On The “Conference on Building A Corruption-Free Society”

While I have no problems with people and companies hosting conferences and symposia, I must say that reading about Timex Communications’ decision to hold a conference with the theme “Building a Corruption-Free Society: The Challenges of Communication", really got to me. Details of the news report on the conference can be found here.

It must be obvious to any communicator that people in a nation still considered to be one of the top three most corrupt nations in the world, don’t start organizing “international” conferences and talk-shops on building a corruption-free society, using communications. As anybody with minimum experience or training in communications will know, communications can only sell a good product. However, if the product is in some way fundamentally defective, the best communications and public relations can do is to make people try it once, after which they’ll never try it again. They may even make it a point to either sue the peddler of such a product or simply ignore or tune out his messages.

What everybody, from the average man on the street to the international development bodies and NGOs know is that Nigeria and Nigerians need to do more to tackle corruption than talk about it. We need to see the Nigerian government walking its talk on it anti-corruption stand. We need to see the churches, the mosques, and the schools, the media – everybody – playing their part in the war against corruption. We need to see more doing than talking.

Methinks organizing a conference, any conference at all, on corruption is being hasty about the corruption problem and how far we have come in tackling it. If, on the other hand, NAFDAC organizes a conference on the “Building a Society Without Fake Drugs” or something along those lines, I’d have no problems with it. The whole world knows where Nigeria was before the Akunyli-led administration took over the battle against fake and sub-standard drugs and where we are today. Organizing such a talk-shop or conference will not risk making Nigeria a laughing-stock among nations.

I have always admired Alhaji Kabir Dangogo, the former head of Corporate Affairs at Union Bank (which, while he was there, was the biggest bank in Nigeria), who now runs Timex Communications. An experienced and erudite professional and scholar in the field of Public and Corporate Communications, he is perhaps, the most internationally recognized Nigerian practitioner in the field.

However, taming the corruption monster requires much more than using the communications mix and tailoring messages to your various media. To me, much more needs to be done at the legal, regulatory and enforcement ends before we can seriously saying that we have anything serious to communicate or share with the world through a conference, symposium or whatever. When we have been able to get to the critical tipping point in the battle against corruption, then the world will seek to study the Nigerian model and even desire to explore the communications aspect of the battle. Anything other than this would be a tad bit premature.