Which president will not smile?

President Goodluck Jonathan went to many places late March. He saw many people too, high calibre people in Africa and in Europe, and all of that in six days. There were issues to those visits. What happened in Namibia, his first place of call, is one. What he said to Nigerians residing in that country is another; and there is yet what he told Nigerians residing in The Netherlands. One other place the President visited stands in a class of its own though; no, the personage he met stands yards apart from others. And if many Nigerians didn’t remember every other person that had hosted the President, they remembered this one: Pope Francis, the Catholic Pontiff. It happens that it’s ever fashionable to visit the pope, and it’s even better for anyone to so do at this time. That’s because Pope Francis is popular around the world. That rubs off on any guest, a reason the Americans who will never do a thing without carefully calculating the benefits for their national interest also came to see the pope. Or, has the reader ever heard of a Unites States’ president visiting an unpopular and controversial figure before? Then, that reader will understand why even America’s president went to the Vatican at this time. Of course, Nigerians couldn’t have missed the fact that Nigeria’s leader and his delegation arrived days ahead of the American president. And there is no gainsaying it that the ever religious citizens here don’t fail to see the implication in that. Nigerians know it means their leader had got all the blessings from the Holy Father before the Americans who like to be first in all things arrived the scene!

Yet, that wouldn’t stop some of Jonathan’s men from pointing out how significant the visit to the Vatican was for Nigeria, the same thing they did about another visit to Israel earlier in the year. Nevertheless, the other places that the President went to and the presidential proclamations he made are of relevance to this writer. Take Namibia, for instance. There, Jonathan started his six-day working tour. The country had had its own rough times in the hands of white supremacists. Nigeria had been there for Namibia’s freedom fighters that time, one reason Nigeria, though far away from the scene of the struggle for freedom was tagged a frontline state. So, when Namibians marked their 24th Independence Anniversary in March, they invited Nigeria. Namibians  didn’t invite Jonathan and send him away without according his country the front seat on that occasion; they didn’t treat Nigeria the way South Africa with its leaders’ grand sense of rivalling Nigeria have always been doing, refusing to publicly accord Nigeria the recognition of a comrade-in-arms after apartheid eventually caved in, and neither did they consider it significant to honour Nigeria by letting Jonathan mount the podium and put in a word during the burial of former President Nelson Mandela. Instead, leaders of countries that had sustained apartheid got the honour.

But Namibians were not like that. They awarded Jonathan the highest honour they had for what his nation did for Namibians in their time of need. And the gesture was more exciting for the simple reason that it was not the better known freedom fighter and former President, Sam Nujoma, although present, that so honoured Nigeria. It was his successor, President Hifikepunye Pohamba. Namibians have long memories. And after Jonathan was awarded, he made the often-heard highly contentious statement to the Nigerian community in Windhoek to the effect that corruption is not Nigeria’s number one problem. He said, “Corruption is everywhere” but it is over-celebrated in the country (Nigeria) to the extent that the nation and its people are stigmatised. He got on the airplane thereafter, and headed for the Vatican.

His arrival later in The Netherlands formed the final leg of his tour. There, he had joined other world leaders at the 2014 global Nuclear Security Summit. The summit had focused on what was  achieved so far in securing nuclear material, as well as its future. The organisers said they picked The Netherlands as host because of its history as an advocate of peace and human rights. The first of such summits had been in Washington DC, USA, in 2010. That Nigeria’s leader attended both the Washington DC edition and the latest is good, but what’s of greater interest to this piece was a comment he made to the Nigerian community in The Netherlands. In the event, the comment brought his previous statement about corruption in Windhoek into sharp relief. “I appreciate you, my brothers and sisters, who find time to come and see me,” he had said to Nigerians in a Town Hall meeting in The Netherlands. And pleased with the calibre of people present, he asked rhetorically, that when such calibre of compatriots gather anywhere, “which president will not smile?”

“President Jonathan also considered creating avenues for a media chat with the Nigerian-oriented TV stations in the Diaspora as a platform to counter the negative projection of Nigeria in the western media.” That was part of a TV news report on the meeting the President had with Nigerians in The Netherlands. Having a media chat will throw light on some issues and let the world know how the mind of the Presidency works on some crucial issues, of course. But a media chat is one thing, the official view from any government that can never shoot itself in the foot is also one thing; but what the world sees and reads about Nigeria are another. What is reported in a nation about government officials that steal like hungry rats can’t be controvertible; it can’t be, like the actions of delegates to the National Conference which media houses reported, but which got some delegates upset to the point of saying the media should be banned from doing its job.

Yes, the President proposed to use media chats on Nigerian TV stations in the Diaspora to counter negative coverage of the country in the western press. But one wonders if, Nigerians abroad who are actively fed about news from home, and who are active on most Nigerian-based online newspapers where they make eye-popping negative comments, will believe whatever is said in the course of such image laundering effort, not to mention foreigners. And, apart from what Nigerians see their government officials loot, they have also noted the Transparency Index published in December 2013 by Transparency International. In it, Nigeria was ranked the 34th most corrupt nation in the world, taking the 144th position, among 177 nations. In the group’s Corruption Perceptions Index for the same year, Nigeria scored 25 points out of a possible 100 points, a performance that was poorer than in 2012, when Nigeria scored 27 points. The nation shared the platform of graft with the collapsed and crisis-torn Central African Republic and the neighbour, Cameroon. And there are those billions being serially discovered lately at parliamentary committee hearings, said to have been expended by government officials without following standard practice. TV stations regale Nigerians with them each day. There are also the billions that the lawmakers lately say crude oil managers can’t account for, and the phoney manner high state officials use their positions to put the nation’s resources and assets to illegal uses, all of which makes one wonder if these reports in the public space do get to the President’s table. And when the President said earlier this year that anti-graft agencies had been working hard like tireless camels, that he knew they had been working even though Nigerians might not know it, one had had reasons to scratch head, turning around in search of any Nigerian to corroborate what the President said.

 By the way, the strategy for attracting mass attention can’t follow the same pattern in all places. Whoever has organised events both in Abuja and Lagos understands this, not to mention media chats targeting TV audience in foreign countries where the more interesting TV stations are available mostly by subscription, remote boxes are ever ready to switch among over 500 channels, unlike in Nigeria where most citizens can be forced to watch dreary six hours of sponsored programmes. In any case, Nigerians know that whatever effort to combat corruption here hasn’t been what it should be. So this is where more efforts should go, rather than an attempt at image laundering, as well as expending resources to catch the minds of an international TV audience that hardly pays attention unless the news is red hot negative and scandalous. And of course if corrupt government officials here aren’t so celebrated but are put away where they belong, there’s a group ready to smile long before the President does – Nigerians.