Tuesday, September 13, 2022

Insecurity: Lai Mohammed, Where Are You?

 By Dan Onwukwe

He evokes different images to different people. He’s a talker and a tackler. He lives in denial just like the government he serves. Anybody who has been following his political career carefully and his comments, will understand that this man has an irritating habit of talking too loosely and telling yarn that amounts to nothing other than rough humour. That’s just one of his numerous personality traits. Other traits include peddling half-truths and outright lies. But there’s a darker side of living in denial.  It doesn’t give one the ability to look facts, very unpleasant facts – in the face – without deluding oneself with wishful thinking. 


*Lai Mohammed

Lai Mohammed, Minister of Information and Culture possesses these traits in abundance. As any management consultant will tell you: beware! These traits are the blinding lights of success. They are also the secrets of failure. But, Lai Mohammed keeps telling the same tale. Very often, he indulges in outright propaganda to hoodwink the undiscerning . However, the good thing is that half-truths have expiry date, no matter the short-term political gains. Let’s go a bit back in time. In the campaign leading to the 2015 elections, and desperate for power, Lai Mohammed was a forceful presence in the then opposition APC propaganda machine to demonize the Goodluck Jonathan Presidency and make it unelectable. 
        

As the Publicity Secretary of the party, his fingerprints were all over the propaganda offensive to unseat the PDP. Lai Mohammed looked self-assured, tireless in churning out half-truths against the Jonathan government. His job was simple: make Jonathan look worse than a wimp. He called him “clueless, “incompetent”. In fact, he was Jonathan’s tormentor-in-chief. The former President’s wife, Dame Patience Jonathan was not spared. What the Information Minister lacks in eloquence of speech, he makes up with hard-hitting jabs.  Lai’s lies were successful.  Muhammadu Buhari defeated Jonathan in the Presidential election. Expectedly, Lai Mohammed was handsomely rewarded with a Ministerial appointment.  

              

 Anyone who thought he would change and give out facts as facts, had been proved wrong. He has carried on ever since, to borrow a management concept, because he believes in “half-truth of first-mover advantage”. This is a status that brings initial important competitive advantage, but it offers a cautionary lesson that backfires later on. Looking back, the Lies and half-truths emanating from the Information Minister are legion. Few will suffice. Not long ago, he said Nigeria had become “safer”, only for insecurity to worsen. Two months ago, disturbed by the incredible ascendancy of Labour Party Presidential candidate, Mr Peter Obi, Lai Mohammed threw another bombshell of a lie, alleging without evidence, that Obi was the unseen hand behind the #Endsars movement two years ago.   

                            

That, of course, didn’t stick. Rather, “Obidient” has become a political movement, an ever-present conversation in Nigeria and beyond. And his message is resonating everywhere.  Anytime Lai Mohammed speaks, things seem to get even worse. I don’t know why.  His latest gaffe that the “worst is over” as far as insecurity is concerned, is by all accounts, out of touch with the present reality. At a press briefing last week, together with two other Ministers and three heads of Ministries, the Information Minister said the “worst of insecurity in the country is over”. Really!    On the surface, this is supposed to be good news, but the truth is that, it was half-truth. Few days later, about nine persons were abducted in Ondo state on their way from a funeral and a hefty ransom demanded. Insecurity is still squeezing everyone to a corner.

 

Two days ago, the convoy of Sen. Ifeanyi Ubah was attacked near a market in Enugwu-Ukwu, Anambra state. Ubah however escaped assassination, but some of his security aides were reported killed. For sometime, that brusque style of Lai Mohammed of telling the truth selectively was somewhat effective politically for the government he serves. No longer. For over seven years, his demagoguery gave him that all-important oxygen of publicity in the position he holds.    

    

But hubris sometimes do catch up with people who have this proclivity for maligning the truth. Unfortunately, it’s the country that pays direly for their mistakes.  As I stated in this column in April this year, Lai Mohammed likes defining truth downwards.  For him, the event of the moment supersedes all things else. As we all know, Nigeria is still sailing through rough seas. Every sector of our national life is bleeding. Contrary to his claim that the “worst of insecurity is over”, insecurity has taken a new dangerous dimension. Senator Uba can better tell his traumatic experience when he recovers from his close shave with death.

 

But the ruling APC, and it’s spokesman, are still in denial that insecurity is ravaging the country. The evidence of that is everywhere. The other day, he claimed that a string of successes had been recorded in the fight against Boko Haram, ISWAP, bandits and other criminal elements. He boasted that the Federal Government had done well in ensuring safety in rail transportation. “We are proud that in our time, Nigerians are once again able to travel by rail, this time in total comfort and safety”.  He added, “I am very proud of our security forces , our men and women in uniform, they are living up to the billing.

 

The camps of the terrorists have been decimated, and thousands of the terrorists and their families are surrendering in their droves”. He feebly argued that the effectiveness of the security forces had been enhanced by the leadership of President  Buhari and the “unwavering commitment of the Armed Forces and its leadership”.  Few hours after his vain boast, terrorists attacked Kaduna-Abuja bound train. About 970 passengers were on board the train. Few were killed and hundreds abducted. They are being released in piecemeal, with a hefty ransom by a negotiator now in the net of the security agency. 

                

This is where we are today: As long as our political environment breeds opportunists who excel in pure demagoguery and telling lies, so long will Nigeria remain unsafe. There are many Lai Mohammeds in this country. Admitted many of us have hidden flaws, what psychologists call “personality quirks”, but some people have mastered how to control them successfully and resist their exploitation by people around them. The flaws in the likes of Lai Mohammed could be as result of overweening pride. Such people, psychologists say, view admitting the truth as a sign of weakness.        

                  

It’s also a reflection of the inner character of the individual concerned. Many in political offices today tend to be so immersed in the specifics of strategy that they really pause to think how much they miss useful insights if they had paid attention to analogical reasoning which is a powerful tool for sparking breakthrough ideas. 


That’s not just Lai Mohammed’s dilemma, but that of others entrusted with information management governments’ agencies.  Recall few years ago, when the same Lai Mohammed said, matter-of-factly, that Boko Haram had been “technically defeated”, only for the insurgents to carry out a deadly offensive in the North East, taking hundreds of female students into captivity. The parents of the victims are still in turmoil.

*Onwukwe is a commentator on public issues  

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