Judul : Critiquing snippets from Garba Shehu’s book
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Critiquing snippets from Garba Shehu’s book
Recently, eminent Nigerians converged at the Shehu Musa Yar’Adua Centre, Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, for the launch of Malam Garba Shehu’s book, “According to the President: Lessons from a presidential spokesperson’s experience”.
While I have not read the whole book, I saw snippets in the media. For instance, one of the snippets trending in the media is the admission by Shehu that he fabricated the much-publicised story of rats invading the office of President Muhammadu Buhari. According to Shehu, the story was a deliberate “spin” to divert public attention from the mounting speculation about the President’s medical condition and ability to govern, following the return of the President from a three-month medical vacation in the United Kingdom on August 19, 2017.
The former presidential spokesman explained that the announcement of the Presidency that Buhari would be working from home, rather than his office, further stirred public scepticism, amid the already tense situation created by the leader of Indigenous Peoples of Biafra, Nnamdi Kanu, who claimed that Buhari died and was replaced by a Sudanese Clone named Jibrin. From what I gathered from the snippets, Shehu made that confession in Chapter 10 of his book, titled “Rats, Spin and All That”.
As somebody professionally trained to believe that truth in public communication is crucial for building trust and fostering a healthy society, I found myself in very deep emotional confusion after reading the confession of Shehu. I did not know whether to start laughing or crying. Although I am an avid reader of books across disciplines, I immediately became disinclined to read the book, not knowing if it would be worth the time doing so.
Unless Shehu wants Nigerians to believe that some “human” rats (or a cabal) had unfettered access to the office of the President in his absence, he engaged in unpardonable unethical conduct by making up a story, no matter what prompted him to do so. If Nnamdi Kanu was spreading disinformation by claiming that Jibrin from Sudan replaced Buhari, should a presidential spokesman debunk falsehood with falsehood? Two wrongs cannot make a right.
Based on the snippets from the book, Shehu confessed that the rat story he made up ranked among the five top news items in the BBC World News Bulletin. If information emanating from the Presidency in Nigeria can no longer be trusted internationally, then we are in big trouble in this country.
It was needless for Shehu to have fabricated a story, more so, such an embarrassing one, to deflect attention from the health condition of the President. After all, the President is human. No human being is immune to sickness. If Shehu had reasoned professionally under the circumstances that he found himself when the President returned and was working from home, there were other things he would have done to douse the anxiety in the country, instead of fabricating the rat story.
I remember that while the President was on that long medical vacation, the Minister of Information, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, took some media aides of the President, including Femi Adesina and Lauretta Onochie, to the United Kingdom, where they took photographs with the President and published them in the media. Luckily, technology has made it possible to verify the date that a photograph was taken.
Instead of acting professionally, Shehu resorted to blatant falsehood under the guise of a spin. Granted that a spin is not totally unacceptable in public communication when and where necessary, it does not include the dissemination of fabricated and unfounded information.
Like I said earlier in this article, the truth is vital in public communication for us to build trust and a healthy society. This standard cannot be compromised for any reason. Public communication is one of the tools in public relations. I may not have the luxury to start differentiating between propaganda and public relations here. Although people use them interchangeably, they are not the same thing.
Propaganda has negative connotations, such as fixing, sugar coating and whitewashing. In propaganda, facts are slanted, distorted or twisted to mislead the public. On the other hand, public relations (the job of presidential spokespersons) aims to build a reputation and create goodwill. As a career, modern public relations has outgrown propaganda. This is by the way.
A presidential spokesperson going all out to fabricate stories for whatever purposes would injure the reputation of the President and make him lose the goodwill of the people. I leave it to Nigerians to measure Buhari’s reputation and the amount of goodwill he enjoyed among Nigerians by the time he left office on May 28, 2023, after spending eight years in office as the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
Unless Shehu intends to do restitution to Nigerians for feeding them with fabricated information from the Presidential Villa, I guess that if he had consulted a meticulous publisher, he would have been advised to leave out the chapter on the rat invasion hoax in the Villa, at least, for the sake of national interest and to avoid worsening the country’s already battered international image.
Finally, I cannot end this article without appreciating the book reviewer at the book launch, Professor Umaru Pate, the Vice Chancellor of Federal University, Kashere, Gombe State. I first met him in 2014 at Premier Hotel, Ibadan, Oyo State, where he was one of our resource persons at a workshop on Conflict Sensitive Reporting organised for selected journalists by the United Nations Development Programme. It was indeed a memorable encounter. I cannot forget in a hurry the knowledge that we gained from him during that workshop.
However, I beg to differ with the erudite Professor of Mass Communication that Shehu’s book should be recommended for journalists, political aides, PR professionals and students of governance and media studies, seeking to understand how power communicates and how communication shapes power.
I am sceptical about using a book celebrating disinformation to groom people in media leadership development, which is among the things that Shehu wants to achieve with his book. Power should not communicate with falsehood. Rather than shape, communication with falsehood corrupts power. Corruption of power undermines democracy, creates economic instability, inequality and social injustice.
- Dr Nzomiwu writes via chekmma@yahoo.com
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