Meet Lai Mohammed – The Hardest Working Man in The Action Congress

It’s difficult to listen to radio or open the newspapers in Nigeria today, without listening to or reading about Alhaji Lai Mohammed at work. The National Publicity Secretary of the Action Congress political party never fails to use every opportunity to get the manifesto and opinions of his party across to the public via the media.

Mohammed has commented on every gaffe of the Obasanjo and Yar’Adua administrations. From OBJ’s third term agenda, to the Yar’Adua’s alleged ill health, the bungling of the 2008 budget and the missteps with the 2009 appropriation and Maurice Iwu’s INC’s Im(?)partiality – nothing that has happened in the polity in the last three years has escaped Iwu’s attention.

He’s become such a force that even the security agents of government now pay "special attention" to him. If only the other members of the Nigeria political class could take their jobs as seriously as he does his.

Multichoice, Your Nigerian Subscribers Deserve A Better Deal

Multichoice, the South African Company that has brought us DSTV, the satellite television system, has definitely had it good in Nigeria. Since it began operations in the country in the early 1990’s, the company has amassed a huge subscriber base and made billions of Naira from the Nigerian economy. I won’t even mention the huge amounts that Nigerians were and are still paying for subscribing to the system; fees that almost double those offered by its competitors. For a long time, Nigerians have had no choice in the matter, at least not until HITV came up a couple of years ago to stop the unhealthy monopoly that Multichoice has been enjoying in Nigeria.

So while I am still a DSTV subscriber, I still have issues with the Company. One include the many subscriber promotions that DSTV offers to its South African subscribers, promotions which its Nigeria subscribers only get to hear about, but never participate in. Is it that DSTV does not make enough money in Nigeria to justify offering holidays, cars and other gifts to a few of its many subscribers? Or are we again seeing the profiteering behaviour that has characterised the business practices of South African-owned businesses in Nigeria? I recall that MTN, the mobile telephony company was also particularly stingy with rewarding or making good for bad behaviour to its subscribers until the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and its biggest competitor, Globacom, gave it the fight of its life.

South African firms need to be reminded that apartheid has been dead for over 16 years, and that a business model that involves them short-changing Nigerians is not sustainable. MultiChoice should find ways to reward their Nigerian subscribers before the generality of the Nigerian public get wise to its funny games. What is good enough for South Africans is okay for Nigerians.

The Link Between Ram Killing and National Reputation

In the fifteen or so years that I have been consciously watching the media, this is the first time that I’ll be seeing images of a head of state physically murdering an animal, all in the name of killing the “Sallah Ram”. Seeing President Umar Musa Yar’Adua presidentially doing away with a ram on the front page of the Guardian newspaper today shows that our president is either a terribly stubborn and insensitive man, is surrounded by unbelievably inept advisers and minders, or simply suffered a security breach. Even the Head of the Islamic State of Saudi Arabia, the homeland of the Islamic Faith, has never been portrayed in the media killing a ram for the Eid-el-Kabir Islamic festival.

The states that Nigeria does business with have got laws against what our president did yesterday. Some of the heads of states and the international bodies that he’ll be asking for loans, assistance or just plain and simple support would have choked or thrown up if they were there at Abuja, seeing what our “oga” did to that ram. I’m not been hypocritical, having killed a few animals in my time; but the head of state of the most populous black country in the world must live up to globally recognized standards of decency and civility.

I really don’t care what the President does in the privacy of his Aso Rock quarters or his Katsina home, but slaughtering that ram in the presence of the media does not in any help his reputation or that of the country he leads.

Nigerian Companies - Now Playing Globally, But With A Very Local Mindset

It’s funny to see how Nigerian organisations have decided to play on the international stage without taking into cognisance the need for them to step their game to the level of excellence and professionalism that’s become second nature to players in other climes.

A clear example is Skye Bank (Nigeria) Plc. I was watching CNN the other day, and came across its television commercial, which used Whitehouse Family’s “I wish I could fly”, which was also a cover version of a U2’s song of the same title. Somehow, I doubt if the parties behind the commercial applied for or even got the rights to use the music.

Taking advantage of the local popularity of various European or American artistes’ works is common practice in Nigeria, and many advertisers and advertising agencies get away with it because Nigeria was more or less a backwater in the international entertainment industry. Music and movie Piracy is big business in Nigeria. Millions of CDs of these artistes are sold in the country annually, yet there are no representative offices of any of the international music labels in Nigeria.

However, when Nigerian firms begin to move their communication from Nigerian media to CNN, the BBC and The IHT, the need to learn how to “globalize” the quality and legality of their messages must not be forgotten or downplayed, as it can bring about serious reputational and other problems for Nigerian companies.

So, while I support Nigeria’s increasing share of the global business pie, I’d still advise our fellow Nigerian businesses to tread very carefully, as the errors being made now in the areas of marketing and corporate communications could find their way into other parts of their operations, with even more dire consequences.

“Advance with caution” is the catch phrase.

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.