De-marketing Nigeria in style

This would have been titled de-marketing Nigeria in “rhumba style”, but we are in the midst of serious national worry and embarrassment here. Ras Kimono’s “rhumba style” is typically happy, smooth rhythm and dance. It was a song to which we danced with unfettered excitement and pure delight. Of course we were young and were readily swayed, even to the cadence of the times.

Kimono thereafter sang “Under Pressure”. This song which spoke to the societal ills of that era, also hinted at the need to arrest a decline that loomed. Rather than have you just dancing to the beat with the melodious sing-along, it brought us back to the place where our senses should be: the reality of the times. Kimono’s songs were refreshing and took us away from the monster Fuji music hits that had taken over the airwaves that era.

Then, Ras Kimono came with another hit. Like a breath of fresh air in the music scene in Nigeria, we reveled in the song, and the new slang. And while we danced and danced, we couldn’t answer the question he asked. He asked in his heavily accented patois, whata gwan ina this our country? Whata gwan ina this our nation? What’s gwan became a street parlance, a slang for various occasions, but the real owners of the question knew themselves.

The current realities need us to ask “What’s Gwan” again, anew. Now that we have got to a juncture at which we are compelled to market our country, we need to ask what’s gwan.

Just as the Igbo believe that a good product already markets itself, there would not have been any need to compel Nigerians to stop de-marketing the country if the handlers were themselves good salesmen of the country. The huge gap in marketing Nigeria and de-marketing her could be filled easily if the leaders in the enterprise play their roles well. The chief marketers, the marketing managers do a very bad job of promoting the image and the good sides of our country but want the followers to do what they have not done. The leaders pretend that we shouldn’t follow examples. If people leading us in the marketing business, like Dave Umahi and Lai Mohammed and co. were doing a good job, they would not need to tell their fellow citizens how to behave or how to react to their country’s everyday displays. Then we were not just in the market, we were a part of the control in the market.

These people do not need to be told that the Natasha Akpoti episode was on some foreign news outlets recently. Those news channels which are outside the control of those who want us to stop de-marketing Nigeria at all costs, are also out of the control of the followers. The Natasha episode is naturally one form of marketing or the other.

The country is being de-marketed in a special style by ‘senior men’ and ministers. Their deeds weigh far more than what others far from the top can do. We recently made waves all over the world and attracted flak from Africa and beyond. That day, we were in Japan for an international exhibition. When people of other nations, especially Africans were exhibiting their potentials, Nigeria was exhibiting empty stalls while the officials were nowhere to be found. Soon, the unpreparedness of those who were flown from Nigeria to market Nigeria became glaring. Nigeria soon became the centre of negative attraction and unwanted excoriation.

Those we officially hired to go to Japan abandoned their primary duty of promoting Nigeria and market her to private citizens who took the initiative. The officials got lost in frivolities so much that protecting the image of the country was left to unprepared but courageous individual Nigerians in Tokyo.

While these patriotic individuals battled the ugly misconceptions instantly created by the neglect by the relevant officials, the Nigerian government capped the whole scenario with a lie.

They issued a statement in which they claimed that Japan had designated a special visa for Africans that would make them a kind of ‘citizens’ of a city in that country. Africans thought this was due to the sheer size and marketability of Nigeria but the Japanese authorities promptly denied the statement and called it outright falsehood. It was embarrassing and debilitating. That episode was de-marketing at its highest notch, and many Africans were not happy at the tawdriness of these Nigerian officials. They saw that it had not just cost Nigeria as a country, but that the entire continent had been smeared.

The country just moved on. Or, have we heard anything that could deter a repeat of that kind of horrid episode? There were no questions asked and nothing to take as lessons for the officials. We have moved on, waiting for when the social media would remind us that we had been on that route before. Then Nigerians who demand accountability and morality would be dragged as those ‘de-marketing Nigeria’.

The United States Congress debated violence in Nigeria event by event, cycle by cycle and timeline by timeline. The Nigerian legislature is more interested in the number of defections witnessed in the states and the Senate, and in the House of Representatives. Lawmakers, with no serious interest in tackling the killings around them must have watched the sitting also. They would rather sing to massage the president and caress the incessant killings and arrive at a worthless resolution. Then the cycle goes on and on.

By so doing, won’t Nigerians ask questions and make demands of our lawmakers? When they ask such questions and use the only means through which they know they can be heard, which is the social media, they would thereby be de-marketing Nigeria, whereas the lawmakers who triggered the questions would be left with their circus show to keep riling Nigerians. So, who actually does the de-marketing of the country here: government and its officials or Nigerians grumbling at their ineptitude?

Since the intervention of the United States in the raging and unrelenting insecurity in Nigeria, there has been a country de-marketing spree. The American President Donald Trump said there is Christian genocide in Nigeria and that for this, he was returning Nigeria to the status of Country of Particular Concern. He added that if nothing was done to reverse the trend by the Nigerian state, American troops might step in, including “boots on the ground” to tackle it.

Since Trump made that statement, the government has increased its efforts to market Nigeria. Tinubu has tried through various new means to change the direction its product, Nigeria, is facing in the international market. It hasn’t been good-looking but the government has tried hard to portray the country differently in the face of up-swing of terror attacks on Nigerians.

In fact, the federal government under President Bola Tinubu has actively engaged resources to ensure this. How? Rather than first engage diplomatically, the government deployed propagandists everywhere to deflect the real issues. Reno Omokri did try to use a former United States mayor for this image-laundering but it went terribly bad. It went so bad that Reno Omokri has taken flight from that issue and has abandoned attempts to create a different narrative from what Nigerians have from various reports.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs agreed to be engaged by Piers Morgan. He prepared for the questions that might come and took his time to study the issues before attending to the effervescent and cantankerous Morgan. How did it end?

It’s worthy to ask, like Ras Kimono did: Whata gwan ina this our country? Whata gwan ina this our nation? This question stands unanswered still, and even becomes more pertinent with the confusion all over country.