The spirited effort by Works and Housing Minister Babatunde Raji Fashola to blame the media for the anger his statement on the state of our roads caused has left me even more confused than the initial report itself. Over the weekend, Fashola sent our messages pointing to the speech to claim the media misquoted or misrepresented him. It will not fly. He still gets it wrong.
Works and Housing Minister Babatunde Raji Fashola put his foot in the mouth with his comment on the state of Nigerian roads. The minister claimed the highways are not as bad as Nigerians perceive them. He has received condemnations as well as invitations to tour the country or travel only by road for the next three months to prove his claim.
Fashola failed the test of communication psychology. The rule in messaging is never to offer the audience a negative. Do not accentuate the negative because it will stick in the minds of the audience.
Fashola’s statement was an appeal for balance in the media in reporting the bad state of our roads. In doing so, he repeatedly mentioned the poor state of the roads.
Fashola can still turn this umbrage around. He should come out more forthrightly and speak to the challenge of the expectations of Nigerians versus the reality of inadequate provision for capital projects
Here is what he said: “To appeal to you, yes, we are here to solve problems. Problems (are) headlines for you. But I think, for balance, it is also to show that not all of the roads are bad. Because the focus is on the bad part, but you owe Nigerians, whose taxes we use, to also show them that some works (are) going on. Because it is not all Nigerian roads that are unmotorable”.
“On Benin-Warri road, for example, many sections are motorable. It is a part that has caved in and collapsed, and that’s where the pain is, and that’s where we would respond to. Same thing for Lagos-Ibadan.
“It is important for us to have balance in order to encourage people to have hope in the country because it is not as bad as sometimes we portray it. That’s your headline, we know. But it’s important we let them know that on a 100km stretch, maybe 10-15 percent is bad. Maybe you actually drive to that point before you feel the pain. Those are the places we would address. Thank you very much.”
It is difficult to comprehend the effort to change the narrative after the fact. Minister Fashola says that on average 85 percent of the roads deemed obnoxious is in excellent condition leaving only 15 percent as the portions that cause problems to users. A different presentation of his message would have been to accentuate the positive: “We will fix the 15 percent of bad portions on federal roads that cause users pains”.
Such positive messaging would have spared the embarrassment.
I had a different reading initially of the minister’s statement. I thought he was flying a kite. He made the statement a few weeks after lamenting the poor funding of the ministry against the backdrop of the enormous task at hand. Fashola has also spoken of our country’s need to raise as much as N10 trillion in bonds to provide the infrastructure that we need.
Against that backdrop, I thought he was indirectly reinforcing the message of the inadequacy of the appropriation to the ministry. When on Bayo Onanuga, CEO of the News Agency of Nigeria, ended his piece on Facebook ostensibly blasting the minister for the wrong statement by referring to the budget, I thought that was the real message. I still hold on to the notion that Fashola wants to draw attention to the inadequate provision for capital expenditure in 2019 as well as the 2020 budget.
Fashola can still turn this umbrage around. He should come out more forthrightly and speak to the challenge of the expectations of Nigerians versus the reality of inadequate provision for capital projects. Not much will happen to those roads given what we have allocated for fixing them as well as constructing new ones.
In the psychological analysis of communication, the emphasis is not on message or the medium but the expectation of the recipients. Nigerians expected Fashola to have a message of hope on the roads. He was defensive and came out with a garbled message. We understand the challenge. Fashola suffers internal contradictions arising from the variance between his boasts before 2015 and the reality of the government in which he serves. He should turn his message around and speak candidly to us. We will understand.
Again, the Enugu airport
Work on the reconstruction of critical parts of the Enugu Airport enters the eighth day today, 14 November. Work commenced on Thursday 7 November. It was precisely 75 days to the shutdown of the airport.
There was so much drama in those 75 days. We want to commend the Minister of Aviation Senator Hadi Sirika for going to AkanuIbiam Airport to kickstart the repairs. Stakeholders of the Enugu Airport look forward to using it against Easter 2020 (April) and to an airport that works. Commendations also to Governor IfeanyiUgwuanyi for doing all that is necessary to ensure there are no excuses. Ahoy.
