When a government adopts falsehood as policy

When the global corruption watchdog, Transparency International (TI) released its 2017 Corruption Perception Index (CPI), which ranked Nigeria 148 out of 180 countries despite the efforts of the Buhari administration to tackle corruption in the country, the federal government went into denial mode, accusing TI of bias. After reeling off its own facts on fighting corruption in Nigeria, the presidency dismissed TI’s report as “a political distraction” given that some critics of his administration are patrons of the watchdog. It did not matter to the government that as an opposition party, it had consistently relied on TI’s ranking to discredit the previous government and position itself as a better alternative.
The rational thing for the government to do if it disagreed with Nigeria’s ranking, is to fault the integrity of the primary data source (methodology) – which was not generated by the watchdog anyway – used for the study. But no, it did not. It couldn’t have anyway. Instead, it went the lazy way – attacking TI just because some of its board members, who are Nigerians and are within their rights to hold their personal views, are critics of the Buhari administration. What a shame!
But if we thought that was the lowest the government could go, it descended further into outright lies when the Brookings Institution, drawing its data from the World Poverty Clock, released its report, showing that Nigeria has overtaken India as the country with the most people living in extreme poverty in the world. Details of the report shows that Nigeria now has over 87 million of its citizens living in extreme poverty compared to India’s with just 73 million. But whereas, India, with a population of 1.35 billion, has continued to see a rapid decline in the number of its population leaving under extreme poverty, Nigeria, with just a population of under 200 million, has continued to see its desperately poor population rising at an alarming rate. According to the report, extreme poverty is growing by six people every minute in Nigeria while poverty in India continues to fall.
Pronto, the government rolled out its propaganda machines to counter the report with otherwise intelligent ministers coming to voice inanities and outright lies to refute a fact that is as clear as daylight. It did not bother the government that every rational individual with basic knowledge of economics can see clearly how its ill-conceived policies since 2015 have been throwing millions of Nigerians into extreme poverty.
Now, even more insulting to Nigerians is government’s feeble attempts to deny and fault a UN report that the Nigerian government had paid “huge ransom” for the release of the kidnapped Dapchi school girls in February. The report identified these ransom payments as the major factor fuelling the nefarious activities of Boko Haram and other terrorist groups in the region.
Now, virtually everyone with knowledge of Boko Haram activities and the negotiations that went into the release of some of the Chibok and later Dapchi girls know that the Nigerian government has been paying ransoms to Boko Haram – and it is indeed these ransom payments that is fuelling further kidnaps by the sect and largely funding the activities of the terrorist sect. It therefore beggars belief that the government is trying to deny the obvious!
From these instances, what is becoming clear is that the government has adopted a policy of deliberate falsehood and disinformation as a means of communication and it is doing great damage to the image of the country. These reports are results of carefully conducted research and facts gathered on the field by respected and apolitical international/global agencies. The reports are respected and accepted world-wide and most countries rely on them to formulate policies and or programmes. It therefore does not show us in good light when the Nigerian government tries to deny these reports just because they reveal inconvenient truths.
The government may have come to power through propaganda, but it cannot continue to govern through propaganda while labelling all critical voices liars and agents of corruption. It may rely on propaganda to keep its support base, but it cannot rely on propaganda to gain international support and recognition. It’s rather making a mockery of the country and its intelligent people.
Besides, the government’s belligerent attitude to factual reports and data about the country questions its capacity to listen to genuine criticisms and change course when it’s in the wrong. With a government that is impervious to criticism and accepts no wrong, Nigeria may be headed for the rocks except a miracle happens!