So, when will someone speak to the poor?

Indeed, the apparent disconnect between the government and the people is due largely to poor public communication flow. Sometimes, it takes the form of no communication at all while at other times, it is occasioned by inaccurate or inadequate communication. Interestingly, because the real target of any policy is the people, the general public ought […]

Indeed, the apparent disconnect between the government and the people is due largely to poor public communication flow. Sometimes, it takes the form of no communication at all while at other times, it is occasioned by inaccurate or inadequate communication. Interestingly, because the real target of any policy is the people, the general public ought to be conversant with any matter of public interest. That is what is referred to as Public Enlightenment- a veritable prerequisite for national development. This is because the solution to the problems of development in a nation does not necessarily lie in massive construction of physical structures alone. In fact, the people may, due to ignorance, not appreciate such projects and could misuse them.  There is therefore the need to place greater emphasis on public enlightenment to prevent devastating mob actions like the burning of public buildings in protest or the disruption of public power supply cables etc. to ventilate grievances.

A critical look at the handling of the topical issue of fuel subsidy will show that in reality, no one spoke to the poor, that is, majority of Nigerians, on the issue notwithstanding assumptions to the contrary. Last week, no less than three government ministers made the point that majority of the people at the venues of the protests against the removal of fuel subsidy did not know why they were on the streets. That observation is no doubt correct because there is no way the down trodden and uneducated whom the ministers had in mind, would have known the issues at stake when they were not educated on the subject. Government, as usual took for granted that people knew or ought to have known without making efforts to ascertain whether or not the issues at stake were explained to them or whether those who were supposedly informed understood the message. To conclude as our ministers did that the people were merely instigated into the protests is however incorrect. This is because the so-called instigators – the opposition political parties are no less contemptuous of our neglected poor. Indeed, the diction of the alleged instigators is the same as that of the government- a language which the poor does not understand. What, for example would the uneducated have made out of the address on ‘political mandarins’ by my brother, Igodomigodo?

The question why then were the poor on the streets should not be difficult to answer because they got there through what is called intra-personal communication. Some of them woke up on the first day of a new year to discover that the same amount of money which catered for certain needs the day before, suddenly became greatly insufficient for the same needs. They didn’t need to be educated to appreciate their deprivation as well as its suddenness.  Thus, no one needed to instigate such persons to get into the protests. While some other persons who are unemployed and thus idle found good company on the streets, other idle hands seized an obviously conducive environment for looting. It was a classical case of people talking to themselves in the absence of communication. There is however, the argument that the fuel subsidy issue has for a while, been the subject of debates here and there and as such, it is wrong to say that no one spoke to the people on it. Here, we need to note that sectoral consultations and public enlightenment are two different issues. Whereas a few things were said in the area of publicity especially during the protests, they were of little relevance because those would essentially pass for what is known as panicky rejoinders. In addition, they were directed at the elite and not the poor. Apart from the fact that the messages were neither timely nor easy to understand by the uneducated, the channels employed were inappropriate. Advanced technology has no doubt established that the best way to reach mass audiences across distances is to use the mass media particularly radio and television. But in Nigeria, the problems which the poor have with the media are too many.

First, not many people have access to the media or can afford the channels. Second, the nation’s erratic public power supply makes it difficult for people to listen to radio or watch television. The poor cannot afford batteries for their radios let alone generators for television. Third, media practice in Nigeria is not only urban-based but exceedingly elitist.  It is not grass-roots oriented.  To start with, the use of local languages which the people hear and understand is unfortunately uncommon.  Consequently, media contents which are designed to inform, educate and entertain the people are not understood by them.  Therefore, there exists in Nigeria, a visible disconnect between the media and a large percentage of their target audience.  This is a major challenge yet to be met because the ideal thing is that people do not need to understand a foreign language to be able to know what is happening either in their country or elsewhere. Sadly, community based and community owned radio and television stations as well as newspapers are rare in Nigeria.  The decision of the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria (FRCN), to use its national stations to transmit in 12 Nigerian languages is commendable, but the Corporation is yet to operate from all state capitals let alone in local communities. As for television, the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) is supposed to have a total of 101 stations with no less than 60 in local communities but there is doubt if the expansion project will be completed considering the trend of irregular capital grants to the organization. In the case of the print media, it is strange that a nation which had a newspaper-Iwe Irohin- that was published in a local language as far back as 1859, is yet to come to grips with how to sustain community/local language newspapers. Consequently, to use any of these modern organs to communicate with the poor amounts to nothing.

Traditional institutions would probably have been useful but there is doubt if they are sufficiently committed to the subsidy policy to become its advocates.  We cannot blame them because as we hear, it took four briefing sessions before ministers themselves assimilated the policy. What is more, modernity has overtaken the traditional channel- the town crier. One frame-work which would have been helpful is the use of cine rovers at the village square. Unfortunately, this has gone into disuse since 1993 when government merged MAMSER with the Public Enlightenment Division of the Ministry of Information to become the National Orientation Agency (NOA). The great dream of the founding fathers of NOA for it to be used as a grassroots channel to mobilize public support for government projects and policies has been abandoned as the Agency is now coerced to propagate culture. Who then speaks to the Nigerian poor on public policy?