Please, somebody tell me it’s some kind of a joke. I woke up one morning and heard on the radio that there was this push by our new information minister to “rebrand” our country, Nigeria. At first I thought it was an attempt at humour, come April 1st, it would be revealed as an elaborate April fools day joke. April has come and gone, still the whole rebranding theme is on and I’m appalled. You’ve heard the quote that “a rose by any other name is still a rose.” Well, common sense dictates that a scoundrel by any other name is still a scoundrel. I’m a patriotic citizen of Nigeria, and it is because of this love which I have for my country that I will tell it like it is, hoping that we will not behave like the cowed citizens in the fable who were too hypocritical to tell the silly emperor that he was naked, or as my American friend would say, buck nekkid. For those of you who are not familiar with the story, let me summarise. An emperor wanted the very best tailor to make the most astonishing garment ever seen by man (or in his case, never seen by man!) After much ado, he finally got an extremely crafty tailor who assured him that he was truly the man for the job. So he began to spin his invisible outfit, yes, invisible. You see, he was actually sewing nothing, but convinced the emperor that he was onto something big. The emperor called his advisers who were too terrified to tell him the tailor was sewing nothing. Finally, the outfit was done (according to the con man/tailor/rip-off artiste). The town-crier went round the town announcing that the emperor would parade himself around the town in his never-been-seen outfit (pun intended). On the D-day, every single person in the kingdom gathered and the anticipation was palpable. What would this amazing outfit look like? Finally, out came the emperor, and there was a gasp as everybody’s jaw dropped to the ground, but nobody dared say anything. So the emperor went round the town, oblivious of the sentiment in his people’s hearts. That is till one little boy pointed to the emperor and laughing very hard indeed said what everybody knew all along, the emperor is naked! This was the cue everyone was waiting for as the whole kingdom erupted in uncontrollable laughter and the king, very ashamed indeed, sheepishly fled the place.
Does this scenario sound familiar? Somebody should tell the government that no amount of air-brushing and sloganeering is going to change one single thing about Nigeria’s image without first of all tackling the root problem. If an apple is rotten from the core, no matter how enticing it is made to appear on the outside by painting it a very pretty colour, the moment you bite into it, the decay inside will rear its ugly head. An ostrich may decide to bury its head in the sand in the mistaken belief that as long as it can’t see anyone, nobody will see its big, fat rump sticking out in the air like a sore thumb.
My main network of choice is Zain Nigeria. In the recent past, they had some network challenges that made me seriously consider switching to another network. Thank God they’ve sorted themselves out. Let me tell you, if they had not gone back to fix the problem, no amount of glossy TV adverts, radio adverts, magazine, newspaper, billboard, in fact, if they like, let them advertise in the open skies and on the surface of the ocean, nothing would have stopped me from looking for a more stable network. How can you expect to convince other people when you haven’t succeeded in making any impact on your own people? The irony of the whole issue of rebranding is that it is those countries with the most homework to do that take out expensive slots in international media trying to persuade people that indeed they have something. A good market sells itself. How many times have you seen successful countries like the United States of America, Britain and a host of others advertising themselves? They don’t have to! In fact, it’s all they can do to control the flood of people from those very countries advertising themselves from overfilling their own countries. Go to the nearest embassy and see people desperate to leave this country. People are willing to die just to get to these perceived Eldorados. People travel through desert, pay huge sums of money, swim across shark-infested waters, and pack themselves like tuna in containers, just to get to these places, why? Because things work in those places. There is constant electricity, not so for PHCN which has a chronic epileptic power supply problem. There is safe water supply for every home, while in Nigeria, even the so-called cities lack water, much more the hinterlands. The roads are paved and beautiful, in Nigeria, the size of the pot-holes in most roads can swallow a tractor, how much more, smaller vehicles. There is a welfare package for the citizens, here you’re on your own, in fact most people in Lagos who criss-cross the Third Mainland bridge on a daily basis are confronted with the sight of the people who have built shanty-towns in the middle of that stinking body of water, yet, these are citizens of this country. In fact, I don’t want to go on, because it upsets me to think that this country has all that it takes to become truly great, yet corruption has been its bane. We have resources, human and material; we occupy a peaceful part of the world: no earthquakes, Tsunamis, wildfires, hurricanes, tornadoes, cyclones. What more do we want from God?
How can you talk about rebranding when a country that produces oil barely has any functioning refinery, but has to take its crude to faraway lands, at great costs to be refined? How shameful is that, yet nobody says anything. If President Yar’Adua decides to build brand new refineries within the rest of his tenure, I tell you, it can be done. People barricade themselves behind many gates because of insecurity; kidnapping has become the order of the day. The police is ridiculously untrained, hardly any case is solved in this country. When Funsho Williams was murdered, the police invited detectives from London to help in their investigations. Even they threw in the towel when they discovered that the crime scene had been hopelessly compromised. Sanitation can only be guaranteed in the confines of your own home, step outside and be confronted by towering refuse everywhere. People defecate at every corner, and it all seems insurmountable.
Until Nigeria tackles the issues which have made Nigeria have a pride of place at the top three most corrupt nations in the world for so long, the whole rebranding effort will be an exercise in futility, borne out of naivety and doomed to a resounding failure, in fact, it will only expose this country to further international ridicule. I think the federal Government should borrow a leaf from Governor Babatunde Raji Fashola who knows that actions speak louder than words. Who would have believed that Lagos State can come to the level it presently has. That is the spirit, don’t just talk the talk; you must walk the walk.
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