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Heart Of Africa
Project: Another Drain Pipe?
Nigeria Image
Laundering Project Coming to America
By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye
Unfortunately, ours is a country where some fellows,
with an exaggerated notion of their smartness, have
mastered the very grievous and self-demeaning art of
wasting precious time and resources that could have been
deployed to productive use on some meaningless exercises
and getting paid for such prodigal endeavours. Or else,
how can one possibly explain the stubborn insistence of
the Federal Government of Nigeria through its
Information And National Orientation Minister, Mr. Frank
Nweke Jnr., to still go on with its Image Laundering
Project, when even from the outset, it was all too clear
to everyone, that the whole thing was not only wasteful,
but capable of making the country look foolish and
grossly diminished before the outside world.
In this
internet age when the latest news from Nigeria could
immediately be read in Australia, China, Malaysia,
Taiwan or just anywhere in the world, long before most
Nigerians are even able to do so, what possibly could
any self-respecting fellow be wasting his time and the
nation’s resources telling the outside world about
Nigeria that they do not already know? If Nigeria, under
the present Administration, has not truly failed, as is
now widely believed by both Nigerians and foreigners,
the outside world would not require the effort of Frank
Nweke and his gaggle of image launderers to make up its
mind about that. Nigeria is bare before the whole wide
world!
When in
2004, the then Minister of Information, Mr. Chukwuemeka
Chikelu, came up with the Nigeria Image (Laundering)
Project, I was one of those who felt highly scandalized
that the very thing that had failed late military
dictator, Gen Sani Abacha, in his moment of distress and
estrangement was what the Obasanjo Administration had
gone all out to dredge up, in a clearly doomed attempt
to secure for itself an unearned image. In my column in
Daily Independent of Wednesday,
August 11, 2004, entitled,
Chikelu: Deodorizing Dog-shit? I had
advised the Minister to excuse himself from the very
wasteful and utterly useless project, for which the
Federal Government had voted N600 million at that time.
I was so
baffled that anyone in his right mind would be willing
to stake his reputation and dignity to embark on a
project to burnish the horribly, self-battered image of
a government, that was always too eager to behave in
ways that seemed to suggest that its very life was
wholly dependent on the countless scandals it submerged
itself in almost every other day.
“What I am
telling Chikelu today,” I wrote, “is what I think he
already knows too well, namely, that when a room is
horribly messed up with the indiscriminate droppings of
a very reckless dog, what you must do is to bend down
and carefully wash the place with active detergent.
Only then would you get back the fresh, pleasant air
that makes a room worth inhabiting. But if you take the
unhealthy short cut of spraying the dog-shit with heavy
dose of deodorant, then you will get a putrid scent that
will make the room more repelling than ever before.
Nigeria does not need an image-burnishing project. I
sincerely urge Chikelu not to be party to a profligate
venture he already knows would return no positive
dividend.”
Now, I do
not know whether the Minister took my advice or not, but
what became clear soon after that piece was published
was that all the irritating noise about the wasteful
project suddenly disappeared from the public domain. And
not long after that, the Minister, too, lost his job,
but with his honour and reputation in tact. Now we have
Frank Nweke Jnr. on the saddle and the controversial
project has shown its irremediably ugly face again, this
time, with a new name: “Nigeria: Heart Of Africa
Project.”
And so,
recently, at huge expense to the nation, the Nigerian
government took its undying folly to the Queen Elizabeth
11 Conference Hall, Westminster in London, to launch the
Image Laundering Project, all in a clearly futile
attempt to burnish with a few drab addresses and
unappetizing slogans, the horrible image it had
willfully accumulated for itself since it was imposed on
Nigerians by the most diseased elements of the nation’s
political class in 1999.
Now, I am not concerned here
with the disruption of Nweke’s speech at the occasion by
protesters led by the UK arm of the Movement For The
Actualization Of The Sovereign State Of Biafra (MASSOB)
which called him a liar and other unprintable names; my
business really is with the folly of the whole wasteful
enterprise, and the crude pigheadedness that motivated
its enactment in the first place. The next phase of the
launch is billed for the United States in the next
couple of days, and, a statement from the Ministry of
Information has already alerted us to alleged plans by
some Nigerians in the United States to protest at the
venue of the launch.
What every
sane Nigerian should be asking at this time is: why are
these heartless people so bent on squandering the
nation’s resources to carry out this impossible and
self-serving mission while majority of Nigerians whose
lot could be improved with the funds they are wasting
are trapped in grinding poverty? Why is the Nigerian
Government so disdainful of the feelings and opinions of
Nigerians – the very people at the receiving end of its
countless anti-people policies and actions, while it
spends so much to attract even the slightest hint of
(mostly insincere) approval from foreigners? How can a
government with an incredible mass of impoverished and
aggrieved people at home, convince itself that what is
most important to it is to try to purchase meretricious
credibility for itself by making some insincere and
unverifiable claims about its phantom records of
achievement abroad?
Somebody
should, please, ask Mr. Nweke and the government he
speaks for to shelve the proposed US jamboree, disperse
the growing number of shameless jobbers and unrelenting
parasites already milling around him and the so-called
Heart of Africa nonsense, and sit back at home to fix
Nigeria and earn the respect of its citizens. This
option if adopted may require extra and sincere work
than the expensive, meaningless noise at world capitals,
which the image project is all about, but, at the end of
the day, it would prove to be the only realistic way
this government can earn all the respect and approval it
craves.
Any government can earn the respect and
confidence of tourists and investors without its
officials traveling to anywhere outside its shores. When
the people are happy with their government, commentaries
and news about it would become more positive, and the
outside world would take note. Only then would sincere
and genuine investors (not the current fraudsters who
are here to milk the country dry with the aid of their
highly placed, corrupt friends) will start trouping into
the country in droves.
By the way, what really is
Nweke telling his audience at the ‘Heart of Africa
Project’ launches around the world? What can a
government whose seven years in power have only returned
to the citizenry pains and frustrations possibly
advertise as its “achievements”? Only recently,
Thursday, November 9, 2006, to be precise, “what Nigeria
must do to change the course of events and become a
model democracy in Africa” was discussed with passion
and seriousness on the Voice of America’s Africa
Journal. With Host, Vincent Makori, at the
studio in Washington were two Nigerians: Sunday Dare,
VOA Hausa Chief, and Emmanuel Ogebe, a Special Legal
Consultant. Nigeria’s Information Minister, Mr. Frank
Nweke, was the Phone-Guest from Abuja.
I caught the programme at the
point Rasheed Ladajo’s case in Oyo State had cropped up
in the discussion, and was thoroughly disappointed by
the most embarrassing submission of Frank Nweke on the
issue. Following the declaration of the Court of Appeal
that the impeachment of Gov Ladoja of Oyo State was
unconstitutional and null and void, the Attorney-General
of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Mr. Bayo Ojo,
had immediately constituted himself into a Superior
Court, and issued a counter ruling stating that “though
an appeal simplicita does not constitute a stay
of execution, Chief Ladoja should still consider the
appeal by the other party as a stay of action and should
therefore stay home until the Supreme Court makes a
pronouncement on the matter.” Note that at this
time, the other party were yet to file any appeal before
the Supreme Court!
When Frank Nweke was asked to
react to this constitutional rascality by Bayo Ojo (who
incidentally has just been rewarded with a UN top job),
he declared that Nigeria was a federal state and the
states were autonomous entities, and so, it was not true
that the Federal Government through its Attorney-General
had interfered in the legal and constitutional issues in
Oyo State. In fact, Frank declared that Bayo Ojo did not
stop the implementation of a Court order in Oyo State! I
could not believe my ears. Majority of those Frank was
speaking to on VOA television were either Nigerians or
avid readers of Nigerian newspapers online which duly
reported Bayo Ojo’s counter ruling on the Ladoja matter.
Now, if this barefaced misrepresentation is Frank’s way
of prosecuting his image laundering enterprise, then,
the Obasanjo government would always end up a laughing
stock before the rest of the civilized world.
The VOA programme was a
public relations disaster for the Nigerian government.
Nigerians who called in from different parts of the
world were aghast that the government in Abuja has done
nothing in the past seven years to improve the lives of
ordinary Nigerians. No doubt, all those overwhelming
claims Frank was making about “developments” and
“progress” in Nigeria can only be accommodated in the
realm of fiction. This was a country in which seventy
percent of its citizens still lived below poverty level,
amidst all the incredible wealth that has come to the
nation in the past few years from oil exports, more than
at any other time in the nation’s history. In fact,
Nigeria seems to be the only country anyone can point to
where boundless prosperity has only translated to
unspeakable sufferings for the people. Each time Frank
was asked about the excruciating situation in Nigeria,
his reaction would be to triumphantly point out what he
perceived as similar situations existing in Europe and
the United States. I wish he had bothered, too, to
compare the functional amenities in those places with we
have in Nigeria.
What about security? These
days, robbers operate for hours, with utmost impunity
and without any form of challenge from the police.
Recently, there were reports that a band of robbers had
seized four banks and had continued to operate and shoot
indiscriminately for about four hours. The police were
called but they refused to venture near the scene. A
police personnel in the area told a national newspaper:
“We were aware that they have been operating since about
midnight, singing and dancing, but we can’t confront
them because we have no APC (Armoured Personal Carrier)
to provide cover for us.”
If anyone has any other definition of a failed state
more or less than what this story graphically
illustrates, please let’s have it!
We live in a country with
death traps as roads, erratic power supply, unspeakable
hunger and mass unemployment. The recent quarrel between
President Olusegun Obasanjo and his deputy, Vice
President Atiku Abubakar, threw up incredible, horrible
details about boundless corruption in the Presidency one
never imagined was possible. The civilized world is
thoroughly disgusted that such a horribly muddied and
discredited government is still in place, and that
instead of standing down, it is rolling out billions to
burnish its irredeemable image.
These are issues Frank Nweke
and his crowd of whitewashers should be worrying about,
not the image laundering jamboree that makes the rest of
the world thoroughly sick.
Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye
is on the Editorial Board of the Independent (www.independentngonline.com),
where he writes a weekly column (SCRUPLES).
Email:
scruples2006@yahoo.com
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update 15 July 2008 |
