Psychology of change begins with me: How it killed our movement

In recent discussions of the Change Begins With Me campaign, a controversial issue has been whether the government is accepting the responsibility of fixing Nigeria or shifting the responsibility to the long suffering people.  The most trenchant view against the government’s appearance of irresponsibility came from Dr. Farooq Kperogi.  Writing on his Facebook page, Dr. […]

In recent discussions of the Change Begins With Me campaign, a controversial issue has been whether the government is accepting the responsibility of fixing Nigeria or shifting the responsibility to the long suffering people.  The most trenchant view against the government’s appearance of irresponsibility came from Dr. Farooq Kperogi.  Writing on his Facebook page, Dr. Kperogi complains that the APC government has become a scam.  Another strong criticism of the campaign was attributed to a well-known supporter of President Buhari, Dr. Nura Alkali.  Although these critics have made fair points, I still support the campaign.
Yet, I’m going to argue that the campaign violates some fundamental psychological principles and lacks foundational components to make it acceptable to the people. The timing is way off and the formulators appear not to be listening to Nigerians.  Therefore, they do not understand the prevailing parlance of change.
First, the Buhari’s presidential dream started as a movement since 2003.  At a point, only few people believed in it.  Many people came to join the movement and beginning in 2013, it began to peak, and finally tipped in 2015 and General Buhari was elected president.  If you review the language used in the struggle, you would realize that it’s the language of movements: “March for Buhari,” “FeBuhari,” “Yam Eaters v Change Agents,” and so forth.  What this means is that many people – a community – championed this cause.  Therefore, there was purpose, it was easy to keep going in the face of challenges, the group had an identity, the shared responsibility made it attractive  to join the movement and finally, it was even fun.
But the #ChangeBeginsWithMe campaign has disbanded the movement, turned a group, a community into individuals and asked everyone to go to his corner, to go to our houses and change.  The message here, whether the government realizes it or not, is: “The party is over.  Go and solve your own problems.”  It means individually we should solve the nation’s problems without giving us a framework to work with. Nobody wants to carry all the burdens of Nigeria on one shoulder.  We’re carrying enough already.  We provide our own electricity, water, security, etc.  So asking “me” to shoulder more appears unfair. 
Even if that’s not what is intended, that is the message Nigerians got.  And that’s why many people are against this, even though many Nigerians don’t exactly know why they balk at this new campaign.  But the psychology of it is actually simple.  By isolating “me” – an individual – to go change alone, I no longer have what had become a family support base.  Therefore, the task becomes lonely and less fun.  More importantly, we are at a loss how to implement this change that begins with “me.”  We ask individually: How do I start?  How do I measure performance or its success?  Which tools do I use?  What are the steps?  The mind quickly finds that this is too much to ask of an individual, shuts down and takes the easy way out – by  going against the entire thing.
Dan Ariely, a psychologist and author of many books on behavioral economics such as Predictably Irrational, The Upside of Irrationality and the Honest Truth about Dishonesty, advised that if you desire compliance, you don’t overload the mind in such a way. For example, as a teacher, if I want my students to appreciate my class, I would ask them to suggest 15 ways to improve the lesson.  This way, I’ve overloaded their brains.  Nobody wants to think of fifteen things.  So, instead, they start to think, “there’s nothing wrong with his class.”
Accordingly, the Change Begins With Me campaign has unwittingly turned Nigerians against the campaign and the government.  If they wanted us to comply, they would have given us something easy to do.
The campaign would have benefitted if it had unpacked the secrets of movements and used appropriate language that drives change.  For example, “let’s Kill Indiscipline Together” or “KIT” would have been more appropriate because it uses the language that invites group participation.  You can also easily coin derivatives of that such as, “KIT up!” and so forth. You can’t even create an acronym with the unmanageable Change Begins With Me. CBWM? Even the president’s wife’s #GetInvolved programme is better in this respect.
Another fundamental issue with the campaign was the beginning.  It wasn’t started well. They didn’t enlist key influencers to help out. It would have benefitted from a reading of four books.  One, of Jeff Walker, New York Times’ bestselling author of Launch: An Internet Millionaires Secret Formula.  Another important resource they should have consulted is Ryan Levesque’s Ask: The Counterintuitive Online Formula to Discover Exactly What Your Customers Want.   They would also have benefited from Simon Sinek’s Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action and Guy Kawasaki’s The Art of the Start: The Time-Tested Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything.
All these books (even though some are about the internet and the world of business) document the tried and true ways to start campaigns or launch products and services – using tools that could be tweaked to get citizens to buy into government policies.
Ryan Levesque’s book for example outlines four steps, beginning with the Deep Dive where customers or potential users are simply asked their opinion of an ideal solution.  After an analysis of their responses, they would be categorized into buckets of needs.  For example, before launching any campaign on national orientation, the National Orientation Agency (NOA) could have asked a sample of the people how they think Nigeria could solve the problems of corruption and indiscipline.  From this survey, the agency could have unpacked what the people actually need, how to implement the solution and the prevailing parlance.  Yes, there’s a language.  All of us are tired of the shameless indiscipline and the omnipresent corruption among the police, civil servants, contractors, schools and everywhere.  And we have ways of expressing this frustration.  Change Begins With Me is not one of the ways.
Yet, I support the campaign, simply because we need one and because it’s too late to tell NOA to change #ChangeBeginsWithMe.
I’ve therefore written a song about the campaign for all of us to chant when things aren’t going right.  I’m trying to get school children to chant it before sharing, so that the nation can join the chorus.
Of course many have argued that even the Qur’an says that we should change before Allah will change our situation.  This is true.  But notice the word the Qur’an uses: Qawmi (meaning a people or nation) not anta (singular form of you).  Therefore, the Qur’an is using the language of community, of movements.  In another section it says we should hold unto the rope of Allah -“all of you.”  Again, the language of movements, of community.  Have you wonder why we’re instructed to pray in groups?