Propaganda, harmful PR tool
Last week, I received a call from one of my blithesome friends, a Peter Obi and the Labour Party apologist.
During the dialogue, he plunged exuberantly into Abia’s political homily distorted to push the Otti’s heightened reformation.
“Agu Ibeku, have you seen what’s happening in Abia State?”
The question triggered my curiosity because of the recent upsurge in violent crime in Abia. But then, he continued.
“They said Otti turned the whole of Aba into a construction site in less than 60 days in office. He also cleared salary arrears and pension allowances of all the Abia workers and retirees.”
I chuckled as he romanticised the several “giant strides” of the new administration, including the discovery of 2300 ghost workers that culminated in the government saving north of N200 million.
He also recounted a tweet from Charlie Boy to substantiate this tide of blather and bamboozlement.
It is prejudiced to describe Dr Otti’s two months old government as horribilis, but it’s not mirabilis either.
Aside from not departing from the old maligned Kafkaesque bureaucracy and bumbledom, we have seen palpable entrenchments of paradigms in Abia’s civil service and political chronology.
It would be trite to list them when my previous articles have addressed a few of the aberrations.
However, it is regrettable that the government has promoted to a crescendo the purported discovery of 2300 ghost workers and the saving of an imaginary N200 million when the portal for the verification exercise is still malfunctioning.
The government still owes the ministry workers May’s salary, the LGs two months, and the teachers, agencies and parastatals are like a cat on a hot tin roof. Even the much-publicised dichotomy between civil servants in salary payment still lingers.
The Otti-led government knows its claim of offsetting salary/pension arrears is a hoax, yet it goes about grandstanding and relishing vainglory.
The internet is buzzing with stories of ongoing massive construction when the government is only undertaking rehabilitation on some internal roads and streets in Aba.
Of course, the ongoing repairs are to fulfil the customary 100 days in office publicity. All critical thinkers, including Dr Otti, know he is yet to activate any roadmap to sustainable development.
The government should forebear propaganda. None of its deeds implies novelty to deserve the hype unless it relishes mediocrity.
There’s a need to justify the pre-election hype and campaign for Dr Otti, but doing so with bogus claims will backfire when the revulsion attenuates.
Rachel Hawthorne foresaw this when she held that deception may give us what we want for the present but will always take it away on reflection.
The yuck factor is amplifying the goodwill for now. Scepticism will set in when the deeds do not match the hysteria.
Don Norman Obinna is the Abia State Chairman of the African Democratic Congress (ADC).
Stay in the know on Abia politics. Grab a copy of Don Norman Obinna’s ‘Raped & Enslaved: Era of Kleptocracy’.
