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Re-Branding Nigeria: Putting The Cart Before The Horse?

Shettima Aji Ali, PhD

No doubt many Nigerians are today frustrated by the way Nigeria appears to be drifting along. Many years have now passed by making most young Nigerians today totally unaware that things were not this bad only few decades ago. I should not be mistaken for saying that the early years of Nigeria was in any way a bed of roses. Relatively speaking however, there was peace and security in the country; one could start a journey from Maiduguri to Kano by mid-night without any fear of robbers. If any exigency occurred the traveller could stop and rest in the nearest village along the road. The traveller could buy petrol for his car even at two o’clock in the morning from petrol stations that stayed open twenty four hours. Electricity supply was also relatively stable; we woke up to warm our bathing water with electric heater, or iron our cloth and could reliably keep our fresh meat, soft drinks etc in our fridges. Kerosene was never a problem to source so most young couples and single persons cooked their food with stoves. The senior civil servants and company executives had gas cookers. All these were not out of reach for anybody that made little commitment to save and acquire them. In fact many companies even gave out fridges and gas and electric cookers on-hire purchase to anybody whose income could accommodate the repayment. Nigerians were very hard working, proud and contented farmers, artisans, civil servants, and merchants, in fact in whatever endeavour they found themselves in, dedicated to seeking excellence, living honourably and fully appreciating dignity in hard work.

The educational sector early in our history as a nation could not be said to be anything but basic. Nevertheless, even our public schools, run by our native authorities, and those run by each of the expansive twelve states were well equipped and gave qualitative education. Schools were by and large affordable; for example due to the foresight of earlier leaders like Chief Awolowo in the South west and Sir Ahmadu Bello in the North, they made sure that Schools were affordable enough for mass education, and in the north, schools were not only tuition free but students in the secondary schools and teachers colleges were supported with food, transport money, free uniform and textbook. The classrooms were- equipped, and school libraries had good books and reference materials, including encyclopaedias. Teachers were committed and the government provided village schools teachers with free accommodation. Students were disciplined and respectful. There was no spectre of cultism and drug abuse. Even though we had few universities and polytechnics then, they were up to the task in training Nigerians. Our universities and polytechnics gave credible degrees and diplomas recognised globally.

Although the health sector was in a rudimentary stage, the general hospitals and dispensaries were clean and the environments were remarkably beautiful and serene. The hospitals and dispensaries were functional with relatively well maintained equipment for x- rays, Surgery etc. The pharmacy deportments were well stocked with basic drugs. The nation knew that healthy human resource is necessary for economic prosperity.

In our general human endeavours, we respected discipline, honesty and hard work. We celebrated honesty and hard work not by dishing out questionable awards but by deeper community recognition, due respect, relying on the celebrated persons for advice, consultation on dispute resolution and guidance. Such people were never put on the scale of wealth for recognition. Their places on the high table (or at the centre of the gathering) is assured not by how much funds they contributed for the occasion or to the chief, or, how well dressed they appear at functions. They were recognized for wisdom, honesty, handwork: in most communities if not all, the individual’s personal record of honesty is key to remaining relevant in the society. Every family toiled to make sure that shame and disgrace are not brought to the family because such tended to remain as stigma forever with the family.

The performance of the public officers may not have been totally above board but it is evident in the light of the orderliness of the operations of the civil service that there was much desire to be prudent and professional. Every decision taken was in compliance with due process and the civil service rule. Most critical decisions were taken in the best interest of the country, (community and state as the case may be). For example our leaders fought a war to Keep the nation one not because we could not have done well respectively in our various regions as units but because our leaders saw a people bound by centuries of commercial relationships and by years of colonial blending would do much better as a nation that has huge market, large and diverse natural and mineral resources and creative and resourceful people nearly unparalleled anywhere in the world. Nigerians were respected all over the world. Foreign nationals came to study in our schools and universities, and copied how we made palm oil, grew ground nut, cotton, cocoa, tapped rubber, and took varieties of our crops to develop their nations. Our doctors and aircraft pilots were sought after, so are our lawyers and judges. How we felt proud then? Nigerian professionals left Nigeria to work elsewhere in those days not because their nation was too uncomfortable and demoralising to work in but because they wanted to excel in those western nation that were far ahead of us, and one day, come back to Nigeria to assist her. How I wish we had a task for re-branding of Nigeria at that time, we would have been so proud to offer to the world an offering to behold.

Do we really need a re-branding campaign if our focus is mainly local? If our concern is in re-orienting us to change our negative habits and attitudes and the way we manage our country, have we really looked at our achievements or failure of previous efforts like War Against Indiscipline, (WAI) and MAMSER? Wouldn’t the whole effort be most appropriately the responsibility of the Social Orientation Agency? While it is essential we always re-examine our ways of doing things, is it not for the purpose of making our country a better place for living, and doing business? Can we not then say that we are trying to be an attractive country for us and for others to visit, be friends with and do business with? Is our claim that our concern for the re-branding is for domestic consumption really then tenable? Let us not deceive ourselves in the want of justification for launching an advertising melee, another season of jingles for our children to maim. If we must re-brand then our focus must include the outside world that we want to attract to our country, and be friendly to Nigerians wherever hey meet and therefore, must focus on those things that gave Nigeria bad image abroad.

To re-brand Nigeria what do I offer the outside world or even the masses of Nigerians to buy in a Nigeria brand today? When a marketing manager is given a task to re-brand an existing product that has shown significant weakness in the market, the first and right thing for him to do is to make sure he understands what was distasteful about the product that made it to fail in the market. The second and subsequent tasks then are to develop the product, assisted by good market research, to update the product with those benefits, the goodness the market is willing to accept once the product hits the market again. That is absolutely necessary to ensure the product receives the confidence desired from the buyers.

The task of Professor Dora Akunyili to re-brand Nigeria is a colossal task even with her antecedent as the head of NAFDAC. The honourable minister is no doubt a personality, a brand that is sellable any day, as a selfless, patriotic professional that did our nation proud in the area of fighting the scoundrels that made our nation home for fake and adulterated foods, drugs and chemicals. Her zeal to achieve a new positive image for Nigeria is well placed and sincerely, many humble Nigerians are with her in the quest for a re-branded Nigeria.

However, as I said earlier, we have a product Nigeria that we are re-branding today. First and foremost, if our effort is internal, then I think our task is that of instituting an effective, very transparent and incorruptible leadership. Nigerians generally are very timid and easily made to fall in line with the authority. Announce a dawn to dusk curfew tonight and you see no one on the road tomorrow and continue for the number of days desired. That is if no highly placed government officials or their children break the law. The issue is Nigerians have lived for so long with leadership that was above the law. Consequently, they have learnt how not to respect the law wholeheartedly and take cue from the bad morals and corruption of the leadership.

If our focus is eventually to make us attractive to the outside world, then what is our selling point? Certainly it is a very wrong first step to start our search for selling points by denying those Nigerian habits that helped in building the perception of the outside world about Nigeria. For example even though one can accept that it takes two to tango in perpetuating a 419 scam as the Honourable Senate President David Mark said in his speech at the launching of the re-branding programme, we cannot deny that Nigerians started the scam. Today every business transaction involving a Nigerian has to be double checked at the other end. Stiff payment requirements may be put in place to ensure that they do not fall prey to another scam. No doubt the victims in 416 scams are greedy persons and are criminals of not minor proportion. Apropos we did little in complaining to the countries of the victims to arrest them (the victims) as accomplices in theft and make them to pay for their attempts to defraud Nigeria. In the area of high level bribery, we have earned an ignominious position that hardly any international case of bribery gets revealed without mentioning Nigerian public officers being beneficiaries. Rather than investigate immediately and make public the identities of those involved, nothing has ever befallen the corruption perpetrators. At the same time rather than black listing all those companies involved in bribing Nigerians and making them to pay for defrauding Nigeria and for all damages pertaining to quality of contract executed and refund over-inflated values to Nigeria, we keep doing business as usual with them. Taking decisive position against such corrupt persons and the companies would have been a selling point for us.

One is surprised that Mrs Farida Waziri, the executive chairman of the EFCC recently said in Lagos that corruption in Nigeria is elusive. To my mind, our laws make dealing with cases of corruption to be excessively burdensome to our anti-corruption agencies. Corruption in Nigeria is brazen and we live with it in every corner today. How many public officers today that we know are living well beyond their means? How many smugglers and petroleum dealers do we live with all over the places that are living in total affluence? How many businessmen do we know that acquire properties all over the place and yet are not properly assessed for fax payments in Nigeria? How many collapsed buildings and roads do we see around decorated with the tomb stones of the companies responsible for their construction yet they remain the choice contractors for all new contracts? How many schools and hospitals in the local governments remain dilapidated, without books and drugs, yet the local government chairmen and councillors spraying naira at parties and driving the latest cars? How many different items donated for free by even international donor agencies for distribution to the poor or sick, including mosquito nets do we see being sold in the open markets? How many soldiers do we see carrying horse whips harassing innocent Nigerians despite the Chief of General Staffs’ warning to them that it is not part their uniform to be carrying whips and using them at will on innocent Nigerians? Do we excel in protection of human rights in Nigeria? How many traditional rulers award chieftaincy titles to their poor citizens even when they are committed, honest and dedicated to making their villages and towns proud? The list is unending. Corruption and indiscipline pervade our everyday life we really don’t need to look for corruption in any hidden places.

In the same vein, Nigeria today is for survival of the fittest (or should I say the wealthiest, the well connected in politics, the highly placed public officers, the military, and the police officers. Discipline and hard work is far from the mind of the people today. Even the youth are so much in competition to be rich, or have the paper qualification at all cost, the only key to plum jobs that theft, cultism and exam malpractices have become a major attraction for them. Honour to most people in Nigeria is not at stake. So we see colossal failure of public institutions entrusted to ‘experts’ to run but we never hear of the expert resigning. That is why even in the face of the chorus description of our last general elections by all international observers as a failure, followed by the various election nullifications for lack of transparency, and fundamental inadequacies, and the almost hang Supreme Court decision in the presidential election is not enough to make Professor Maurice Iwu to resign as INEC chairman. Rather we see some of our senators in spirited defence for the Professor to stay and lead us to another set of confused elections lacking in credibility. Similarly, where do we place our Central Bank officials including the governor that was not aware that the bureau de changes have not been operating in compliance with laid down rules, even as they were buying an average of $200 million weekly? Is the huge fraudulent drain on our foreign reserve allowed by the CBN not enough embarrassment for the CBN governor and his team to simply step aside honourably and be held responsible for the negligence?

Coming to the rule of law, many Nigerians still face harassment of the police, the military, the rich and the high and mighty despite the hype about rule of law in the seven point agenda jingles. Nigerians still risk beating, or languish in the very filthy police cells not fit to keep pigs in. Yes, President Yar’adua has expressed the commitment to the rule of law in the country and made some practical effort in instituting it. However, access to justice and fair hearing and benefiting from this rule of law drive has grandiosely remained the preserve of the high and mighty and the visible characters in the country. The average Nigerian can still be slapped by government operatives, and will still have to beg the operative for forgiveness from further punishment.

Making anybody believe in whatever you are telling him about yourself, you must first have created the confidence in the person even to listen to you. Though looks are by no means good indicator individual human qualities, If I looked haggard and unkempt I will certainly need three times the effort required by a neater well groomed person in receiving a welcoming response from an average person that I meet on the street. Our nation has been made to look haggard and unkempt not by outsiders but mainly by ourselves. Where is the transparency in our financial management? We wake up everyday to hear of some strange bank account of the CBN or some inflated yet not performed contacts? We hear of privatization of government institutions in which principal dramatis personae in the management of Nigeria with total insider information about the offer has acquired shares of unimaginable proportion and nobody makes a serious case of this criminal insider abuse. Today we have petrol stations receiving fuel supplies at subsidized rates for sale to the public only to be smuggled out of the country or sold to surface tank operators. Consequently, some petrol stations built over decades ago have hardly ever dispensed fuel to the public. Indeed new fuel stations spring up every day with no evidence that they would perform any better. Should we claim that the Directorate of Petroleum resources (DPR) officials performed their responsibilities credibly?

Sincerely, the question to ask are too numerous to be exhausted here. There is no secret about the ills of our society, and regrettably to be candid, the efforts at correcting the issues have so far only been half-hearted. Many well meaning Nigerians welcomed the creation of ICPC and the EFCC few years back, but were significantly disappointed with their performance so far. Especially until recently the EFCC has lost its focus and has become political instrument of selective justice in absolute disregard to rule of law. The effort to make changes to the laws to give greater autonomy to the EFCC and the ICPC and shift the burden of proof of innocence in cases of corruption to the accused is quietly resting before its death. On the other hand, the lame support to the Freedom of Information Bill both by the national assembly and the executive only tells the world that Nigeria is not ready to be part of the community of transparent nations.

The worst thing an advertisement for image laundering should contain is false information to its intended audience. Before undertaking a huge financial commitment to our re-branding effort, Nigeria must today tackle all the areas we have massive shortcoming in that makes us stand out among the bad and the ugly. We must take very bold steps to control corruption and institute rule of law. We must for example ask (in fact expect) any persons no matter how highly placed they are to step aside from their positions (e.g. senator, or governor etc.) to facilitate immediate investigation when named, for example as in the corruption revelations by Siemens and Halliburton. Equally, the problem of gross indiscipline among Nigerians must be addressed. In fact indiscipline in the average Nigerian contributes significantly to our bad image elsewhere. At any airport that Nigerians frequent abroad, we are the noisiest, the unruly and wanting to jump the queue. We don’t hesitate to dirty the environment and have complete lack of empathy in our dealings with our neighbours, fellow road users. We lack commitment and responsibility to performing our duties diligently even in the office.

What do we do so as not to have a false start in our re-branding effort? First, we must address the attitudinal issues of Nigerians to achieve any success at laundering our image. We must have a transparent, accessible, just and fair justice system which mandates compensation and official apology to whomever that suffers abuse from any of our security agents and public institutions. We should

1. Have a leadership that is totally above board, a leadership that truly adheres to the concept of servant leadership and lives by its principles. Such a leadership must ensure that everybody submits to the rule of law of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Our leaders must therefore show us their commitment by immediately addressing all their shortcomings in both their private and public lives.

2. The Freedom of Information Bill should be passed without further delay making sure that appropriate checks and balances are in the Bill to ensure we don’t turn into a nation of frivolous image bashers. The Bill should be an instrument for the enhancement of transparency in governance, business and even elections in the country.

3. Immediately and firmly address the issue of lack of transparency and corruption. All cases of corruption that have clear evidences for prosecution should be taken to court and allow the judicial process to determining them. Burden of proof in case s of corruption should be shifted to the accused.

4. All area in which the activities of economic saboteurs and speculators are haemorrhaging the nation’s resources (smuggling, currency trafficking and money laundering, tax evasion and petroleum products diversion etc) should be critically looked into and appropriate measures taken to block the leakages. Stiff penalties should be in place which should include public disgrace and confiscation of assets of guilty persons.

5. A national code of ethics in business and private life should be promulgated, widely circulated and vigorously pursued for implementation and absorption to our public and private lives. Emphasis should be on discipline, honestly, orderliness and cleanliness, transparency and empathy for others.

6. Access to justice and quick dispensation of justice should be instituted ensuring total respect to fundamental human right of individuals. Our police cells and prisons should be cleaned and sanitised to make them less dehumanising and centres of rehabilitation and correction for the unfortunate persons that find themselves on the other side of the law.

While it may not be possible to achieve these points overnight, with a concerted and firm executive commitment, all the rules can be laid down within a matter of months. In fact we have never been short of ideas on how to change Nigeria for the better but simply lacked the commitment to see through for implementation of the ideas without fear and favour. Our re-branding campaign should go in congruence with our effort in cleansing ourselves of the evils that made us look bad in the eyes of the rest of the world. There is no point denying that we have acquired bad habits. We only need to have sincere determination to correct them, and seek the support of our friends world over to give us the benefits of the doubts as committed to reform, forward looking, honest and descent nation which has a lot to offer in business partnership, political maturity, economic stability, peaceful and conducive environment and a proud warm and welcoming people.