Governments avoid communication for concealment – experts

Recently, the Public Relations Consultants of Nigeria (PRCAN) gathered Nigerian stakeholders to discuss the imperative of communications in governance. But an aspect that was not deeply discussed was, in spite of the imperatives, why various governments still avoid embracing communication in governance.

Media practitioners who attempted answers attributed governments’ deliberate aversion to communications as part of governance strategy to concealment, lack of understanding and  intentional plan to evade accountability and transparency in governance.

“Real communications, which involves feedback, will force governments into accountability as they need to explain their intentions, get feedback from the people,” Chido Nwakanma, CEO,  Blueflower Communications, said.

Nwakanma, who is also the president of PRCAN, further said that sometimes the governed input will not favour ‘vanity’ projects as the people would prefer simple projects that address their needs, saying “not many governments would really want to be accountable to the people.”

Similarly, John Ehiguese, CEO, MediaCraft, a PR agency in Lagos, said some governments have something to hide and don’t want to be overtly transparent. According to him, lack of communication clearly helps impunity, which is the bane in the Nigerian environment, as “some of them disregard feedback, which completes the circle of communication as unnecessary.”

Speaking at the lecture, Kayode Fayemi, Ekiti State governor, said one of the most profound challenges of governance in Nigeria was the deficit of trust between the state and society. The relationship between the government and the governed is severely undermined by a distrust of the government and a pervasive lack of faith in national institutions, according to him. “It is not an exaggeration to say that Nigerians nurse a profound scepticism about the intentions of their political leaders, and about the capacity of institutions to deliver on the promise of democracy. In fact, it is fair to say that most Nigerians have adopted cynicism as their default attitude towards politics and politicians,” the governor said.

He further said that the conduct of politicians since the onset of the Fourth Republic in May 1999, had done little to alter the perception of politicians and public office-holders as thieves.

Stating that no government, no matter how well-intentioned, can successfully conceive and execute policy in a climate of distrust, he said, as public opinion and more importantly public confidence is the lifeblood of healthy democratic governance.

To him, the key to building trust between the government and the society is communication. Democracy, itself, is best understood as a continuous conversation by the citizenry about their values and priorities. The task of political elite is to take the pulse of the public, and develop the instincts and aspirations of the electorate into a political and public policy agenda. We tend to limit our understanding of this conversation between politicians and the electorate to election year, when the electioneering campaigns are marked by a constant one-way traffic of campaign promises.

The governor regretted that despite the tons of well-intentioned and even altruistic policy efforts to fight poverty and other societal challenges, these initiatives fail because they are largely imposed by the elite on the people. “They emerge from a process in which the government dictates solutions to the people rather than discussing with them. Consequently, these policies have little or no ownership or buy-in at the grassroots level and are often dead on arrival, he said, and therefore stated that for policies to work, the people have to take ownership of them and drive their execution.

By: Daniel Obi