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In Search Of Image Crisis Free Politics By Stephen C. Onuoha chibunnam@yahoo.com I stumbled into Sir. Jossy Nkwocha’s thought provoking article of Friday, January 28, 2005 in ‘This Day’ newspaper titled “Image Crisis in PDP”, months after the article was published. After reading the article, what immediately crossed my mind was that ‘this article could not have come at a later time than then’. And as a public relations practitioner, author and above all, Knight of St. Christopher, Sir. Nkwocha must have felt that he could no longer watched the PDP’s dragging to the mud, his cherished profession before he put the saddle on the right horse. Indeed, Sir. Nkwocha’s concern and disappointments at PDP’s image burden as well as his angst on the poor public perception of the ruling party’s inadequacies characterized by lack of vision and mission is quite understandable. However, as much as I plead not to be seen as joining issues with Sir. Nkwocha, a senior colleague, let me, with all modesty, venture to comment on PDP’s negative image and perception and how the NIPR, Sir. Nkwocha’s professional body shares from this malady. I know many would, after reading this article, end up calling it a case of ‘dog eat dog’. Nevertheless, I venture to contribute on the article because it posed as a double edge sword by raising some fundamental puzzles bothering on the image crisis bedeviling the PDP and by extension, indicting the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations (NIPR), (Sir. Nkwocha’s professional body) for playing ‘knife of blunt edge’ all this while. With all modesty, Sir. Nkwocha need to be commended that at a time public relations was being overlooked and dragged to disrepute, he was bold enough to cry out and used the article to analyze the dangers of applying public relations only in the breach. With due respect, let Sir. Nkwocha and by extension, the NIPR be told that the article was long anticipated before it was written. And that, had the article been written earlier, and probably with others of the type, who knows, the PDP would all that while, have been saved from all the shambles and debacles that finally landed them on the present sport of the winds and the waves. I mean, for an elected Chairman, who supposed to be in control of his party to have been treated the way Chief Audu Ogbe was treated shows that all along, the man was only in office while the President has all the power. Obviously, the PDP has been on the crossroad and members at each other’s throat since the last election. Talk of the Anambra State imbroglio and finally, the Plateau State brouhaha. Yet public relations experts know that the most vital assets in which politicians ought to guard jealously are their intangible assets, i.e. good image and reputation, maintaining and sustaining goodwill and mutual understanding and not the other way. In fact, these assets (intangible) worth more than “Ghana-Must-Go formula”. On the area of ‘playing knife of blunt edge’, it might not be out of place to say that considering the time Sir Nkwocha’s article was written, public relations practitioners deserve reprehension for exhibiting lack of commitment in the total management of the nation’s image all the years. Base on this premise, the article could be viewed as never served any positive benefit to Chief Ogbe, former PDP Chairman and the man the article was directed to, because he had already found himself in the President’s ‘catch-22’ before that article was published? I believe many people would reason along my line and wondered whether Sir. Nkwocha and the NIPR ever existed all the while that the PDP has been somersaulting from one image pillar to the other crisis post. Yet public relations practitioners have all these while watched as the winds and snows of politics continued to blew and engulfed some of the PDP states and their notable bigwigs. Unfortunately, these politicians were having field days patronizing the services of phony P.R. neophyte and interlopers who are roaring every where and charlatanizing themselves as know-all merchants. But as Sir Nkwocha has called the first shot on the splotching PDP impasse, one hopes that it will throw greater challenges to other P.R. practitioners to be alive to their profession, especially the elder practitioners who can influence the high caliber politicians. Only then will the task and vision of changing our present chequered and rancorous political landscape for which Sir. Nkwocha is preaching be made. Also, it will to a great extent, help to transform our democracy from nascent to full and fledging one and also educate them on the relationship between political responsibility and national stability. After all, politicians are no professionals hence they are not tutored in the act of crisis management and image building which are the rudiment of liberal politicking. All they know is to heat up the polity and maneuver their ways to victory at all costs. Let us hope and pray that Sir. Nkwocha’s article will sensitize the politicians especially the PDP to recognize the role of public relations in politics by articulating and critically examining the issues raised as they would assist them in differentiating it from propaganda and bribery. On the other hand, it is hoped that the P.R. practitioners would wake up from their present dormant posture and see the nation’s political project as the responsibility of all, if Nigeria is to move forward. Finally, it is my believe that the NIPR will henceforth cease being onlookers in the Nigerian political project but active functionaries and not in their present passive mood of disinterested passengers in a bulekaja bus. It really saddens that the NIPR that supposedly are the custodians of image building and human relations management are, six years of democracy, just beginning to talk about it, because they have abandoned their social responsibility function to summersaulters, even while the nation is burning. Indeed, the body has exhibited lack of commitment and indifference in the management of the nation’s image. In any case, it is not too late for them to find their bearings on the myriads of challenges the present dispensation poses on them. No matter how violent and expensive it seems to be, people could at least give advice on how to better it, so long the advice is within the ambits of the law of the land. And there is no other time the professionals could come out and reposition the PDP and its bad reputation in the entire polity than now. But for this tall dream to materialize, action must begin now. No doubt, for the image of a complex party like the PDP to be positively laundered, this can only be accomplished by erudite practitioners in the act of image and reputation building and this of course, is never lacking in the NIPR camp. Though they appear inequipped and unprepared as far as the challenges ahead are concerned, all that is needed is for them to be proactive and participate in issues of corporate Nigeria instead of drifting first only to react later.
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