Profiles in makeover

There is obviously ample capacity within the Muhammadu Buhari administration for redressing what we may call faulty discharges of presidential verbal currents. But this capacity, as it seems, does not lie with the president in person; and so, there may be a need for internal conversation in The Villa on proprieties and best practices in presidential communication.

The standard practice by the administration hitherto has been that whenever the president let slips a verbal mishap, presidential spokespersons rally to spin off redeeming narratives out of the problematic commentary. But those after-the-fact slants at the best of times have really been less than redemptive, and oftentimes they left the distaste stoked in the citizenry by the original comment rankling.

It gets more complicated when it is the president himself who hazards the makeover, because he could end up reinforcing rather than relieving the narrative that was problematic ab initio. That seems to be the case with his recent comment at a Commonwealth forum in London in which he was widely construed to have said most Nigerian youths do nothing and only feel entitled, nursing idle expectations of oil rents.

During his visit to the United States last week, the president by all ratings put up a sterling performance compared with the London outing earlier in April. But he also took out the time in Washington to push back against criticisms of his controversial comment at the Commonwealth forum in London, saying those criticisms arose because the media willy-nilly left out crucial aspects of what he really said.

The Nigerian leader had been quoted, even by Presidency accounts, as saying in response to a question at the Commonwealth Business Forum in London on April 18 that: “We have a very young population; our population is estimated conservatively to be 180 million. More than 60 per cent of the population is below the age of 30. A lot of them have not been to school and they are claiming that Nigeria has been an oil producing country, therefore they should sit and do nothing and get housing, healthcare and education free.”

In an interview with the Voice of America (VoA), Hausa Service, last Tuesday, President Buhari said his words at the London forum were misrepresented by the media. He told the radio service: “You know Nigeria’s population is now between 180 and 190 million, and 60 per cent of this population are youths – that is 30 years downward. In the North, for instance, most youths have not been to school or are dropouts. If not that we had favourable rainfall in the last two farming seasons, most of them have no jobs and are just idling away.

“These youths, even if they travel out of the North for greener pasture, they hardly make enough to pay their rent, not to talk of feeding, clothing and transportation back home. I made all these explanations, (but) they refused to highlight them in their reports; and you know the media in Nigeria in most cases only do whatever they like. For instance, the nation’s achievements in the agricultural sector where millions of Nigerians benefited financially were left unreported by the media.”

And so, it is the racy media – not even political mischief-makers earlier fingered by government spokespersons – that get all the knocks for the ‘#lazy Nigerian youths’ windstorm. And let’s not even dare to feign hollow innocence here: a broad segment of the Nigerian media truly gets sensationally negativistic on many matters that are plainly developmental.

‘Perception is notoriously subjective and dependent on the lens through which the perceiver views his subject matter. It is like the proverbial cup that is half filled with water.’

Still, you could hardly say President Buhari’s clarification to the VoA served the image of the Nigerian youth before the world better than his controversial comment at the London forum. Because the VoA clarification not only reinforced the image of Nigerian youths – this time, more specifically in the North – as mostly illiterate and idle, it also portrayed whatever contribution they have made as happenstances deriving from lucky breaks in the fickle conditions of nature. To put this in other words, there is little creativity or none at all to the youths’ engagement with nation building.

Perception, however, is notoriously subjective and dependent on the lens through which the perceiver views his subject matter. It is like the proverbial cup that is half filled with water. A cup that is neither full nor empty can be described from whatever prism one views it: a positive-minded person will say it is half full, thereby celebrating what is available and the prospect of further growth; whereas a cynic will bemoan the cup as half empty, thus focusing on what has not been achieved and the possibility of what is available being depleted.

By application, even with a measure of makeover in the VoA interview, Nigerian youths through Mr. President’s viewlenses remain predominantly an embattled and wasting lot. But if you want to view these youths and their role in national development from a whole new prism, you need not even go outside the Buhari presidency. Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, last week, called out many young Nigerians who have made outstanding and innovative strides in sundry sectors that not only contributed to building this country’s economy, but have also boosted national pride.

In a keynote address at The Platform, a civic forum instituted by Lagos cleric Pastor Poju Oyemade to facilitate national exchange of ideas, the vice president argued that government’s role is to formulate the vision and create the environment for nationhood. “The real building of nations is done and is best seen through the efforts and accomplishments of many outside of political leadership – men and women in business, agriculture, education, entertainment and the arts, who by just doing their business diligently, serving faithfully or making sacrifices, contribute to building the economies and social systems that ultimately build the nation,” he said.

To that extent, the vice president articulated a long list of Nigerians youths, outlining their profiles and the courageous startups they’ve enacted in innovation and technology, healthcare, agriculture, beauty and fashion, literature and the arts as well as entertainment. His presentation not only identified these young Nigerians by name, with their thrilling accomplishments and the contributions these have made to national life, it also highlighted the positive impact their efforts have had on the overall national image. Also noteworthy about the presentation was that it factored in young individuals in industry sectors like teaching, government and military services who have been outstanding in their careers and have sacrificed enormously – for those in the military, with their very lives – for the good of our country.

You would hardly believe it is from the same breed of Nigerian youths that Osinbajo was drawing his copious examples. The vice president’s keynote address at The Platform was a zestful makeover projecting the resourcefulness and enterprise of the youths. And the whole import of his presentation, to my mind, was to recalibrate the Buhari presidency’s narrative about Nigerian youths and show that there is deep appreciation in the government for their contributions to nation building. But I would think this message needs first be deeply internalized in the Presidency to have the full effect on the populace.