WAC: A war marred by communication collision- Ik Muo, PhD

 

When the speaker and he to whom he speaks do not understand each other, that is necromancy

I have forgotten to source of this quotation but it is very germane  to our discourse today. There is also another angle to this type of necromancy: it is when the speaker confuses the listener with conflicting information. Three years ago, I mused  on the confusing communication tendencies of this administration, and argued that while it has been in the character of our previous government, this change-propelled administration has made it a cornerstone and I gave an example. ‘On 26/11/13, a group of rebel governors, led other nPDP members to join the APC and the great Lai Mohammed described the defection as a strategic merger that would give Nigeria and Nigerians a new lease of life. Five years down the line, the same group of rebels formed the rAPC and decamped mostly to PDP and the same Lai declared: Today is a special day. God has answered our prayers by exposing our political traitors. God has removed stones from our rice. (Ik Muo: Communication Collision, Pharaseesm & Change Management. The Guardian, 23/8/18). So, the first act of political harlotry was strategic while the second was divinely ordained to de-stone the APC rice   Communication Collision (CC) is the tendency to say opposing things depending on the time and circumstances or political brethren contradicting each other in the market square; when what one said previously collides with what the same person says presently or when two people, supposedly in the same camp publicly contradict or lambast each other. It involves one contradicting himself, contradicting his comrade or contradicting the past with the present. This tendency, which I warned about 3 years ago has become so professionalized that we cannot have it better elsewhere and it has become the  major on-doing of this WAC( War Against Coro). Of course, I treated a similar matter when I wrote on the forked-tongue tendencies of the Federal government last week (Ik Muo: Chatham House Declaration, Forked Tongues and Our Security Catastrophe; BusinessDay, 25/2/21). I also note that in Nigeria of today, everything is a war: War Against Corruption, War against IPOB, War against banditry, War Against ASUU, War against Sunday Igboho,  War against fake news and its twin brother, hate-speech, and War Against EndSARS. Probably, that is why nothing is working because we are fighting many wars in many directions at the same time. 

 In June, 2020, the PTF on Coro unveiled its Ten-Pillar Multisectoral Pandemic Response Plan for WAC and one of the pillars was Risk Communication and Community Engagement. How can that  communication pillar work when we have 1001 institutions and persons communicating with us on the WAC? We have the Minister of Information, Minister of Health and his junior counterpart, the PTF represented by the Boss; The Coordinator of PTF( Dr Aliu), The PTF National Incident Commander, NCDC, NAFDAC, National Primary Health Care Development Agency, Ministry of Education, National Research Institutes and at times the amorphous Presidency!  Even Okonjo Iwealla of the WTO was the first to communicate on the vaccine availability in and for, Nigeria.So, why won’t there Communication Collision(CC) or confusion in the land over Coro? . Let’s start from the vaccine matter. Nobody was sure of the quantity, the type, the source, the arrival date, the projected number of people to be vaccinated, the cost of the vaccines and the cost of the vaccination. The figures have varied from 100000 to 4m, to 47m, to 57m, to 109 m to 120m while the arrival date had moved from early 2021, to late January, to early February to late February to April until the Minister of Health confessed that he was no longer sure of the date while NPHCDA boss informed us that the date would be fixed by COVAX. And just on 2/3/21, we took delivery of 3.9m doses, just enough to vaccinate about 1% of Nigerians and we held a reception party for the vaccines, when Ghana & Ivory Coast had already started jabbing! 

And since COVAX is free, why was a government official telling us that the delay in arrival was caused by negotiation over prices and why was BUA Group and CACOVID quarreling over who paid for what? Recently, NAFDAC gleefully announced the approval of AstraZeneca brand for Nigeria. Good enough. It is not only Willie (Anambra Governor) that is working; this shows that NAFDAC is also working. But other questions arose. If NAFDAC has just approved a vaccine for Nigeria, which vaccines were CACOVID, Nigerian Governors Forum and other groups promising to buy for us? Or was any group working from answer to question? And how many people are we planning to vaccinate? 109m, 144m, 75%? or 50%? The figure depends on who is speaking and on what occasion.

Long before all this, Nigeria had received the Russian Vaccine and at an event attended by The Russian Ambasador, the Minister of Health told us how the vaccines would be validated by the appropriate authorities. Few days later, the Minister of State for health looked us in the face and declared denied the reception of any Russian vaccines. Hear him “We have not yet received the vaccine and, to the best of my knowledge, it is not yet ready; the Russian Ambassador and the Deputy Head of Mission only visited us to give us an update’

 At the presentation of Russian Vaccines to the Nigerian Government, Abuja

However, while the Federal Government is still trying to put its Coro vaccine and vaccination project in order, the Bauchi Government is sure of what it wants to do. The state may not have any Coro-Vaccine agenda but it plans to vaccinate 800,000 cows at the cost of N32m. As you can see, the number is certain and the amount is certain and that is how things should be done. The PTF or Ministry of Health or NPHCDA should go for tutorials in Bauchi.

We all recall when the FG directed students in exit classes (SS3, JSS3 and Primary6) to resume so as to write exams, but the same government had earlier declared that Nigerian students would not write WAEC. While the confusion lasted, the Minister of State for Education advised parents thus ‘ don’t send your children to school if you ae not sure of their safety’!!! The Minister of Education later said that they were ‘forced’ by states to open the schools. He was in effect singing ‘it wasn’t me, that hit-song released by Shaggy in 2000.  The PTF told us that we had flattened the curve but at the same time told us not to rejoice and while it declared that the second wave was upon us, the Oyo State Government said ‘na lie’ while the Kogi State  Governor or government (they are not different!) said there was no Coro in the land, even though the government is said to have budgeted some billions for the  vicious enemy. The great Lai had told us that coronised corpses would not be released for burial but we all knew what happened to the very special corpse of Abah-Kyari. And then, we remember the famed mysterious deaths in Kano. The Minister of Health said about 60% was caused by Coro. The PTF Technical Team said that there was no evidence but that they would investigate and then said that its preliminary reports indicated that most of the deaths were Coro-related. The governor of Kano set up its own team  led by Muktar Gadanya, a Professor of Infectious Diseases from Bayero University Kano  and after its verbal-autopsy model declared that it was a mere16% and that the report by the Ministry of health or PTF should be thrown into the ocean. As at today, nobody is sure of what exactly happened. We don’t have the patience to follow through on any matter except it involves sharing money!

Like the groom at the wedding in Cana, I left for the best for the last: The famed ‘Chinese medical experts’. 

  The Chinese ‘Doctors’!

The Federal Ministries of Health and Education were literally fighting over who would have the upper hand in the ‘breaking-news’ reception of the Chinese experts who had come to help us give Coro a TKO (Technical Knock Out), even though Nigerian Medical Association had warned against the idea. And while the Minister of Education told us that they were already at work in our Isolation Centers, the Minister of Health said that the ‘doctors’ were not their guests while the Chinese Engineering Construction Company later informed us that they had come to teach its staff how to wear facemasks properly. We also later learnt that the Chinese and the materials worth about $2m, were sponsored by the CECC, and not a bilateral, Nigeria-China Affair. And nobody knew when the Chinese, who were welcomed like celebrities sneaked out of the country.

The government was also fond of alarmist communication, when their messages exacerbated the worries and anxieties of Nigerians, rather than soothing them. This is contrary to the fundamentals of crises communication. There was a time the government told us that we would soon start counting bodies in hundreds; that  Coro is just beginning( you ain’t seen nothing yet) and that more than 80% of the victims were not in the isolation centers

As Zeburudaya would ask, ‘are you see what I am saw’? Have you seen why a good number of Nigerians look at the whole Coro thing with serious misgivings? And what image does hosting a grand reception for vaccines, (just enough to cover1% of Nigerians)  convey both in Nigeria and elsewhere?

Just the other day, somebody said we should provide solutions when criticizing the government. I am not criticizing the government. I am just ‘reporting’ what is happening and drawing attention to areas that have k-leg; where 1+1 does not give 2. In any case, you only advise somebody who does not know what to do; not one who knows what to do but fails to do it.  Alright, here is my advice on this Coro communication and CC. The government should set up a unified  and centralized communication structure for Coro (after all we run a centralized democracy) or a decentralized structure in which different agencies are in charge of communicating different aspects of the Coro affair. 

I also advise that the Minister of Information should not have any hand in the matter.  I know that PMB will not accept the last part of the advice!

-Ik Muo, PhD.  Department of Business Administration, OOU, Ago-Iwoye.08033026625