By Chuks Osuji
Honestly, there are two political parties whose campaign activities have dominated more public discourse and have been more heavily covered by different traditional, orthodox media and also social media. Without doubt, these two political parties are the APC-the party in power and People Democratic Party, PDP the party in opposition.
Be that as it may, unfortunately, it appears to objective observers and political pundits and watchers that the APC appears to regularly inflict major negative image dis-functional contents to its publicity machinery. Why?
The two sources of the self inflicted image publicity defects are: the National Chairman of APC: a man who likes to hit Newspaper headlines without considering the immediate and remote consequences of what he often says, simply because, “he does not believe that there are millions of Nigerians who are more intelligent and smarter than him: believing that whatever he says would be palatable to members of the general public clapping for him.”
But not knowing that majority are often making mockery of him because according to one British writer, “If one is to be a successful liar, one would have good retentive memory.’’
Oshiomhole is a one way traffic speaker, opening his mouth and saying things to impress his immediate audience but not knowing that those who clap for him in error would mock him in disgrace.
Imagine, how can a whole chairman of APC open his mouth to say, “Politicians should come over to APC and once they do that their sins are forgiven?”
The second source of self-inflicted image publicity defects to APC is Lai Mohammed who has perfected in the act of telling lies but has not perfected in convincing Nigerians that there is great difference between “lie and Lai.”
Imagine his last outburst to effect that “some members of the opposition in some states are planning to disrupt the forth coming election without mentioning the state or naming the suspects.” Without any doubt, there is one main source of these publicity.
The reason is simple but dubiously applied. Both the chairman of APC, Adams Oshiomhole and Lai Mohammed, Minister of Information belong to the old school of Goebbels, Adolph Hitler’s chief propagandist during the Second World War.
Goebbels was known to have reputation of believing that if you tell lies several times, “that people will begin to believe them’’.That outdated theory of propaganda prevailed over eighty years ago when the world was virtually bereft of today’s network of sophisticated media connectability propelled and driven by modern technology.
Besides, both Oshiomhole and Lai Mohammed believe unfortunately that propaganda is basically dishing out falsehood to the public. No, absolutely it does not and cannot work in today’s highly sophisticated society, particularly in Nigeria where many vibrant and articulated groups have “shined their eyes.’’
This is why both the Government and the APC are in trouble by receiving unstoppable barrage of criticisms.
This state of affairs in both the Government and the APC is further complicated by the fact that in one way, the existence of the cabal serving as more authentic cabinet further creates more publicity problem for the government and the party.
In this regards, there is obvious disconnection between the three bodies working at cross purposes- Ministry of information, the party and the cabal.
With this, both the government and the APC would continue to get a lot vexatious negative publicity not necessarily from the opposition parties but from many Nigerians who according to Rotimi Amaechi, “the people are crying, traders are crying, workers are crying, students are crying…,’’ who are using today’s existing social media outlet to vent their anger, indeed the unstoppable anger because in fact, many believe that Buhari’s Government has taken the country several years backward.
The simple question is this. Can the situation be remedied? There is usually one simple answer to this. And the answer is absolutely no because the two persons driving the Government and the party’s publicity architecture are “Mr. know it all type of persons.” After all, there is a long standing axiom, “no matter what happens, leopard can never change its colours.”
Both of these persons- Lai Mohammed and Oshiomhole have done incalculable damages to both Government and the APC because they wrongly believe that Nigerians don’t use their brains hoping that they could hoodwink the Nigerian people with outdated propaganda gimmick.
Worse is that Adams Oshiomhole still behaves as if he is a labour leader. No, not anymore! His inflammatory oratory now is seen as insult to the generality of Nigerians.
And Lai Mohammed now is the image of Honorable Minister of Information for lies. Both must learn something said by Joseph Goebbels. He said, “Heard truth is better than the most successful propaganda”. Is this not instructive to these armature and ephemeral propagandists?.
Dr. Osuji, is a Public Relations Consultant.