By Reno Omokri
How can two walk together except they agree? Now
if two people cannot walk together except they agree how much more three, four
or a hundred? For any government, company, family or association to succeed,
there must first be unity of purpose. This unity of purpose does not mean that
everybody must agree, but it means that behind close doors the groups meets to
harmonize.
*President Buhari and APC National Leader, Bola Tinubu |
Now that word,
harmonize, is a much misunderstood word. Harmony does not mean that everybody
has the same purpose, but it means that everybody’s purposes are brought
together and through a process of give and take, a common thread is woven that
encapsulates everybody’s agenda and when this is presented it produces an
effect that is pleasing to the group and those it wants to serve. Both
Christians and Muslims agree that God created the entire world with His words.
It is something we
can all agree on and in agreeing to this, we agree that words are creative.
They created the atmosphere of the world and they will create the atmosphere of
our individual worlds. This being the case, we have to be careful, very
careful, about the words we speak because if we agree that information is
power, then the management of information is power and its mismanagement is
weakness.
So often, many of us
do not realize that the words that emanate from a leader and his surrogates
must have credibility because those words affect everything within the domain
of that leader. Every word that emanates from a leader is a promise. Don’t
believe me? Try to get the British Currency. On every British Pound note you
will find this promise ‘I Promise to Pay the Bearer the sum of’ £5, £10, £20 or
£50. The promise on the British Pound is made by the Queen of England who
happens to be the Head of State of the United Kingdom .
There is nothing inherently valuable about the paper the British Pound is
printed upon. It has no intrinsic value.
If you eat the
British Pound you will get sick. If you dye it so that the promise made by
Queen Elizabeth II is no longer legible, it will lose its value. The value of
the British Pound is tied to the promise made by The Queen. The reason the
British Pound is one of the most valuable currencies in the world is because
people trust the promise made by the Queen. All over the world, currencies are
only as valuable as the person of the sovereign or head of state making the
promise.
So for instance, if
it becomes known today that the Queen says one thing about Britain and the British Prime Minister says
something different, that credibility crisis will have an immediate effect on
the value of the British Pound and the total capitalization of the London Stock
Exchange and the FTSE 100 index.
Now, the current
occupants of the seat of power in Nigeria do not seem to understand this
dynamic. Since President Muhammadu Buhari assumed office as President of
Nigeria, there has been a remarkable dissonance within this government. The
President says one thing, his spokesmen say another and other high officials
give a completely different take. What is going on? Let us take the issue of
Boko Haram. It was not too long ago that a perplexed nation woke up to read
headlines which screamed that the President pontificated that Fulani herdsmen
came from Libya !
Well, if that is
your story, then absurd as it is, you must stick to it. But hardly had we
gotten over the statement by the President before we were regaled with another
claim, this time by the Chief of Army Staff, Lt-Gen. Tukur Buratai, who
said “some of these herdsmen
that are attacking communities across the country may have some affiliation
with the Boko Haram terrorists.” That
sent shock waves down the length and breadth of the nation.
What are we dealing
with here? Herdsmen or Boko Haram, we really do not know! And then, to cap our
confusion, the minister of information, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, amazingly told us
“herdsmen move from everywhere, from Mauritius or anywhere. You can’t stop them”!
This all happened within a space of two weeks! Alhaji Lai Mohammed and current
World 100 and 200
meter champion,
Usain Bolt, actually make me believe that people’s names actually affect their
destiny!
I have been to Mauritius .
I was there this past February. This is a tiny Island nation
more than 1000
miles from
the African coast. A herdsman and his cows would literally have to swim for
years before they got to Mozambique from Mauritius .
Then from Mozambique , it would take
them months by land to get to Nigeria !
But that is not even the point. The point is the inconsistency and dissonance
coming from the highest levels of our nation’s government. And like I said, it
is a pattern.
When British Prime
Minister, David Cameron flippantly said to the Queen that Nigeria and Pakistan
were ‘fantastically corrupt’ nations, Presidential spokesman, Garba Shehu,
rightly issued a statement condemning Cameron’s callousness and the world’s
media including Newsweek and Al Jazeera reported his statement stating that
Nigeria and President Buhari were ’embarrassed’ and ‘shocked’ by Cameron’s
words and denied that we were a fantastically corrupt nation. This was on the
10th of May, 2016.
Now you can imagine
the trepidation of Nigerians when Buhari himself who had been reported as being
‘shocked’ by his spokesman recovered from his shock and decided to pass it on
to us by agreeing with Prime Minister Cameron on camera that Nigeria was indeed
fantastically corrupt! Perhaps that was the shock Garba Shehu was really
talking about. Even if President Buhari believed we are all fantastically
corrupt (I am NOT) then he should have pretended to agree with his own
spokesman for credibility’s sake.
But he completely
made a fool of Shehu to the world and I can assure my readers and Shehu (a
specimen of a gentleman and the star in the President’s media team) that both
Newsweek and Al-Jazeera would not be quoting him in future, except they have
some form of corroboration from President Buhari himself. And then this
confusion affects everything. Like millions of Nigerians, I was so ecstatic
about the fact that two of the Chibok girls had been rescued that I tweeted
congratulations to the President.
But then it turns
out that what the State House said was not true. Not only was it not true, but
it differed with the news coming out of Borno and reported by the world. One of
the girls was not really a ‘Chibok’ girl and the one who was really a Chibok
girl was not rescued as the government had claimed but had escaped from her
captors. And it goes on and on. On the 13th of May, 2016, Vice President
Osinbajo tells us that fuel subsidy has not been removed and we believe him
because, well because he is a pastor!
Then three days later
the minister of state for Petroleum Resources, Mr. Ibe Kachikwu, tells us that
if subsidy had not been removed we would be paying marketers ₦16.4 billion a month! What is going on here? Is it
or isn’t it subsidy? Has it or hasn’t it been removed? Our heads are spinning
with the spin! Who is right between Osinbajo and Kachikwu? The President goes
to China and his spokesmen let slip that he is
going there to sign a $2 billion loan agreement.
Then he lands in
China and we are told that it is no longer $2 billion it is now $6 billion and
then we are told that Nigeria has signed a deal to make our economy a clearing
house for the Chinese Yuan. No, we are not going to be a clearing house, we are
having a currency swap. I put it to Nigerians that from the President himself
to his minister of Finance, no one is actually sure what went on as regards Nigeria ’s economy in China !
And it goes on and on.
Today the President
is going to announce names of looters and then again he is not. It will be
published by Lai Mohammed’s ministry of information at some later date. Doesn’t
this administration know that if a house is divided against itself, it cannot
stand? This is the hidden reason why our economy is not standing. Foreign
Investors have been waiting to get a concrete sense of the policy direction of
this administration and this same tendency of approbation and reprobation has
overshadowed the economy where you have the President saying one thing, the
Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria saying another and ministers saying
something else.
Is it too much to
ask that officials of this administration be on the same page? They are not
even on the same book talk less of page. And unless and until they can get on
the same page, Nigeria ’s economy will
continue waver and falter because words create our atmosphere and the words of
this administration are in disarray which is why we currently have an
atmosphere of dissonance in Nigeria .
*Reno Omokri
is the founder of the Mind of Christ Christian Center in California , author of Shunpiking: No
Shortcuts to God and Why Jesus Wept and the host of Transformation with Reno Omokri
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