“You know, in my very first meeting with President Buhari he said specifically that he would like us to shift our focus to the northern region of Nigeria and we’ve done that. Now, it has been very difficult. The work there has been very difficult.” With these innocent words, the President of the World Bank Group, Jim Yong Kim opened a can of worms. The poor banker, obviously, never heard of the “mum effect in communication” – some things are better left unsaid.
Kim got it wrong, when he began his statement with “You know.” We do not know, Kim! Neither do we understand how a president could make such a request. You perhaps expected that, in line with global administrative procedures, the first meeting would have been made public, and press releases issued to capture such a “key” government policy – “shift your focus to the north.” Honestly nobody told us! This apparently was a top secret information, and we, the public, were not supposed to know.
Now, those who studiously deprived us of (and hid) this vital information in the aftermath of that crucial meeting, want us to believe that you failed or neglected to put the word “eastern” between “northern” and “region” in your recent statement to the press. But instead of grinding their axe with you, for “misleading the public”; they are throwing tantrums and calling Nigerians who “read you loud and clear” (the North is preferred) names. This is either a classical case of transferred aggression or executive bullying! Nigerians are reacting to Kim’s information, so the presidency should challenge Kim if he misunderstood the request and misrepresented the president in his statement.
Challenging Kim would be a tough task for the presidency. Kim had his aides in the meeting. If his aides and Kim do not know the difference between the “North” and the “North East”, then he has no business holding a high office of such global trust. Consequent upon that meeting, the World Bank, in line with the president’s directive, developed programs for the north (note the phrase “and we’ve done that”) and the presidency did not redirect their focus to the North East (which they claim they meant). The entire “ballad” appears to have been classified as top secret until the World Bank president re-echoed this ballad of the North in his world press briefing.
Since then the presidency has been jumping like a cat on hot bricks from illogical explanations to semantic fallacies to put Kim’s revelation to rest. But some things cannot just rest in peace – not even in a presidency where the more you look the less you see. Questions abound: If the president said that the World Bank should focus on the North East (and with known and justifiable reasons), why was it not publicized? Was this meeting in a coven (like a KKK meeting) with a grand wizard administrating an oath of omerta? Hmm! The Good Book says that everything hidden shall be made known one day – thanks Kim!
Lai Mohammed has been unsparing in spewing out all kinds of functional and dysfunctional information to the public. He likes the sound of his voice and he is completely inebriated with his uncanny ability to tell Nigerians what he wants Nigerians to hear and not what Nigerians want to hear. So why did he not tell us the bit about the “north” after the meeting with the World Bank? Why did he not put the icing on the “North East” cake and give us gullible Nigerians the sound bite that soon the North East would be transformed into a tourist attraction with Word Bank projects – thanks to the ingenuity of the president.
The defenders of the presidential universe (the Voltrons and the Spidermen who spun webs around us) did not tell us this bit about the “north east” until now. Yet they always have answers to every asked and even unasked question. Now that we know the game (courtesy of Mr. Kim) they are trying too hard to change the rules and shift the goal post. That is why their story is so touching but unfortunately it sounds like a moonlight tale.
The other problem is that the defense of the presidency is at most a side talk against the stream of the national conversation. Favoring the north had become a talking point long before Kim spilled the beans. Herdsmen do not only kill at the slightest provocation, they brandish and strut assault rifles in the full glare of law-enforcement officers – yet they do not get arrested because of where they come from. They escape sanctions without the army launching even “Operation Lizard Whisper.” The North has taken over the military-security complex, according to some politicians. The North is favored in appointments, according to regional groups. “North got lion’s share under Buhari – Documents” Punch Newspaper in a screaming headline. “Buhari is President of the North,” according to Governor Ayo Fayose and the elder statesman, Ayo Adebanjo. The conversation goes on…
So when Kim talked, he was simply adding a footnote to an ongoing conversation – or perhaps turning the conversation into a “ballad.” Now the nation is dancing to the “ballad” and the presidency, instead of dancing to its own music, wants to stop it with name-calling. An old Annang proverb states that the chicken ought to be more upset with the man who slaughtered it than with the maid who prepared it for dinner. The presidency should direct its salvo at Kim if Kim said something wrong. Otherwise, let them ever hold their peace. After all, you can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.