APC: Will Abdullahi be Squealer or Goebbels or…?

LANGUAGE and politics are like Siamese twins, difficult to separate. There is hardly anything the political class, nay any human being can do without the instrumentality of language. In the fierce battle for the control of power levers, language comes in handy. The successful prosecution of political activities, including election campaigns, rests on how skillfully the political actors deploy the resources of language to woo the voters and convince doubters. Persuasion is often favoured by politicians from across the globe, although with a blend of euphemistic and dysphemistic constructions, as was the case in the recently concluded election in the United States.

It is against the background that people with high capacities to manipulate language and its resources, whether in the spoken or written form, are found across parties. Some of them are deliberately head-hunted for the task of positively projecting the interests of their parties or organisations.

One key party office that is central to this task is the office of the spokesperson or image-maker. Spokespersons, from time immemorial, have the responsibility of protecting the image of their organisations from attacks particularly in this dog eat dog world. Thus, spokespersons are saddled with the task of preventing the image of their organisations from any imaginary or real onslaught. When no attack is coming, they polish the image of the entities they defend and make same look neater.

The question has always been asked if there is a difference between propaganda and persuasion or the techniques employed in both. Austin Cline illuminated the darkness in his article in 2006. Cline says: “[In persuasion], while an argument is designed to establish the truth of a proposition, propaganda is designed to spread the adoption of an idea, regardless of its truth and always in a one-sided manner.”

Nigeria’s governing party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), two weeks ago, filled a void left by the appointment of Alhaji Lai Mohammed as Minister of Information, Culture and Tourism. He was the party’s national spokesperson until his appointment. He had also been spokesperson for the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), one of the legacies that coalesced into APC.

History is a better judge of how Lai Mohammed played his role as party image-maker. But his opponents are quick to point out that he is one politician who can sell a black material as white, call a saint a devil and vice versa. His supporters have rejected such label and defended him for doing what he is elected to do.

The new image-maker, Bolaji Abdullahi, graduated from the University of Lagos where he studied Mass Communication. He bagged a Master’s degree in Governance and Development Studies from the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex in the United Kingdom. He practised journalism for a while and rose to editorship before he joined politics in 2003 as Education Commissioner in Kwara State where he hails from. He thereafter flew on the wings of Saraki to get appointed as Minister of Youth Development and later Sports.  Saraki’s movement to APC from PDP saw Abdullahi doing same.

In politics, the new APC is a tested hand both locally in his state and on the national political scene. He is a close ally of Dr Bukola Saraki, the Senate President. What is he bringing on board? He revealed his plan in an interview with newsmen shortly after he was unanimously picked. He has promised to adopt a new strategy in winning the hearts of Nigerians to the APC and the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari.

“The way I see it is that there is no template for this kind of assignment. Different period calls for different approaches. Alhaji Lai Mohammed did very well as the spokesperson of the opposition party. But, I think that the temperament that one will need to speak for a ruling party; even if Lai Mohammed had continued now, is going to be quite different from the temperament one will need to speak as an opposition spokesperson.

“More than any other thing, I think that what I am going to do is to bring my many years of experience as a journalist and as an editor to bear on this assignment and be as professional as I can be. So, I don’t think we have the same assignment. He did excellently well, but I think that my assignment is different. I will essentially try to do my best,” he said.

For Abdullahi, who prides himself as a “thinker, writer and problem solver” in his Twitter handle, the new job requires deep thinking on the strategy he talked about. A good number of Nigerians who voted for the administration are regretting the decision. More worrisome for these Nigerians is the perpetual blame shifting to the past administrations. Buhari was elected to solve the problems which were well identified during the election campaign. Repeating the same jaded, worn out tales about the depth of decadence in the previous governments is proving to be counterproductive to the administration as the number of famished Nigerians continues to increase.

Three options are open to the new APC spokesperson: he may decide to wear the garment of Squealer, a character in George Orwell’s Animal Farm, who plays the role of image-maker for the “Comrade Napoleon” administration.

“Comrades,” said Squealer, “I trust that every animal here appreciates the sacrifice that Comrade Napoleon has made in taking this extra labour upon himself. Do not imagine, comrades, that leadership is a pleasure! On the contrary, it is a deep and heavy responsibility. No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be? Suppose you had decided to follow Snowball, with his moonshine of windmills– Snowball, who, as we now know, was no better than a criminal?”

Abdullahi may enter into the shoes of Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler’s propaganda minister who thought he was keeping the image of the ignoble Nazi government in Germany clean when in actual fact, he was adding to the decay of the government in every facet of life.

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State,” Goebbels said.

The new APC image-maker may spurn at the two historical characters and refuse to model their strategy and create something new, as he has said. But whatever model he chooses ultimately, he as an Editor will not like Goebbels, “Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play.” Should the press even be perceived as such, hunger and anger have combined to build Nigerians into a potent lie detector.