WITH few months to the end of President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration, the first Nigerian female professor of mass communication, Stella Okunna, has said the President would have performed better if his spokespersons had the “courage” to tell him the “truth”.
Okunna was assessing the job done so far by Buhari’s spokespersons, Garba Shehu and Femi Adesina, as well as the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed.
Speaking in an interview with the Punch, she said the spokespersons failed to give the president the needed criticism and guidance to make him “do better”.
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She said, “It is a case of the good, the bad and the ugly. I think there is too much propaganda.
“That is the problem with people who speak for the government in Nigeria; too much praise-singing and too little constructive criticism of the leaders. Our duties as journalists are to be watchdogs; even as spokespersons, they are doing the work of a journalist for their principals.”
Okunna, who served as Anambra Commissioner for Information when Peter Obi was governor of the state, said the Buhari administration did not meet the yearnings and aspirations of Nigerians who voted him in on the mantra of change in 2015.
“They were saying former president Goodluck Jonathan was weak and incompetent. Did they perform? Isn’t insecurity now worse than when Jonathan was there? Has education not collapsed at all levels? Has the Human Development Index, all the indices therein, not worsened? Has unemployment not escalated? Look at fuel (in terms of subsidy payment and scarcity), look at poverty. We are now the poverty capital of the world,” she said.
Speaking of her stint in politics under Obi, who is now the presidential candidate of the Labour Party for the February election, Okunna said she was guided by the ethics of mass communication which she taught in the university.
“I didn’t know Mr Peter Obi from Adam. The first time I met him was at the swearing-in for commissioners. I was terrified because I knew that as a professor of communication, he could make me information commissioner. I also knew that if he did not do well, I would become a propagandist or a liar, if I didn’t leave.
“I remember I walked up to Peter Obi and I told him, ‘I don’t know who you are, I don’t know whether you will do well. If you don’t do well, my teaching subject in the university is in the ethics of mass communications, I will not lie to you,’ ” she said.
Sinafi Omanga is a multimedia journalist and researcher with the International Centre for Investigative Reporting. He has a keen interest in humanitarian reporting, social justice, and environment.
Twitter handle:
@OmangaSinafi
Email:
somanga@icirnigeria.org