refundable application fees.
In their reaction to the incident, the Minister of Interior and officials of the NIS blamed the multitude for flouting stipulated test centre procedures.
That singular incident emphasised the country’s unemployment quandary. However, to understand the miseries of the Nigerian youth, it helps to understand the social realities of the world in which they are maturing into adults. Nigeria has arguably one of the richest and largest natural resource deposits in the world. Government and the structure of government however, constitute a challenge to development. For instance, the total cost of servicing government and public officers has continued to exceed 70 per cent of annual budget in the last 12 years while just little is left to service capital project or human development.
Even so, the Nigerian leadership confidently announced a new gross domestic product (GDP) of $510 billion on April 6, 2014, up from the GDP of $290 billion, and thus becoming the largest economy in Africa after overtaking South Africa’s GDP of $370 billion. Nigeria’s output has reportedly been experiencing a continual expansion of about 6.5 per cent yearly over the past decade with a current population of 165 million, compared to South Africa with 3 per cent average annual growth rate and a population of 51 million.
The new GDP figure was obtained by changing the base year from 1990 to 2013 for calculating its output to reflect newly emerged sectors of the economy such as telecoms, information technology, music, online sales, airlines, and film production. The figure instantly shrank Nigeria’s debt-to-GDP ratio from 19 per cent for 2012 to 11 per cent for 2013.
Income per head for Nigerian citizen as per 2011 index is $1,423, that is GDP $235.92 billion divided by 165 million population. That of Singapore is $63,740 income per head with GDP $318.7 billion and population 5 million; Chile $14,623 with GDP $248.59 billion and 17 million population; Brazil $12,653 income per head with 196 million population and GDP $2.48 trillion.
However, news about the country’s rising economic prosperity gives little cause for excitement amongst the citizenry. Ngozi Philomena Okor, a retired school teacher, argued: “What use are the figures they are quoting when the citizenry can neither feel nor enjoy the dividends of such reality? I think our government has taken us for granted. That is why they try to deceive us with such spurious figures.”
Recent United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) states that Nigeria is not one of the African countries recording remarkable improvement in its human development index. The agency in its 2013 Human Development Index (HDI) Report listed Angola, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Liberia, Mali, Mozambique, Niger, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Tanzania among the African countries that made the greatest strides in HDI improvement since 2000. According to the report, Nigeria was ranked amongst countries with low development index at 153 out of 186 countries that were ranked.
Life expectancy in Nigeria is placed at 52 years while other health indicators reveal that only 1.9 per cent of the nation’s budget is expended on health and 68.0 per cent of Nigerians are stated to be living below $1.25 daily. Adult illiteracy rate is 61.3 per cent yet the report contradicts the reported growth in the Nigerian economy, with the country recording a GDP growth rate of 6.99 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2012.
At the backdrop of this grim situation, the nation has to contend with persistent power outage. Of about 35,000 MW energy needed to light homes and power industry in the country, Nigeria generated less than 10 percent at 3,463MW up till March 20, 2014 when it dropped to the previous abysmal level of 2,500MW or seven per cent. The government however, blamed the situation on “a significant drop in gas supply and a number of fire accidents along the Benin-Sapele highway.”
Despite this grim picture, the country’s economy has been described as robust and resilient.
At the backdrop of this socio-economic situation, the Nigerian youth are witness to the
Federal Government’s outrageous budget of a whooping N992.57 million on food and general catering services for President Goodluck Jonathan and Vice President Namadi Sambo in 2012.
Out of the N4.749 trillion budget presented by Jonathan to lawmakers at the twilight of 2011, N18.34 billion was budgeted for the state house and from that, the cost of foodstuffs, catering supplies and kitchen equipment for the President, his deputy and their offices was estimated to cost the nation N992.57 million, approximately N1 billion.
This infuriated the nation’s teeming youth and drove them to the streets in a protest march tagged the “Occupy Nigeria” movement. Although the protest which was meant to object President Goodluck Jonathan’s removal of fuel subsidy as well as perceived profligacy of his administration occurred with maximum turnout and pockets of skirmishes that led to death of few youths in the hands of the police across the country, the situation, contrary to widespread apprehension, didn’t degenerate further than that. The “Occupy Nigeria” protest is over, but the youth have discovered more effective means of venting their frustrations: they simply pick up a gun and explosive device.
Problems the N275 million PR money could have solved
Instead of spending such money on what Ruqqayah Amona, an economist and grassroots microfinance bank administrator identify as “window dressing,” President Jonathan should have invested such money in resolving some of the country’s infrastructural and economic woes argued Amona. And she might not be too far from the truth. This is because the situation in wastelands like Jagalwa presents an eyesore. For instance, the only school in the community, Jagalwa Primary School, comprises just two classrooms and there are no desks or chairs in the classes save three rubber mats spread in one of the classes for pupils to sit and write on. Headmaster of the school, Zakka Husseini, claims that the school has a population of 85 pupils although the pupils that could be sighted at the time of The Nation’s visit barely numbered 16. En route the school, Husseini was sighted chasing after pupils that were fleeing from school although he maintained that the number of pupils in school was scanty because majority of the pupils had gone to visit an ailing classmate. Husseini doubles as the schools headmaster, science and mathematics teacher and he claimed that three other teachers frequently visited to assist in teaching the students.
An interesting feature of the school, however, is that even though there is no electricity in the area, the two classes making up Jagalwa Primary School are fitted with ceiling fans and the floors are covered with expensive terrazzo. The headmaster could not identify clearly the classes making up the school and despite his hearty efforts to make excuses for the glaring lack characteristic of the school, he could not do much to explain away the school’s abject neglect by the government.
And at a time that the country requires N56 trillion, according to Gimba Ya’u Kumo, Managing Director of the Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria (FMBN), to reverse the nation’s housing deficit of 18 million housing units, such money could have been invested in bolstering President Jonathan’s touted drive to provide affordable housing to the homeless and low income earners.
Housing experts argue that for those in the low income bracket, it is possible to build a house on a lean budget of between N2.5 million and N3 million. Rasheed Amoo, an electrical/construction engineer and Managing Director of Hardalt Technical Ventures, Papalanto, Ogun State, advised that aspiring house owners with lean budgets should look beyond the major city areas to acquire land for their homes. According to him, with N3million, you can build a modest home for yourself and your family on the city outskirts.
The inherent advantages in diverting such money to finance low cost housing schemes or building hostels for the homeless in such locations are inestimable, argued Amoo. According to the former Project Engineer of Dunlop Nigeria Plc, if Mr. President had invested such money in ameliorating the nation’s housing woes, it would go a long way in resolving the nation’s housing deficit and homelessness.
Several other infrastructural lapses across the country including the preponderance of bad roads, chronic electricity outages and inadequate healthcare have been identified as major areas deserving urgent government attention. “I do not understand why Mr. President prefers to pay N275 million to an American PR agency to create a favourable image for him at home and abroad. Why would he do that? If he could devote such money to supporting the improvement of ailing sectors of the country, the citizens will be happy with him. We will think favourably of him and he would need no expatriate PR firm to launder his severely battered image. Good leadership begets good image at home and abroad…It’s as simple as that,” said Tope Olubode, a school teacher.
