Tony Abolo
As a communicator by profession and a communication teacher, I am often amused when Nigerians tell each other at fora, online and in the quiet relaxation spots that we are discussing and raising our voices on issues, and complain afterwards that it seems no one is listening or responding or addressing our grievances.
Well to a very large extent, it is all so true. One of the early things you learn in the art of communication is EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION. Yes you can communicate all you can, but until you are heard, and there is a feedback (appropriate response) there cannot be said to be communication going on.
In Nigeria and for longer than our touted 65 years, post-independence life, in fact since 1860 when Lagos became a colonized spot, we have been on this business of making noise and thinking we are engaging each other.
We only end up either in a shouting match, talking across each other, over the heads of others and consider that we are communicating.
A typical example of Nigerians in communication is a market place or a public square, a family meeting, a drinking parlour and you have captured where I am heading to.
The situation is now made worse and more cantankerous with the mobile phone and internet. Never mind that that has introduced another dimension to the challenge.
Anyone, anywhere can initiate an opinion on any issue that one fancies. And when one disagrees with the opinion, if you are patient to read the thread of the responses, it is about disagreeable comments, insults and then the real Nigerianess is exposed; opinions driven by sentiments, ethnic perceptions and religious biases.
Then of course follows a barage of insults and a reference to unconnected issues and persons, laced with insults about the opinion writer’s ethnic background which the responder finds despicable and far below what the responder would consider acceptable.
I guess at this point you clearly can see that our process of communication does not produce clarity of thoughts, of complete meanings, of real dialogue.
We only end up sending conflicting and confusing messages. You then wonder why we spend so much energy attempting what ends up being ineffective communication.
You can raise this discourse at another level, that of government, the public and public communication.
Here, we have carried our repulsive habits to the public square. An issue emanates from a policy and unlike the kind of civil service processes that Nigeria began with in the 60s, what you now find is not only that the Governor or President is speaking and that the Commissioner for Information or the Minister for Information is expatiations on policies and responding to public queries or anxieties, you find all sorts of hitherto unknown groups, representing tendencies and internet that are not helpful to the issues weighing in and then the interest amplifies the conversations and then you hardly know thereafter where the logic lies or who has a clear understanding of what the policy stands for or what the public should make of any new policy.
What happens to reveal where they are, the chairman of the ruling political party or a ward chairman joins in to justify (usually from a party’s angle) and we are left more confused or angrier than we began.
The situation is not helped when we have a national issue. That is where, you get Nigerians at their “best”. The Ohanaeze, the Arewa Northern Forum, the Afenifere, the PANDEF all start to offer opinions which may not be so constructive, but are offered from geopolitical stand points.
To any observer you hardly can make the correct perspective from all of these various opposing viewpoints. I have a tendency to think at these junctures that the media has no need to give all these conflicting sound bites any volume.
But then they say, it is democracy. Now, should democracy be so noisy? This is where you must give thumbs up to the Chinese democracy system.
Conversations are controlled and directed to a purpose. I think ours is just a me too, I have to be heard.
In the end, we complain that “Our opinions” are not being carried. This pain of talking across each other, more like a communication of the deaf is evident in our security crisis, a situation made more difficult because the commander-in-chief is not coming up with a clear cut voice.
A situation not helpful by just issuing press releases. Then comes the real Nigeriannes, the Chief of Defence will speak, the Brigadier – General for Communication will speak on the same issue, a retired general would weigh in, then GUMI and Shehu Sani will speak, then the political parties will each offer either a “Strategy” or blame.
In the mix is the Bandit leader or ISWAP Press Releases or Tik Tok video. You can now clearly see that after 10 years we are not the wiser about insurgency and how to address it.
To worsen our communication debacle, Trump sends out a tweet and the Media is now part of the conversation on “strategy” and “how to”. And lest I forget, the House of Representatives and the Senate are deliberating and the media is reporting the views and debates and the motions.
If you are like me, after reading all the daily newspapers and watching all the TV stations and listening to all the Radio Stations, are you more enlightened?
I have advocated for what I call the media being in a collective over the Nigerian project. It could help set the tone for clarity on national issues.
It would then help if the Public Sector would use the proper channels and protocols in public communication. There has to be order in how we react to events, issues and persons in Nigeria, otherwise we would be making lots of noise and not communicating.
Proper communication produces coherence, meaning and order. We may all need to pull back for now. Now because our attempted conversations are akin to a conversation between the deaf, we are unable to address the twin challenges, Dr. Olu Fasan describes as “Nigeria is neither a true nation, nor a true state”.
Meaning we lack the critical ingredients of nationhood as we are unable to have a genuine national conversation that can produce a collective political will that can address a festering ten year long insecurity and still no visible path to socio-economic progress. These weaknesses have stayed so long that they constitute existential threat to the Country.
We hardly can state what is indeed describable as “of national interest”. To achieve the genuine national interest, leaders as well as citizens must lay aside parochial interests and focus on the task that we have never ever embarked upon – nation building and state building.
We lost it in 2014 during the Jonathan’s National Conference and still, in the Buhari days, when the report got put inside the cooler dust bin. We seem to be in the same trajectory even now, when a simple Constitutional Review exercise cannot produce a wide scale acceptable document.
It is then pertinent to combine that without engaging in the collective move on nation and state building, Nigeria can never fulfill its true potential and with it, the emancipation of the Black Race, a restoration of the Black race the world over and the loss of our true pride of place, in today’s geographical space.
Nigerians are jobless. all they know is to disturb on social media