Corruption, strategic communication and national development

When Nitin Nohria, former dean of Harvard Business School, said, “Communication is the true work of leadership,” he was highlighting a key element of national development. As a complex tapestry, Nigeria faces various challenges, but one enduring challenge is connecting with its people. This problem is exacerbated by hydrocephalic corruption, which remains a wedge between leaders and the public, straining perceptions, but which strategic communications can help resolve.

Strategic communications is a plan that considers audiences and channels to achieve your most important goals. In national affairs, it bridges the gap between leaders and citizens, supporting national identity and a shared vision. In Nigeria, however, the gap widens with each successive administration.

At 64, Nigeria should have a clear national identity, creed and shared vision, but these remain elusive due to corruption and poor communication. Corruption and strategic communication cannot coexist; Where there is corruption, propaganda dominates. To be successful, the government must develop a communications strategy that engages all stakeholders, ensuring understanding and support. Honesty, credibility, ethical considerations and critical thinking are important elements of strategic communication.

We often see leaders in Nigeria using the proverbial body language that suggests they should take their work seriously. The key question to ask is, “What’s stopping them?”

You don’t need any academic credentials to know the simple answer to this question: corruption or the perception of it is what holds them back. The question that now arises in the reader’s mind is, “How can strategic communication solve the problem of corruption?” This question can be answered simply by disaggregating the elements of strategic communication. These are: honesty, trustworthiness, trustworthiness, ethical considerations, compliance with laws and regulations, critical and creative thinking, etc.

Where corruption exists, the type of communication is “propaganda”. Nigeria is a giant when it comes to governance and to be successful, the government must plan its communication strategy by engaging all its stakeholders such as employees, appointees, partners and citizens. On the one hand, a conscious effort must be made to ensure that ministries, departments and their members understand the direction of the government, namely its policies, goals and desires.

Moreover, the public should be sufficiently told and shown the government’s direction and sincerity around it. Suffice it to say that the proper development and implementation of a strategic communications plan can help build trust and credibility, stakeholder engagement and participation, policy advocacy and implementation, crisis management and risk communication, promotion of economic growth and investment, education and awareness campaigns, technology and innovation, protecting culture and national identity, and measuring impact and effectiveness.

A practical example of the use of means of communication in Nigeria is the recent exchange rate crisis. When the Tinubu administration first allowed the naira to float, believing it would find a good level against the dollar, it reversed course and continued to depreciate. The media space was flooded with information that the naira would continue to fall. In February 2024, the official Nigerian autonomous foreign exchange market fell to a new all-time low of N1,534/$.

The greater fear created by the media led people to sell their naira for dollars, further reducing the naira to about N1,800/$.

It should be noted that the government left the media space to speculators who spent days creating panic around the naira and profiting from its effects.

In late February, the Central Bank of Nigeria through Governor Olayemi Cardoso entered the fray using a number of monetary instruments which stopped the attack on the naira. The CBN’s decisions have been massively amplified through mainstream media and online platforms. This continued for weeks and months, creating fear around the dollar, the opposite of the initial circumstances that created fear around the naira.

Amid concerns about the possible strengthening of the naira against the dollar, many people with dollars in their home accounts have started mining them.

While it is safe to say that the CBN’s actions have stabilized the naira, the role of communication through the media cannot be undermined. Since experts say the fair value of the naira against the dollar is 860, it appears that fear has pushed it up to 1,900 and the “same fear” over the dollar, fueled largely by the CBN through communications, has brought it down to less than 1,200 naira in April.

Since communication without content cannot create lasting progress, the naira gains have ultimately been lost as they currently stand at around $1,400.

According to Udeme Ufot, the basic roles of strategic communication include defining and creating, informing and engaging, positioning and differentiating, persuading and influencing, reminding and sustaining, and stimulating action.

When defining the problems that a strategic communication plan should solve, the place of research cannot be ignored. There seems to be too much subjectivity in Nigeria, as is the case in many African countries. Governments often assume they understand the problem; therefore, as soon as they take office, they start implementing solutions and communicating their opinions to various levels of stakeholders.

Management lacks empiricism, hence the frequent mistakes of proposing policies that are clearly poorly thought out and withdrawing them due to public protest. There are as many stakeholder groups in the government as among the governed. The government must collect insights from these diverse groups and rigorously analyze them to understand pain points, desires, and even acceptable solutions, guided by the nuances revealed by effective research instruments.

A communication strategy born from such rigor will allow you to understand people well enough and how they like to communicate with them. This will also help the government appreciate concerns about variables such as corruption, executive impunity, management waste, and many others.

In this regard, the communication strategy will include honesty in solving the problems of the people who take them with them. Government communication with citizens is most effective when citizens see that the government is addressing issues that are important to them. With trust built between both sides, it is easy to gain public support for government policies and, over time, build more fundamental variables of faith, belief, and national identity.

Additionally, it is extremely important to understand that government is a brand. Once he loses public respect, he will only sink further. Successful companies continually reinvent themselves in the minds of their customers, redefining their essence, building trust and offering value. Governments must embody this position.

According to Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon, “Your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room.” The President of Nigeria, Bola Tinubu, as the number one marketer of the Nigerian brand, must genuinely seek the answer to the question of what the majority of Nigerians think about the brand (Nigeria) that he manages. This tendency to become defensive about the government’s image whenever people call it out may be inevitable, but the government must remain true to itself by at least seeking the truth about the sentiment around it and considering ways to change such perceptions.