Is Rochas Okorocha better than Lai Mohammed?

By Tonnie Iredia

The visit to President Buhari in London by a delegation of the Nigerian Governors’ Forum was probably the first opportunity for Nigerians to really believe that their President was indeed still alive. Before then, no one understood the stories coming out of government circles. To one of our roadside parliaments, the visit by the Acting President Prof Yemi Osinbajo, was like a piece of comedy. The parliament referred to here is not a legislature but a location where some people who despite the current recession still have enough resources to exchange pleasantries every evening amidst drinks and pepper-soup, etc.

The week before, this writer had a rare privilege of being in the parliament with a friend to listen to a discussion centered on the relevance of the London visitations. While one group opined that the acting President’s visit was unnecessary,  others said that if not that they saw and thus identified Osinbajo’s voice, his assurances on the President’s health sounded so much like Lai Mohammed speaking.

As a reporter, I was thrilled by how Ojo, one of the discussants playing the role of a reporter presented the story. He put the story as follows. “Good evening viewers, here is the news…. Today, Nigeria’s acting President, Yemi Osinbajo said he has concluded a one-day visit to London. He said he went there to visit President Muhammadu Buhari. Osinbajo added that he left the day before and returned next day. He said he was with the President for over one hour and that the visit afforded him a great time to enjoy some presidential jokes.

The Acting President confirmed that his discussions with the President covered a number of policy issues. Osinbajo then said he has now returned to Nigeria. This is Ojo reporting from Abuja.”  Ojo rebuffed criticisms that as a reporter he should have reported from London, the venue of the alleged meeting and not Abuja where nothing happened concerning the subject. Instead, he insisted that he was not the first Nigerian tv reporter to report a story from its wrong end.

If the truth must be told, there was not much to add or take away from Ojo’s factual report of the visit. Viewers saw nothing else other than the acting President speaking. Did he go to visit himself they queried? Others who spoke after Ojo, were unanimous that the next visit by a delegation of the ruling All Progressives Congress did not help matters. Although the visit produced a picture, only the President was identifiable. According to the discussants, may be the shot was not taken by a photographer but by Governor Rochas Okorocha of Imo State. The latter was not only a member of the delegation but the juicy highlights of the reported speeches were credited to him. In other words, the story this time was that Okorocha said and said and said. Would Lai Mohammed, the party’s traditional spokesman and current Minister of Information not have done better? Some said he surely would have but a few thanked God Lai was not there because according to them, he probably would have increased the credibility gap in the story. So, Okorocha would have made a better Minister of Information especially as he successfully slammed the manufacturers of Nigeria’s “merchant of lies.”

The next speaker applauded the visit by a delegation of the Nigerian Governors’ Forum (NGF) which produced enough photos to the delight of many people. The pictures were indeed good enough to convince our army of cynics that our ailing President had recovered. Although, there were a few dissidents who still said they would have felt better if the NGF delegation had included Governors Wike and Fayose of Rivers and Ekiti states respectively, statements such as ‘seeing is believing’ ‘we came and we saw’ and ‘the recovery of the President was a miracle’ credited to some of the delegates were no doubt reassuring.  Indeed, all the stories the nation had been hearing about the sense of humour of the President made sense only after the people saw a picture which showed him laughing heartily.

But why do we have so many cynics in Nigeria? This is in earnest an issue which the government ought to tackle by ensuring that people are provided with information as and when due. Nigeria’s politics of information management is too high. It is either because people who are appointed to speak are never allowed to manage information professionally or that too many important people contribute all the time to government’s discordant tunes. It is also possible that there are people who believe only what is negative; anything positive is doubted. The case of Governor Okorocha’s report on the visit of the APC delegation is perhaps a good example. Rather than a simple report on what happened, the angle of ‘merchant of lies’ introduced a controversy, hence the response of Fani Kayode that “I for one would not believe a word that a man like Rochas tells me.”  When Nigerians also read in the media that Rochas was warming up for the Presidential contest of 2019 if Buhari doesn’t recontest, a few imagined that it was what the governor saw in London, that made him to have doubts about Buhari’s future interests.

Back to our roadside parliament, a discussant applauded Rochas’ argument that his interest in the 2019 election would be preceded by an endorsement of no less than 10 million Nigerians. Trust the drunks in the special parliament, everything is argued. One member opted to be appointed the Director General of the Rochas campaign team to design a strategy of getting more than ten million endorsements. When given the floor to expatiate on the strategy, he said the following: First, that he would establish a team structured exactly like the Transformation Ambassadors of Nigeria. Second, he would insist that a trusted ally of Governor Okorocha such as the current Imo Deputy Governor should play the role Jonathan’s Secretary to Government played in the 2015 campaigns by leading the team that would receive envelopes conveying signatures of millions of endorsements in the six geopolitical zones. But he could not confirm if there would also be ample resources or whether like before the project would also not fail.

 

The post Is Rochas Okorocha better than Lai Mohammed? appeared first on Vanguard News.