Information mismanagement by the Presidency

Information mismanagement by the Presidency

The way the Presidency mishandled media reports last week about the health condition of Mrs. Patience Jonathan has exposed the Federal Government to public ridicule. Last week, the media gave speculative accounts of the reasons for Patience Jonathan’s overseas trip.
A section of newspapers reported that the president’s wife was in a German hospital where she had undergone surgery to repair a broken appendicitis. Another report suggested Mrs. Jonathan was in Germany to receive treatment for food poisoning that she contacted during a trip to Dubai. And yet a third report said she was originally scheduled to be flown to a specialist hospital in Italy.
All three reports pointed to Mrs. Jonathan’s ill health but all three reports were promptly denied by spokespersons for the Presidency, who insisted that Mrs. Jonathan was resting overseas. Ayo Osinlu, the Special Assistant on Media to Mrs. Jonathan, initially told journalists that the First Lady and permanent secretary in the Bayelsa State Government had been compelled to take a rest overseas, owing to her hectic schedule in August. However, as journalists requested for more authentic information about the purpose of Mrs Jonathan’s overseas trip and the country of her visit, the special assistant became uptight.
He was not going to face further inquisition by the media. His voice rose and fell and his tone took an angry dimension. He told a group of journalists: “Nobody is going to put a gun on my head and force me to talk when I have no fresh information.” The use of a metaphor more appropriate for a man, facing public execution was unnecessary. Information management is a major challenge to experienced and inexperienced mind managers at the Presidency.
Media advisers and special assistants in Aso Rock, in their role as information fire fighters, have to grapple regularly with how to deny or explain rumours that have been published in the media in a context that will make their version of the information meaningful and believable to the public.
In this age of electronic media, social media (including mainstream media) constitute a thorn in the flesh of elected politicians and public office holders, particularly those who seek to withhold information from the public.
A former premier of the state of Queensland in Australia, Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen, once exasperated by media coverage of his government, suggested a bizarre way to curb the power of the media. He said: “The greatest thing that could happen in the state and the nation is when we get rid of the media. Then we would live in peace and tranquillity and no one would know anything.” Unfortunately, Sir Joh forgot that the media represented an institution of society.
They cannot just disappear. While premiers, prime ministers and presidents come and go, while politicians live and die, the media will remain and survive the good times and the bad times. Whenever unofficial news (particularly news of the negative genre) about the president or any member of his family or his ministers breaks in the public sphere, information managers in Aso Rock are confronted with how to fight the metaphorical bushfire on several fronts.
They sweat profusely while they figure out how to respond to the embarrassing leak. In trying to suppress uncomfortable news, media advisers and special assistants become jumpy either because they lack requisite skills on how to deal with damaging rumour or because they are scared of the impact of the rumour on the image of their bosses. In response, they threaten the propagators of rumour with the “Holy Ghost fire”. In a marketplace of ideas, particularly in a market dominated by a sceptical community, getting the public to accept official lines of explanation is nearly impossible. Nigerians are generally cynical of their political leaders.
Political leaders are viewed with suspicion not only because of their sustained record of telling lies but also because of their failure to fulfil election promises. In an environment in which the citizens are distrustful of their leaders, official explanations are usually dismissed as propaganda.
This is the scenario in which information managers at the Presidency, who engage in hysterical attempts to deny leaked news reports are seen as fighting a lost battle. Worst still, the Presidency is known to be averse to proactive release of official information in the public sphere. There are four predictable ways through which media advisers and special assistants in Nigeria respond to unofficial information and rumour about their bosses. The first response is to deny the report outright or to offer an alternative that is at odds with the truth.
The second is to challenge the credibility of the sources of the information. The third is to contest the veracity and soundness of the information. The fourth response is to wring their hands in denial of knowledge of the information. If media advisers and special assistants at the Presidency are upset about spiralling rumours about the health condition of Mrs. Jonathan or her location overseas, they must take some of the responsibility for mismanaging the situation.
Rumours about Mrs. Jonathan’s health condition worsened because someone failed to clear the fog of uncertainty about the woman’s overseas trip and the reason for that trip. There are questions awaiting official and credible answers. What is the president’s wife doing overseas? Is she on holidays?
If so, was the vacation endorsed by the Bayelsa State, who appointed her as a permanent secretary in the state public service? If Mrs. Jonathan is unwell, what kind of illness is she suffering from? Is Mrs. Jonathan suffering from food poisoning, as widely reported by the media? If true, how long is she expected to stay in an overseas medical facility? In which country and in which medical clinic or hospital is she receiving medical treatment? Media advisers and special assistants in Aso Rock should feed the public with convincing information about the purpose of Mrs. Jonathan’s overseas trip.
If she took ill, the Presidency mismanaged the situation by failing to release that information swiftly. Mrs Jonathan is human. As a human being, she is susceptible to occasional bouts of ill health.
There is nothing in human nature that says our First Lady cannot fall ill. There is too much secrecy in the way political leaders do things in Nigeria. During Yar’Adua’s ill health in 2009, the man was so irritated about leaked media reports, concerning his ill health that some staff of the Presidency were compulsorily administered with official oath of secrecy. It was a useless exercise because the oath did not prevent further leaks. In the absence of official and credible information about Mrs. Jonathan, the public has decided to pose questions and invent answers to the same questions the Presidency is unable to deal with.
Whenever Mrs. Jonathan returns to resume her exalted seat as permanent secretary in Bayelsa State, the president must review promptly how media advisers and special assistants mishandled the news report. That review must determine who is authorised to speak whenever Jonathan or his wife travels overseas on official or unofficial duty. A number of lessons must be learnt from this experience. The Presidency must treat Nigerians with a modicum of respect. We are not a cohort of kindergarten kids whom the government can feed inaccurate information clearly designed to mislead. There is nothing sacred about the health of the president’s wife. The president’s wife is a public figure, at least, in her capacity as a permanent secretary. A public figure enjoys limited privacy.
If Mrs. Jonathan is in poor health, it is in public interest to inform the nation. A culture of secrecy has undermined rather than enhanced the image of the government. Rumour thrives when official sources of information are sealed or corrupted. In his book – Africa’s Media, Democracy and the Politics of Belonging (Zed Books, 2005) — sociologist and Cameroonian author, Francis Nyamnjoh, explains the reasons rumours thrive in his home country, as they do in Nigeria. According to Nyamnjoh, “rumour flourishes as a legitimate source of information for the marginalised majority.
Thus rumour…, is like the voice of the voiceless, seeking to challenge passivity and the oppressive discourse of officialdom”. Nyamnjoh argues that “rumour targets those in the limelight. A person must be perceived as having a certain standing to be earmarked for comments, rumours and calumny”. Patience Jonathan, as permanent secretary and the president’s wife, fits that description. Nyamnjoh argues that excessive censorship of official sources of information in Cameroon (and Nigeria too) has led to the emergence of rumour as a vibrant alternative source of news.
The mind managers in Aso Rock should read Nyamnjoh’s book. Ceaseless rumours about Mrs. Jonathan’s overseas trip suggest that Nigerians are trying to find answers to questions about their First Lady. In the absence of dependable information, people have decided to invent outstanding rumours to satisfy their appetite for official information. In Nigeria’s public sphere, the slogan is that if the Presidency cannot answer public questions, the public will make up its mind and disseminate the kind of information that fits the pictures in our heads. That is one problem you have to deal with when you allow rumour to evolve