War of maneuver, state cabinets and NASS
By ISAAC OLUSESI
The dividing line between one and significant others as well as the limits one can violate must be the defining factor in Nigeria’s Constitution 5th Alteration (No. 45) Act that forces the submittal of the names of Minister, Commissioner-nominees, respectively to the National Assembly (NASS) and State Houses of Assembly for confirmation within 60 days after the date the President or State Governor takes oath of office. But the validity of the constitutional timeframe validity, meant to guide against any interruptions in the administration of government business as assented to by former President Mohammad Buhari in March, 2023, ironically became an indictment on him, justified by his 5 months’ wait to the constitution of his cabinet after he assumed office in 2015.
The Buhari insensitivity, odd enough, that came full circle in the corollary, remains the bull’s-eye to the evaluation of his government as inept and slow, resultant to the violation of democratic order, paradoxically, dangerous and inhibitive in a country faced with mounting multiple challenges in economy, politics and security, compellingly to be addressed. And as if Buhari’s flair for debilitating wait and the crippled salutary effects of the coalition of cabinet developmental deliberations, decisions and policies on our democracy were anything, a good capacity route map to healing the nation, the imitative Osun State Governor Ademola Adeleke impeded his cabinet, awkwardly for 60 days, marked ticklish, by the interval between Friday, September 18, 2023 when the maiden meeting of the cabinet was held and July 19, 2023 when the cabinet was, in fact, sworn in. And that, Adeleke brazenly did, laced with a diversionary lie, bizarre, on his predecessor in office.
NASS must come, visiting on Adeleke and other state governors in his ilk with another Constitution Alteration Act to impel or compel governors to make their cabinets hold the first meeting within a constitutionally specified period of time after inauguration. Consequently, and without maneuverings geared up by governors’ executive fiat, the state cabinet or state executive council (Exco) members will assume real deliberative responsibilities, pace themselves connected to productive results. And they will understand, cabinet participation or involvement stands to be aided by useful information from ’the cabinet must hold its first meeting’ demanders, visibly made up of Osun patriotic citizens, other utility sources, considered germane to government and governance, for impact on the governed.
In Osun, government has a ring of tragic irony around its neck for its political blitzkrieg, putting all manner of obstructions in the way of the state. By the very many paradoxes, inherent in the government, utterly unresolved and unresolvable, appropriating the task of mobilizing falsehood against truth, partisan wrangling is drawn out. The government lied, a thundering, ear blocking lie, unpolished from the flotsam and jetsam of damaged truth, detritus of misinformation or disinformation, debris of unprovable allegations, and chunks of noises, uploaded to its public communication management.
Strangely, the lie that came with the most embarrassingly damaging link, reference or comparison to the former Osun Governor Gboyega Oyetola, now Hon. Minister of Marine & Blue Economy, was mustered by government’s politicians and politics, untidy; and made worse by Adeleke who openly slammed his cabinet failure to hold its maiden meeting after inauguration, so long a stretch of 60 days wait after inauguration, on his predecessor in office as he said, “Oyetola who left office before I came in did not hold his cabinet inaugural meeting until November 4.” That was Adeleke’s subtle manipulation to manoeuvre self into a favourable position on what became a critical issue of critical interest to the Osun critical publics, but the brittle, frangible defence insinuated that it took the former governor one year to hold his cabinet first meeting after the inauguration of the cabinet.
The loop of the lie to Oyetola only acquired the reputation and attribute of incomprehensibility until refutation, evidential and well reasoned, from Oyetola’s side punctured the lie and pulled the loop down from its pedestal of falsehoods and noises to the denizen of shame. Contrastingly, the former governor actually held his first cabinet meeting 11 days after the cabinet was inaugurated, records in the Cabinet Office, Office of the Governor, Bola Ige House, Osogbo, state capital, stated.
The lie that ought not to have been in place at all was the altercation recently, in Osun, over how ought not public communication to be handled by the government, a terrific ascent into inglorious heights, and had to do, in particular, with the timespan between when Adeleke inaugurated his cabinet and when the maiden meeting of the cabinet should hold. Of course, yes, not one cabinet meeting was ever held until the 60th day after the induction of the cabinet. That was the bone of contention, picked by the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) in the state and the party gave itself over, took the plunge and geed on, geed up other stakeholders in the Osun survival that dealt with the situation without hesitation. In other words, the state APC, cut the ground from under government’s feet, and had other stakeholders across political parties, mobilized down to the ground. And good, no one at grips with one another to have had the gordon nut cut in the spirited bid that forced the Osun cabinet debut its meeting. Last Friday.
Alack and alas, the government kept its ground, headstrong, but reluctantly yielded to the demand of the electorate when it ought to have promptly from onset, invoked an unassuming analysis of factors that had influenced the state new cabinet away from holding its inaugural meeting, held on to the most profitable, indicative of future electoral gains and craved the understanding of the governed. Adeleke could do that with or without organizing free meals and gifts for journalists. That way, the trio of issue clarification, government’s integrity and self personal trustworthiness would have been effectively served through strategic public communication
The lie, the maneuver or propaganda is a crude form of public communication which distorted or falsified facts on Osun government’s worst deferment of its new cabinet’s first meeting, with the governed, manipulated, confused and maneuvered by sentiments or emotions wipped up to scare them away from the critical standpoint that depicted the the three pronged public verdict here.
One, teleologically, the effective administration of the state rests on the cabinet deliberations and decisions, and requires that the cabinet must be forced to hold its first meeting to see the state new cabinet members in their capacity, role or action, deliberation wise as Honourable members of the state executive council, showing first appearance; two, sociologically, the image of the government and its driver, Adeleke in the eyes of internal and external assessors is at peril; and three, politically, opposition parties are wont to see the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) government party set on its toes, doing or fulfilling its electioneering campaign promises to the electorate.
Government’s public communication management presently in Osun, is erroneously about noises with the proficiency of stubborn customers at popular markets around, far more intensely consequential and the better, so it’s thought, albeit wrongly, with the public communication handler’s inordinate pride in the number of times the government gets mentioned in the press. A vivid example of poor peddling. In the matter, the governed in Osun are not vulnerable to what Antonia Gramsci (1891-1937) called “the war of maneuver” in one of his several writings on the political unrests in Italy, following the Russian Revolution of 1917. Gramsci, member of a lower middle class family at Ales, the Italian Island of Sardinia, was an Italian Communist Party leader, Maxist political theorist and a Journalist for a Socialist Newspaper, ‘AVANT.’ He attended University of Turin, founded in 1404.
The maneuver, to be mild, propaganda, too much common with the government public communication caretakers in Osun is more often than not, for bad reasons by frivolous claims, not infrequently in the press and public space, in contradistinction to helping the government build and sustain credible and reputable relationships with strategic publics and de-escalate costs of conflicts. This would favourably affect the government on its delivery of planned developmental policies, programmes and projects, other democracy dividends for the betterment of the governed. All of that is possible by strict adherence to the well known ethics of public communication, entrenched not in noises and falsehoods or lies, but in the compelling truth and sincerity, the traditional techniques of the profession of Public Relations that restores confidence in the publics.
Otherwise, the contextual tendency in Osun could, with gay abandon, boomerang to cause the image of the person of Adeleke and his PDP government tumbled in the negative reactions to public communication, especially, if discovered to be unimportant to justify the government’s decibel of noises of maneuver, propaganda, sewn together with the thread of _journalese_. Naturally, that is a direct antithesis, long ago, to the corporate integrity and profundity of public communication management. Osun, certainly, can no longer stand the government’s karats or nuggets of drivel and babel.
The scenario of the Osun cabinet’s first meeting held up for 60 days is unprecedented in the faculty of popular knowledge of democracy, its liberalization and communication, with its diverse publics, knitted, in the sequence of the sophistication of the practice of democracy, to knowing why such naughty, nasty stagnation in the governance of the state. And why the government, being financed through the electorate’s hard earned incomes in the name of taxations has become the unilateral affairs of just Adeleke and cohorts, kept close to the chest.
And why also, marginalization and victimization, the twin evils of political unilateralism should be permitted in Osun government that is believed to be a product of ‘the votes of the masses,’ howbeit arguably. It’s not for nothing that a faction of Adeleke’s men and women in his governing PDP had expressed fear at a press conference, penultimate Tuesday, in Osogbo, that the party might lose Osun to the opposition APC if Adeleke wouldn’t get in gear and grasp the nettle to give up on the trending intra partisanship, victimization in the state PDP and its bad governance in the state.
Understanding the differential between good and bad governance in Osun is the aptitude for clear and effective public communication that is predicated on positive actions and tailored to the bottom-line of anticipated specific results to influence public attitudes, opinions and behaviours. And by that, a good image, good fame, good influence, good standing, good honour or prominence, reputation and credibility in terms, could be built. Certainly, not through propaganda, the government’s well oiled machine.
The pyramid or monolith of the propaganda is enough to have caused Adeleke, the Osun chief executive officer, to lose sleep over the imminence of his government’s noises, propagandas and maneuverings that have continued to put a huge question mark on the believability of the government. But that is, only, if CEO or anyone around him has ever heard that Imelda, wife of Marcos, the strongman of the Republic of Philippines once traced her husband’s illness to a malignant affliction of noises by his lieutenants. Official noisemakers, globally, are into heinous and treacherous crime who must have a noose dangling above their recalcitrant heads.
Mr Osun Governor, public communication under you is propaganda, maneuver, ensnared in careless lies, that misleads or misinforms the governed. Adeleke needs not be cynical and his public communication handlers, not ignorant about this: effective management of public communication will build reputation for his government to the acknowledgement of its internal and external publics, if he’s self cautioned against maneuverings, propaganda and lies.
But government, governance in Osun, under Adeleke’s watch presently, is still a far cry, not yet started, productively. There cannot be any credibility should the governor continue to buy into maneuverings, such other nasties. And government’s metabolism cannot get really kick-started; its energy, passive and unboosted; and positive tone for good governance, unaligned. And Osun government will get tagged as irresponsible, an inefficient and non credible player in democracy just as your public image erarns low rating that translates to low confidence, low goodwill, low political patronage and low peaceful, low stable governance. And these negative images stick into the next general elections.
If this piece offends Osun government, please, execuse me. When is it decided that whoever thinks otherwise, away from the government, in a democracy, must be either a traitor or an incurable malcontent?
OLUSESI writes via [email protected] (0806 168 5186 SMS only)
