How Improper Communication Is Hurting Buhari Administration

President Muhammadu Buhari is having communication challenges. These challenges are not limited to his communicators-in-chief, that is his media spokesmen, Mallam Garba Shehu and Femi Adesina, but appears to be the hallmark of the administration, which has also infected other leadership of the APC government across the country.

Recently, the president’s communication people decided that Nigerians should know the president’s ‘human side’ through a documentary film, which suggests that what we had been seeing in the past two and a half years is his ‘animal side’ or even his ‘divine side’ given the deification of the president in recent time. If the title of the documentary made you wonder what in the world his communication people are thinking, then you could imagine the outrage that followed their insistence on airing it on NTA and Channels TV, at a time when Nigerians are having one of the worst Christmases in recent memory due to acute shortage of fuel. The documentary should have waited until after the fuel crisis is over and done with. What is the essence of the rush, you may ask? The fuel crisis ended up obfuscating their good intentions, because no matter what Adesina might say only few Nigerians could have watched it at a time when many were spending nights at petrol stations and there were no fuel to power the generators in their homes in a country notorious for its power outages.

Also recently the administration announced that the federal government and the Nigerian Governors Forum had agreed to withdraw $1billion dollars from the Excess Crude Account (ECA) to finance equipment for the military in their engagement against Boko Haram terrorists in the North East. As soon as this became public there was outcry in some quarters especially from the Ekiti State governor Ayo Fayose who cried foul alleging that the money would be diverted to sponsor the government’s 2019 reelection campaign. Fayose like many other concerned Nigerians queried the rationale for such huge expenditure against a group that the government claimed to have defeated over a year ago. It was in the middle of this outcry that the Vice President Yemi Osinbajo clarified that the money is for providing security all over the country and not restricted to the North East. If the government had properly communicated its position as articulated by Osinbajo at the outset, there would have been no insinuations like that coming from Fayose.

Take the case of the acting chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, Mr Ibrahim Magu, who many Nigerians believe that he deserved to be confirmed as the substantive chairman of the anti-graft agency because of his incredible achievements in the war against corruption including the recovery of several billions of naira from looters of government treasury, his confirmation had been stalled due to poor communication between the Presidency, Senate and the Directorate of State Services, DSS. The presidency forwarded Magu’s name to the Senate for confirmation alongside a favourable security report from DSS, only for another unfavourable report to also emanate from the same DSS to the Senate. The result is that EFCC is still under a boss who is on acting capacity and a huge blow to the anti-corruption war and campaign of this administration. And this hazy communication cloud doesn’t appear to be dissipating anytime soon, which is quite sad.

Over a year ago the government announced the stoppage of the payment of subsidy to independent marketers of petroleum products. The fuel subsidy was a haven of corruption over the years, which was why many hailed the Buhari administration for having the courage to remove the subsidy-an action that President Goodluck Jonathan wanted to take in 2012 but was resisted by Nigerians. Buhari had the goodwill and support to remove the subsidy and also increase the official pump price from N87 per litre to N145 per litre. At the time government should have communicated that even though it no longer pays subsidy to independent marketers but it would still pay subsidy to NNPC which became the sole importer of fuel in the country. Today, government is at quagmire on what to do about the pump price of fuel, as independent marketers are insisting that the present pump price is unrealistic. While the fuel crisis subsists, the GMD of NNPC, Mr. Maikanti Baru, has now revealed that government is subsidizing the price of fuel imported by NNPC by N24 per litre. So payment of fuel subsidy was not over after all. It was merely transferred from independent marketers to government importers-NNPC.

As we enter the New Year, 2018, the president needs to review his communication architecture and come up with communication strategy that would convey his achievements and policies without ambiguity to the Nigerian people.