Chukwuemeka Chikelu, 22 Years Ago

By Okey ikechukwu

Without consulting anyone, former Minister of Information and National Orientation, Chief Chukwuemeka Chikelu went and turned 60 a few days ago. He has the same  birth month and date with the Federal Republic of Nigeria. The same October 1st of a country he served with exemplary diligence, patriotism and deliberate selflessness.

As his Special Assistant and Chief-of-Staff, at the time, I saw first hand what it means to work with a man who understand the declaration in our constitution that the primary purpose of government is to cater for the welfare and security of the people. His tenure, orientation and overall disposition as a minister, differs remarkably from what we are seeing everywhere today., wherein government epitomizes the absence of its very raison d’etre.

If the primary business of anyone in public office is to focus on everything that would strengthen the welfare of the people and ensure a more secure nation, then it must also be said that many who have held, and who are still holding, are in office for the wrong reasons. What we have today, after 26 years of democracy, is are harvests of kidnappers, bandits, broad spectrum poverty and robbers. We have also enthroned consumption, the cheerful squandering of humongous wealth, negative economic pressures among other unpleasant markers of our democracy.

Below, reproduced in substantial measure, is an article that appeared on this page seven years ago, under the title “When Chikelu Was Minister”.  It arose from an occasion when I had to speak about my former boss and friend, Chief Chukwuemeka Chikelu, at a round table organized in Abuja, to address the crisis of leadership in Nigeria. His name came up with nostalgic reference and acclaim. The article under reference said:

“As his former Special Assistant and Chief of Staff, I found myself in the rather uncomfortable situation of having to give an impromptu account of the man and what propelled him to serve Nigeria the way he did as a minister”. I started thus:

“Chikelu came into office determined not to allow the melodrama of “authority” to becloud the fact that the only reason he was reporting to work as a minister was to serve the people and the national interest. He clearly separated his person from the frills of office, lived in his own house, drove in his own car and ensured that the personal expenses of his aides were not borne by the ministry, or government. He was a methodical young man, with very pronounced personal preference for orderliness, clear targets and easily measurable results”.

I continued: “For every proposal from civil servants on any issue, he would always invite me for us to address four questions: (1) How will this benefit the people and the nation?, (2) How do we measure the results?, (3) Can we work out how to make what is being proposed cost less than the figures put forward?, and (4) Would we like to do this if our money was involved and we are being asked to do this for our family? He was that thorough.

At no point during his watch in the Ministry of Information and national orientation did he approve anything that violated any clear policy framework guiding such actions. He took a clear position on public “events”, ceremonies and “programmes”, making it clear that these were often excuses for wasting public funds. Any expensive programme designed without any real value to the nation was seen as a dishonest way of pretending to be working and shot down.

Of course, there was consternation, irritation and subtle protest from some functionaries around him. But Chikelu always insisted that records of expenditure should not be mistaken for development, or benefit to the people in whose name the money was being spent. Some objected to “a serious Minister” looking into the routine “chop and let others chop” in  government, as if his father’s money was involved”.

Not yet done, I continued: “The ministry got a totally new approach to a lot of things under him. He explained that it was an efficient information machinery, and not the high visibility of government ministers, that made the US, UK, and more advanced nations use behind the scenes efficiency to maintain effective global  communication. He redefined the role of the Resident Information Officers (Chief Press Secretaries), pointing out that the nearly-defunct Federal Information Centres and other arteries of the national information network are the real engines of national communication and not necessarily the minister. The neglect and dearth of training of information officers in the ministry over the decades was proof of his position on this matter.

While admitting that robust personal interventions by government information managers are important and critical for effective government communication, he maintained that when this is overdone and abused, preoccupation with  political visibility undermined the information machinery and authentic communication. Generalisations and threadbare pronouncements, usually designed to satisfy political office holders, would then take the place of truth, political mobilisation and information management.

He always said that government credibility suffers when the job of Information Minister is defined solely, or at least largely, in terms of appearances on the print and electronic media at every possible and impossible opportunity; to say something and show that he is working for government. He must keep his mouth open at all times, so that whoever accused him of not talking will be quickly countered with: “I was talking but you didn’t hear, can’t you see that my mouth is open?”

I continued thus: “Chikelu would argue that there were Best Practices in all human affairs, including information management and public communication. Modern nations build, develop and sustain government communication as part of the overall social process. That is why he brought into the very idea of the job of Information Minister an agenda for national reorientation on what to expect from, and demand, of that office and other institutions of state. He also was averse to the view that every critic of the government was automatically an enemy of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

Once government communication tries to please itself, it becomes conspiratorial, declarative, impatient and unable to present the thread that runs through the diverse activities of the state as a focused mission. That is why we have now developed a new generation of leaders, bred on a political diet of purposeless speech making and executive arbitrariness. For them, the word “authority” means ‘the right to misbehave and not be challenged’. Expertise, for them, is nothing more than facilitated upward movement, with or without ability. Capital consumption is their philosophy of leadership and most “prominent” Nigerians have been fed on this nihilistic philosophy of management for four decades.

Three problems confronted Chikelu on the job, namely; (a) procuring authentic information and using credible platforms to present it; (b) separating what is useful from what is useless; and (c) making the information available to his various publics in such a way that even if he did not win them over he would, at least, not swell the ranks of those who would not bother to listen at all.

In this regard, his concern was more with (i) developing personnel skills and strengthening structures and processes in the ministry; (ii) restoring the government’s institutional capacity for distilling useful information; (iii) synchronising the activities, programmes and projections of the information and related agencies for unity of purpose and to avoid duplications and wastages; and (iv) showing that public office holders have a duty to insist on the right paradigms and not play to the gallery, even if the uninformed public opinion wanted it otherwise”.

Then I was done with my comments and observations. Below is the last paragraph in the earlier mentioned article.

“Rounding up our roundtable engagement, the issues agreed upon with regard to the out-going-in-coming Buhari  government was that we had cause to discuss Chikelu because of his performance while in office. We agreed that Buhari should: (1) abolish security votes, since the armed forces, police and security agencies have their budgets, (2) use his party’s strength in the national assembly to cut down the pay of lawmakers, if he loves the nation, (3) be more honest in addressing the herdsmen issue, (4) forbid his new ministers from organising “Summits” and use extant records from previous summits to address the problems of their respective ministries”.

Happy birthday, Nnanyelugo: Abundant blessings and God’s continued guidance.