Where did Professor Alkali go wrong?
When a critic sets his work on a plane that divorces the necessary locale, it engenders shallowness while the attendant pointlessness annuls its logical profundity. No work is devoid of sympathies any way but a writer who distils out facts in the void of circumstances easily assists readers locate the slant as prostrate on a […]
When a critic sets his work on a plane that divorces the necessary locale, it engenders shallowness while the attendant pointlessness annuls its logical profundity. No work is devoid of sympathies any way but a writer who distils out facts in the void of circumstances easily assists readers locate the slant as prostrate on a sub-structure of bias. Let me reduce the grid-lock in Femi’s piece to two broad allegations: that Professor Alkali engages senior members of the party in the press and that he employs in foul language.
As the image maker of his party, he ensures efficient management of communication between the PDP and its numerous publics, internal and external. He structures his communication to clear every ambiguity in the conduct of party business. He also acts and reacts against issues that can soil the party’s image. For clear operational focus, Professor Alkali is the image maker of the PDP and not that of the opposition. Any expectation therefore that he acts more or less than he is doing at present means he is a Trojan.
But does Alkali take on senior members of the PDP? I was at the press conference where he addressed a question by a journalist regarding the call by Chief Edwin Clark to the PDP National Chairman to resign. The exact words which he used in response were that the “PDP respects Chief Clark as an elder and therefore expects him to play a role deserving of an elder.” The phrase, “senile dysfunction” never came in and was not reported in any of the dailies except in Femi’s newspaper, meaning that it must have been manufactured to suit a designed whim.
There should be no question as to the appropriate channel to communicate the party’s internal public as the PDP has a well laid down procedure. However, Femi betrayed his weird sense of equity in his self assigned role as adviser on PDP matters when he saw no wrong that an elder he described as “a senior member of the cartel called PDP”, could not communicate his grievance to the National Executive Committee of the Party which sat the same week, instead took his National Chairman and the leaders of his party to the cleaners on the pages of newspapers. To him, Clark’s style is “admirable and enriches democracy and free speech”, while Alkali’s polite advise that an elder should play the role expected of him became “malodorous and offensive”.
Anyway, many Nigerians have thought since reading that piece that once one is an elder statesman, he automatically qualifies as a senior member of the ruling party whether he is actually a member or not. Similarly, it did not matter to him that the chairman of the Board of Trustees of PDP took to the media over a matter he could easily discuss with the President. He, however, couldn’t hold back tears that Professor Alkali corrected the attendant wrong impression the public was fed with. Little wonder I must admit. We at times have to force the veil off the mascot of justice to make it see through our prism of choice.
Unfortunately, every person that was mentioned in Femi’s piece was accorded a right to divergent views but the same was denied Alkali. Probably as the spokesman of the PDP he does not have such right. He should not defend the PDP. In fact he should commit class suicide to please the opposition. Yes, I agree that power comes from God as argued. In fact, as a Christian I know men are encouraged to respect and support their leaders because every authority comes from God.
Islam does not hold a different view and as such does not condone rebellion against constituted authorities through statements that can bring the President to disrepute. Alkali may at times choose to have sightless eyes but he knows the full implications of media tirades against the president and his party. Some Nigerians have consistently used fowl language on President Yar’adua, they have used unprintable words on him, such words that even the atheists of the ancient Roman empire didn’t use on their leaders, yet in Nigeria, we are Christians and Muslims.
Has the press disagreed with this? Critics would have been disarmed if in just one paragraph of the entire piece readers were assisted to refresh on injurious statements that are awash in the media and credited to the Nigerians in question. This would enable them determine the extent Professor Alkali fouled his tongue in response. This was carefully avoided while emphasis was skewed on reactions while the triggering actions were loudly blacked out.
If Alhaji Atiku Abubakar or General Buhari as suggested in the piece had said more critical things about the PDP and Alkali’s predecessors chose silence as an option, it is simply a matter of style and not on account of weightlessness of issues in contention. There is therefore nothing shocking or unprofessorial in replying falsehood with bare truth as Alkali has done in the instance. The matter is that men often forget that reward for labour in the vineyard of whirlwind is storm. Femi perhaps expected insouciance from Alkali in the midst undeserving criticisms. Perhaps he expects him to be intimidated into amnesia while his party is rubbished daily. I do not know of any principle in media strategy or in wider Public Relations that says one should mask the truth and embrace the opposite so that sensibilities won’t be hurt. I am happy he has not been credited with lies.
The question on Alkali’s worth in Nigerian politics does not arise. I am happy his academic profundity is acknowledged. A professor of no mean repute whose students can still include some of those that strut the Nigerian political space as authentic leaders and lords, should they chose to upgrade one day. That is not to say that over a decade he has put in politics can be diminished, unless we are dropping the impression that the number of lives touched in politics is not more important than the height reached. For Alkali as an attack dog, the argument fails woefully. He is urbane. At his level in life, a professor of many years, across institutions and at different levels of direct government service, he should certainly not be famished of honours to be a side kick.
Ngige is of the publicity unit of the PDP in Abuja