Yar'Adua's Health As A PR Nightmare - 2008-09-08

Bright Nwogwugwu appraises the events surrounding President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua's controversial trip to Saudi Arabia , weighing on a balance, the Federal Executive Council's handling of information concerning the President's health and the PR lessons which those managing his image must learn.

Call them PR disasters and you would be absolutely right. For image managers of Nigeria's number one citizen, President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua, this is indeed a season of nightmares, as his failing health has exposed their inadequacies both in positive image projection and in damage control. The unmistakable impression is that they are trapped in the puerile illusion that public relations practice is an exercise in downright falsehood or undue reticence, as exemplified in their shoddy treatment of media reports on Mr. President's ill health.

In the main, it is the marked indiscretion of these national brand managers, and not the President's health challenges, that ignited and fanned the flames of tension that swept through the nation following Yar'Adua's trip to Saudi Arabia some three weeks ago.

When a brand is in the throes of crises, and is so seen by its target market, it is only reasonable for the brand custodians to deploy effective communication techniques to build sympathy for the brand, while emphasising the immutability of the brand's core values and propositions. It is not a time to rise in defiance against overwhelming evidence. It is not a time to be glib or be evasive because no brand loyalist wants to be treated with levity or kept in the lurch. Moreover, nothing depletes consumer loyalty more than dishonesty.

These are simple PR lessons which the President's image managers failed to apply, thus resulting in needless speculations about the severity of his ailment. The situation got so worrisome that by last week Sunday evening, the news (which mercifully turned out o be false) of Yar'Adua's purported death quickly made the rounds in newsrooms across the land. But even when the overwhelming evidence showed that the President might have had a close shave with death after an unannounced surgery in Saudi Arabia, key government officials continued to insist that all was well with him. They went further to announce last Wednesday as the day of his return, only to be put to shame. Inexplicably, Information Minister John Odey continued to insist that the President was hale and hearty! Having got some snippets from reliable sources in Saudi Arabia as regards Yar'Adua's deteriorating health, the country's media perceived Odey's clean bill of health for the President as a desperate attempt to deceive Nigerians.

Analysts have described as unprofessional, worrisome and counter-productive, Odey and the Federal Executive Council's handling of such a sensitive issue as the health of Mr. President. Whereas Mr. Segun Adeniyi, spokesman to the President, kept mute, Odey kept maintaining that Yar'Adua was sound and on lesser hajj (Umrah).

That Odey's grossly misleading statement would not fly was obvious. For one, everyone knew that plans had been concluded for President Yar'Adua to make a proposed state visit to Brazil,  only for him to suddenly travel to Saudi Arabia ostensibly for the Umrah.

Two, few days before his trip, Yar'Adua had announced major changes in the top hierarchy of the armed forces. Having approved the appointment of the new service chiefs, the law required him to decorate them at the formal handover ceremony. But this was not to be, as the President suddenly went out of circulation. Worse, Vice President Goodluck Jonathan, who could have acted in his stead, was not conferred with the authority to do so.

Reports had it that due to Yar'Adua's lingering absence, the removed officers had to settle for low-keyed handover ceremonies which saw the new service chiefs undecorated with their new ranks. “For crying out loud, how many presidents on the eve of traveling out of their countries will not hang around to ensure the changes in offices and handover of power?” wondered a concerned Nigerian.

Another development which exposed the claims of top government officials that all was well with Yar'Adua was the inability of Vice President Jonathan to travel to Zambia as scheduled for the burial of late President Levi Manawasa. The trip had to be cancelled and the VP had to hold the fort for Mr. President, at least in principle.

How could Yar'Adua have, in what looked like an extemporaneous move, gone for lesser hajj in the company of two physicians, among others, thereby aborting his elaborately planned trip to Brazil and unduly staying the investiture of Nigeria's newly appointed service chiefs? Did it not occur to anybody in the Presidency when Jonathan's trip to Zambia was being planned that Yar'Adua was likely to be in Mecca performing the lesser hajj at about the same time? What made Odey think that Nigerians are as pliable and gullible as to believe such a bare-faced lie?

To further add to the confusion, the National Assembly that is usually 'proactive' became aloof, with senators and House of Reps members playing cat and mouse games with journalists and Nigerians.

VP Jonathan similarly detached himself from the conjectures trailing Mr. President's health status. In the words of a political commentator who does not want his name on paper, “In the light of this unfolding drama, the Vice President has been strangely quiet as if any action on his part would be perceived as being unduly ambitious and power-seeking. Does this mean that there are forces in The Presidency more powerful than the second most powerful political office in Nigeria?”

It was only logical for the approach of the President's men to backfire. As the confusion deepened and lingered, angry voices started calling for the resignation of Yar'Adua, claiming that he was no longer fit enough to rule the country.

Beyond the calls for resignation from different platforms, including leading opposition parties, All Nigeria Peoples Party and Action Congress, a number of interest groups in the North were reported to have met to deliberate on the state of affairs in the country. Some were reported to be murmuring that Vice President Jonathan (who is from the South-South geo-political zone) must not assume the position of President in the event of the death or resignation of Yar'Adua. Such political chess masters were said to have started contemplating how to suspend the country's constitution so as to pave the way for fresh elections where a predetermined Northerner would become President in defence of the 'Northern mandate'.

The permutations added to the palpable tension in the country as the rumour mill spewed out the falsehood that the President (who is said to have a medical history of kidney dysfunction and Churg Strauss syndrome, an inflammation of the blood vessel) had died in the course of a renal transplant surgery at the King Fahd Hospital in Saudi Arabia. This was a playback of the widespread rumour in March 2007 that Yar'Adua, then the Peoples Democratic Party presidential hopeful, had passed on due to stress he went through during the electioneering campaign. On that occasion, it took the intervention of then out-going President Olusegun Obasanjo, who placed a call to Yar'Adua on his hospital bed in Germany in the glare of the crowd at a campaign rally, to reassure Nigerians that Yar'Adua was alive.

That Yar'Adua's image managers failed to learn from the Obasanjo example in damage control and thus put the nation through unwarranted stress speaks volumes of their qualification or otherwise to manage Brand Yar'Adua.