WEEKLY
TRUST FRIDAY,
FEBRUARY 15, 2002
The media award
Wada Nas
A politician would clutch at any straw so long as it would advance his narrow interest. Such a straw may be a trivia, it doesn’t matter. It is easily promoted to the temporary status of importance and adorned it in attractive colours of deceit, bright enough to be sold to the gullible.
Songs are composed in its praises and the media are recruited to promote even its nothingness. The politician would go to town beating his chest.
At the end of two years of democracy, Nigerians almost without any exception ruled that there was nothing to show for it AT THE NATIONAL LEVEL. Mark it, at the national level, not the states. Professor Jerry Gana was furious with the view of the people on the poor score recorded by the administration.
To prove critics wrong, he organised a tour of the states by some 70 journalists with him at the head, involving some “small” N200 million. Recently, he produced his verdict through some media tour award night. Before going into this earlier before, agencies under his ministry, the Film Corporation, NTA, FRCN, VON, NAN and others, bought pages in an edition of the Newswatch, complete in colour singing his praises. The ministry itself bought about ten or so, also in colour. All of them were saying the same thing, the kind of wonderful and remarkable achievement by the minister unprecedented in history. I wonder why federal ministries and agencies never bought acreages of pages to sing Obasanjo’s praises for moving around the globe with one to two hundred officials. Someone said he has travelled 140 times so far. If for visiting the states, Gana’s ministry and agencies could spend so much praising him, then why not the president who has been traversing the globe almost as a matter of routine? What is so important in organising a tour of the states that it deserves such high-sounding praises? What is the spectacular achievement to warrant this?
I do not know how long this tour lasted. What I am sure of is that Gana and his tourists did not spend more than four to five days in each state, not enough for the media tourists to undertake a serious and independent assessment of what is on the ground: It was a guided tour where officials took them only to deserving places to see what they wanted to be seen. It was a whirlwind kind of tour not enough to cover reasonable areas of the states visited.
Unknown to their hosts, they never knew that the visitors were on an examination mission with the media as the sole assessors. I don’t even believe that the tourists were told before hand that they were going on an assessment tour for the purpose of awarding medals to deserving states.
Their initial assignment was to disprove the public opinion that scored the federal government low in performance rating in the last two years. Perhaps, this was why AD governors never saw the event as important but as a propaganda stunt. During the tour, not much of federal projects were reported by the tourists, a vindication that the federal has little to show for two years of democracy.
Anyway, Professor Gana and his assessors came out with an award night to present medals to governors and of course the president. The governors believed and gathered in Abuja for the ceremony. Many of them carted one medal or the other. Some took as many as four or five. We don’t need to go in to the yardstick used, only the tourists can tell us. We don’t even know whether an AD governor scored anything. These are unimportant for now. While a number of governors took medals home, Professor Gana, not knowing what to award to his boss, having failed to record much in the last two years, devised a trick: Star of democracy medal, whatever that means and dashed it to Mr President without telling us the evidence or reasons for his winning the award.
What we understand by it is that he got it by his zealousness in the promotion of democracy. But how true is this? Na’Abba has told us that in the last two and a half years, this Star of democracy democrat has violated the constitution 100 times, all of them impeachable offences. Even without the speaker telling the nation this much, the general opinion of Nigerians is that this democratic champion has been championing dictatorship more than democracy.
Take the electoral bill for example. I am not referring to what he allegedly did but what he didn’t do. Haven’t we noticed that no official of the administration came to his defence on the matter? Why? Because, by his own admission, he did it without consulting any one of them. According to him, when he noticed that the PDP’s desire was not in the bill, he drew attention to it and requested a lawmaker to draft a statement reflecting the observation and that he signed the letter when the council of ministers was meeting. He never felt it proper to bring the matter to their attention. He did it alone without consulting them and the electoral law is quite important to our democracy. What manner of a champion of democracy does things alone without consulting with those who matter? And this, by popular admission, has been the hallmark of Mr President. This may be wrong, but we all know how he has subdued the political parties, reduced the National Assembly to size except for the House, warned the judiciary and attempted a conquest of labour in the style of the dictatorship of the past. Yet, in spite of these glaring defaults, Professor Gana in conscience felt it proper to award him the star of democracy medal; perhaps for undermining democracy. No wonder then that when this was announced, those present reportedly laughed their hearts out. It was a ridicule for Mr President. Gana could have saved the day by telling the audience that the awards were only meant for the states and not the federal.
But this could have created a problem. The truth is that in concept, the media tour was originally designed to prove to Nigerians that the federal government contrary to popular assumption, has a lot to show as dividends of democracy. So the professor couldn’t have played games.
The question now is, who between him and the public was right in the assessment that the federal has nothing much to show for two years of democracy? each of the governors took something home while Mr President was awarded nothing thereby proving the point that his performance has been very low.
This tour to me was unnecessary. What we got from the tourists were the achievements of the states and councils. and as we know, Nigerians never complained about achievements at these levels. Their complaints were centred on the achievements at the centre. Why therefore waste time telling them about the achievements in the states which they already knew? The tour would have been meaningful if the professor had shown us what the federal government has achieved in the last two years. So to this extent the tour was a waste in that it failed to achieve its original goal of proving to the people that the federal government has indeed something to show for its two years in office. Now we have no doubt in saying that it has been a wasted two years AT THE FEDERAL LEVEL. Let someone dispute it and we would be the better for it.
I can see some governors who won “medals” at the ceremony taking the matter serious as if it is an important recognition. And sure, their radio and TV stations would be telling us how wonderful such governors have been doing. There is one who got an award for water supply while his people have been complaining bitterly that water is a scarce commodity even in the state capital. Yet he was awarded a medal for supplying water to the people! Perhaps dry taps could mean water worthy of recognition by the 70 media tourists. I also learnt of another governor who did excellently well in renovating and upgrading all the post primary institutions in his state. Yet he got a zero award for championing education in his state!
Given these observations, how much of value do we rate these propaganda medals? I do not know the number of AD and APP states that were given the medals. But I heard important voices from Sokoto saying that if the state governor wasn’t among the recipients, then the jamboree wasn’t complete.
I wonder whether Zamfara got any award for upgrading the sharia legal system as wished for by its people. If not, did they find the majority of the people complaining to them in private over the system? Perhaps the tourists felt that promoting religious values is no longer important as it discourages young ladies going nude which our modern men like. The more nude we go, the more civilized we are rated. Such is our modern ways by the definition of nudes and our experts on civilisation.
Anyway, I congratulate those who received the star of democracy award for non-performance, which is another dividend of democracy by default.
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