As long-time followers of this column know, “Matters miscellaneous” is the rubric under which it tries in short takes and with broad strokes to catch up on the glut of occurrences, lest some people feel ignored.
I was mightily relieved that President Goodluck Jonathan chose not to go to Ado-Ekiti to help rouse the PDP faithful and mobilise them behind their candidate in next month’s governorship election. If the President who could not visit Chibok on a mission of sympathy and solidarity with the parents and relations of the more than 200 abducted school girls and communities in the area traumatised by Boko Haram terror were to headline a political rally in Ado-Ekiti, he would have brought upon his own head something far worse than the domestic and international sandbagging he has already suffered – nothing less, to be sure, than maledictions of the blood-curdling kind.
Dr Jonathan and his advisers got it right this time.
Fayose is putting a bright face on it, but I hear that, deep down, he is sorely disappointed. There will not be, at least for now, an infusion of the Federal Might, plus the planeload of cash that he was counting on to animate his ho-hum campaign.
Many Ekiti residents are distressed too, I gather. They had been counting on Dr Jonathan to demonstrate up-close, for their benefit, the intricate azonto dance steps he had performed so splendidly in Kano the other day at a rally to welcome back under the PDP umbrella some prodigals who had migrated to the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC). Residents of Ekiti will now have to wait for another opportunity.
There were also those who were expecting that First Lady Dame Patience would also be on hand to enliven proceedings with the captivating routine that has endeared her like nothing else these past weeks to the global television and social audiences.
I have bad news for Ekiti residents who might still be looking forward to a re-enactment of the bullying and the wailing seen and heard across the world: It won’t happen. Herself the Dame doesn’t do re-enactments. She is always striving for something different, fresh, more riveting.
But there is no guarantee that the première will be staged in Ekiti.
In light of the Jonathan administration’s exceedingly maladroit handling of the international fallout from the Chibok abductions, I found myself wondering whether Nigeria has a foreign minister. Surely there must be such an official, I reasoned. But I found I could not put a name to the title.
So, I looked it up.
And sure enough, there is indeed such an official, and he is by no means an obscure personage. He is Aminu Wali. He is more politician than career diplomat, but having served as Nigeria’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations and before then as the country’s ambassador to China, he surely must have along the way garnered considerable skill in international crisis management.
So, how come he was allowed to go missing in the handling of the Chibok fallout?
Why also was the much-accomplished Professor Viola Onwuliri, Minister of State (1) for Foreign Affairs, shut out of the matter? And where was Minister of Foreign Affairs (II) Dr Nurudeen Mohammed while all the fumbling was going on?
Why was the entire Ministry of Foreign Affairs missing in action while Nigeria and its leadership were being savaged daily in news networks across the world?
It was left to Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala to fill in the gap, as if her double-barelled designation as Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister for the Economy, to say nothing of her playing host at the on-going Abuja World Economic Forum on Africa, was not enough burden. It has to be said to her credit that she did a commendable job under the circumstances.
When it mattered most, the Minister of Information, Labaran Maku, also went missing. First, he agreed to be interviewed by CNN’s Christiane Amanpour. Then, he did not show up. Did he duck, or was he held up by more pressing matters of state?
In whatever case, he must have learned from his few encounters with the international news media that mouthing slogans and throwing tantrums at high decibels is not the best way of conducting government business or winning friends for one’s course.
Within several hours of a crisis breaking in the United States, the President appears before the nation on television, flanked by the officials charged with handling the matter. He makes a brief statement, then yields the podium to the officials to brief the public about what is developing and what is being done. The President and the officials take a few questions, and then depart to face the crisis at hand. Periodic updates follow.
If the Chibok abductions had happened in the United States, President Barack Obama would most certainly nave appeared on national television flanked by the Defence Secretary, the FBI Director, the National Security Adviser and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in full military regalia.
That spectacle communicates strength and resolve, if not control. It reassures the American people that even if the authorities are not “on top of the situation,” to employ a locution that has become highly discredited in these parts, they are grappling with it hands-on.
It may well be that the Minister of Defence and the National Security Adviser and the military top brass were at work behind the scenes devising strategies for freeing the Chibok abductees from their diabolical captors, without the benefit of television cameras. But in this age of what the Americans call “optics,” it is not enough to be doing something; one must be seen doing it.
In the event, it was as if they too went missing when it mattered most that they be seen in action.
Finally, some self-indictment, at least in so far as it relates to my constituency and my calling: the Nigerian news media.
Chibok, and indeed Boko Haram’s mindless campaign of murder and mayhem, was a domestic story, our story. And yet some of the most insightful reporting across the print and electronic media, and the best film footage, have come from the foreign media. They should have been quoting us as sources and for background. Instead, we have been quoting them, sometimes without the nice sense of discrimination the situation calls for.
In a sense, therefore, it can be said that the Nigerian news media largely went missing over Chibok.
