• Friday, March 29, 2024
businessday logo

BusinessDay

How is Buhari selling Nigeria’s brand abroad?

Untitled design (12)

Last week, Nigeria’s marketer-in-chief President Muhammadu Buhari was in Dubai to attend the Annual Investment Meeting (AIM) on the invite of Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid All Maktoum, UAE Vice President, Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai. The event – which is in its 9th edition – was organised by the Ministry of Economy, Dubai to bridge the gap between emerging countries and investors in the developed economies.

For three days, leaders of governments, including Presidents, economic ministers, national investment promotions commissioners, corporations, small businesses and startups engaged as well as pitched to both existing and potential investors.

Nigeria’s President Buhari gave his main pitch on Monday, the opening day of the event. Prior to mounting the AIM podium, the President had had the opportunity to sharpen his wooing skills in a series of meeting with UAE investors such as Khalid Bin Kalban, managing director and CEO, Dubai Investments, one of the big companies listed on the Dubai Financial Market, Yusuffali M.A, chairman and managing director of Lulu Group International, and other top tier business men in the UAE from the energy, infrastructure, property development, hotels, hospitality, food processing and retail sector. He also had a bilateral meeting with Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid All Maktoum.

 

Image laundering is an official state business that has billions of tax payers’ money backing it. Every other week, Nigerian government officials jet out of the country to different parts of the world to put their wooing skills to work and attract foreign investors.

It is nothing new for nations to care deeply about their image. The UAE for instance, hires public relations firms and apply brand management theory – formerly the domain of corporate communications departments and business-school seminars.

It is never a walk in the park, particularly where it relates to a country like Nigeria with serious baggage that could make would-be investors think twice like insecurities, religious crisis, endemic poverty, political instability, judicial enslavement, high illiteracy and poor infrastructural development.

“Let’s keep only what we can manage,” Buhari had said in 2015 when his administration considered closing Nigeria’s diplomatic missions over persistent poor output, adding that there was no point in keeping embassies “all over the world with dilapidated and demoralised,” staff.

One of the challenges, as a senior official in the Nigerian government told BusinessDay in Dubai, is that oftentimes, the people who get to represent the country at these events hardly do it for the value they will bring to the image of the country. As a result there is little or no effort made to plan ahead and acquire knowledge of the quality of participants so as to engage them properly.

“Most of them are only in it because of the estacode and duty tour allowance, plus the joy of traveling around the world,” the official told BusinessDay.

President Buhari’s message on “Mapping the Future of Foreign Direct Investment: Enriching World Economies Through Digital Globalization” was given just before President Rustam Minnikhanov of the Republic of Tatarstan (a federal subject of the Russian Federation) had made a compelling case of why his small nation of about 3.7 million citizens deserves to be the destination for investors’ capital.

On his part, Nigerian President acknowledged the revolutionizing impact of digitalization, and the role Nigeria’s young tech entrepreneurs have made in pushing it forward, he laid heavy emphasis on new waves of cybercrime and terrorism that continue to threaten the positive strides being made.

“The digital world is borderless. In many instances, the criminals in this world are faceless and without physical addresses. This is why we must all come together to protect the good while eliminating the bad,” he said.

He also acknowledged that “it has to be a collective effort led by both public and private sector leaders – many of whom are here today.”

To be honest, the President’s message communicated in just 15 minutes would be most appropriate for another audience, example a conference on cyber security, cyber regulation, open internet etc, giving that every other day cyber criminals make life unbearable for millions of individuals who are now resident online and big and small businesses that want to survive.

However choosing to tell a conference filled with investors waiting to hear about the opportunities and returns they stand to make from investing in Nigeria, that it is time to regulate the cyber space and make it safer sounded very off and left Nigeria’s promise looking very vague.

“That was not the forum for this message,” a Nigerian delegate at the event told BusinessDay.

Right after the President’s pitch, was the vice President of Chechen Republic, another federal subject of Russia. Within minutes of starting his pitch in his native Russian language, the audience got useful information about the industries in his country that were growing as a result of leveraging technology and where the big opportunities are.

It is said that leadership flows from the top down. President Buhari could have chosen a subtler approach, focusing on Nigeria’s rich diversity and the entrepreneurial character of the people. The President and his highly paid handlers need to come to the realisation that Nigeria is a brand in that case it needs to plan and tailor its pitch.