”CHANGE BEGINS WITH ME” NOT TO ”TAME” NIGERIANS

Our attention has been drawn to a story by The Economist, datelined
Lagos and featured in the paper’s print edition of Sept. 24th 2016,
entitled: ”Nigeria’s war against indiscipline, Behave or be
whipped”.

Contrary to the newspaper’s self-professed belief in ”plain
language”, the article in question, from the headline to the body, is
a master-piece of embellishment or dressed-up language. It is loaded
with innuendos and decidedly pejorative at best, and downright racist
at worst.

The Economist wrote that President Buhari wants to ”tame” Nigerians
with the ”Change Begins With Me” Campaign. For those who are the
owners of the English language, the use of that word is unpardonable,
The verb ”tame” suggests that Nigerians are some kind of wild
animals that must be domesticated, and the usage reveals the mindset
of the authors of the article: a deliberate put-down of a whole people
under the guise of criticising a government policy.

The paper, in striving to reach a preconceived conclusion, also
insinuated that some 150,000 volunteers are being trained as enforcers
of the ”Change Begins With Me” Campaign. This is not true. In his
speech at the launch of the Campaign on Sept. 8th 2016, the President,
a globally-acknowledged leader who believes strongly in the rule of
law, left no one in doubt that moral suasion, the very antithesis of
force, will be employed to achieve attitudinal change among Nigerians.
In that speech, the President said: ”I am therefore appealing to all
Nigerians to be part of this campaign.” To the best of our knowledge
and, surely the knowledge of those who own the language, the words
”appeal” and ”enforce” are not synonymous.

In its rush to discredit the ”Change Begins With Me” Campaign, The
Economist, a widely respected newspaper, fell below its own standards
by choosing to be economical with the truth. Enforcement is not part
of the strategies to be employed under the Campaign, and nowhere has
it been said that the ”moral police” will be unleashed, as reported
by the newspaper. In writing the story, the paper did not even deem it
necessary to speak with any official of the government, thus breaching
one of the codes of journalism, which is fairness. It chose instead to
quote a ”critic” of Mr. President in a perfunctory manner.

Again, The Economist made the same mistakes that most critics of the
”Change Begins With Me” Campaign have made: Rushing to comment on a
campaign they do not understand. The Campaign had barely been launched
when the critics brought out their big guns to shoot it down. In the
process, many of them ended up shooting themselves in the foot. Had
they tarried a while to allow the government to roll out the details
of the campaign, they might have shown more circumspection than they
did in their criticism.

The Campaign, which the President said ”will help restore our value
system and rekindle our nationalistic fervor”, is not designed to
shift any responsibility to Nigerians, as many have erroneously said.
It is an all-inclusive campaign that was designed to start with the
leadership. That much was explained by the President when he said the
government would ”drive the campaign” and that it must be strongly
supported by all concerned individually. ”Change Begins With Me” was
designed to start from the President, then trickle down to the Vice
President, Ministers, other top government officials and to all
citizens. What is the campaign asking Nigerians to do? Be the change
they want to see in the society. In other words, if we all want an
orderly society, for example, the motorists among us must obey traffic
rules, our aggrieved youth must stop destroying public property,
patent medicine sellers must stop selling fake drugs, commercial
vehicle drivers must stop taking alcoholic beverages before driving
etc. There is nothing extraordinary or over-burdening in all these. We
are the fundamental units of the society. If we are not willing to
change our ways for the better, we cannot expect a better society.

The Economist said that from its earliest days, the paper had ”looked
abroad, both for subjects to write about and for circulation”. That
means the paper must be aware that many countries in the world have
also embarked on the kind of campaign that Nigeria launched on Sept.
8th 2016. In 1979, Singapore launched the National Courtesy Campaign
to encourage Singaporeans to be more kind and considerate to one
another. In 2011, Mozambique launched a campaign to educate students
on how to treat foreign tourists as part of preparations for the
country’s hosting of the All-Africa Games in that year. In 2015, China
launched a campaign to ”name and shame” any of its own tourists who
behave badly, either at home or abroad. And this year, the Tokyo Good
Manners Project was launched to improve manners in the metropolis of
the Japanese capital. It is therefore uncharitable for The Economist
to hide behind the facade of its own prejudice to denigrate Nigeria’s
genuine effort at national re-orientation.