Rent A Crowd and Miss the Message,By Jibrin Ibrahim

Yesterday, Abuja witnessed a phenomenon it had seen previously of renting a huge crowd to chant a specific message. The message that was being chanted was BOKO HARAM: RELEASE OUR GIRLS. It was clearly a message meant to obfuscate the clear message by our Movement to the Nigerian Government to #BringBackOurGirls abducted in Chibok on 14th April. Our message was aimed at the Government because they have constitutional responsibility to provide security for Nigerians and to deal with all who commit crimes and break our laws. Abducting over 300 girls who were in school to write their exams and telling the world they would be sold into slavery is one of the most heinous crimes that can be committed. Because the abductors have committed crimes, we continue to call on Government to rescue the girls and punish the criminals. Now, we are being told to talk to the criminals. The “counter-message” is incredibly clueless. The bearers of the message according to people who spoke to them were each paid 3,000 Naira for their work. It will be useful to find out where the money came from. I have my suspicions.
It will be recalled that Nigeria went through this type of experience during the dark days of the Abacha regime. A coalition of youth organizations converged under the umbrella of the National Council of Youth Associations of Nigeria (NACYAN), to promote the self-succession Presidential Ambition of General Sani Abacha. Every attendee at the rally was paid to come. The rally held from 3-5 March 1998 and it was named – “The One Million-Man March” a scandalous attempt to equate a scam with the Martin Luther King March on Washington in the 1960s. One Daniel Kanu, the leader of Youth Earnestly Ask for Abacha (YEAA), led the rally of 1998. Today, Mr. Kanu has been reported by Sahara Reporters to be in the United States leading the American campaign for a powerful Nigerian presidential candidate.
As was the case in 1998, free buses – Sure-P buses this time, were made available to bring in all those who accepted payment to come. A message that is chanted by people who neither understand it, nor believe in it is always a public relations disaster. As I reported in my column yesterday, currently, the Jonathan Administration is apparently seeking for a top public relations firm to develop a strategy to provide “strategic counsel,” “stakeholder engagement,” “proactive” media relations and “key message and storybook development”. The successful firm will be required to target stakeholders in the UK, USA, Commonwealth countries, “all relevant EU institutions,” academic institutions and NGOs, “arrange 1:1 meetings with influential and open-minded potential champions,” and “arrange briefings to build links at various levels with the UK, US, Commonwealth and major European governments.”
This is an incredibly expensive way to build credibility for the simple reason that the reality on the ground is stark. The Government is losing credibility because it is not governing and it is not carrying out its constitutional responsibility of providing for the welfare and security of Nigerians. The abduction of over 300 girls from Chibok became a public relations disaster for the Government not because it happened but because after it happened, the Government and its security agencies did nothing for over three weeks. It was the mothers of the girls who carried out an incredibly important civic engagement to march on the National Assembly to tell the world that the Government was not making efforts to secure the release of the girls. It took one additional week of demonstrations before the Government even set up a fact-finding committee. The so-called fact finding committee has not even gone to Chibok yet and today is the 43rd day since the abduction.
Today is Day 27 since the Abuja Family of the #BringBackOurGirls has been engaged in daily rallies and marches. What our Movement has done is to break the inertia of citizens complaining that government is not performing and doing anything about it. Nigerians are now saying government must be accountable to citizens and we will not accept “sidon look” from our President when over 200 young Nigerians have been abducted and remain in captivity. The President was absent when we went to see him last Thursday, instead of seeing us; he dashed off to South Africa. Unfortunately for him, no place to hide, as during his friend Jacob Zuma’s inauguration, participants in the Union Building event on seeing him walk in started chanting #BringBackOurGirls. The world is concerned and there is no place to run to. Neither rented crowds nor public relations firms can dampen the fact that Nigerian citizens are today asking for responsive, responsible and accountable governance.