By Abdulwarees Solanke
Voice of Nigeria
The media, whether mass or social, public, private and commercial, traditional or vcontemporary,l, print or broadcast, in fact, all genres have a patriotic duty, as the fourth estate of the realm. mirror of the society and the conscience of the public to be setting agenda and mainstreaming public issues and concerns that will inform government and public policy choices and actions, geared towards sustainable development and transformation of their societies.
So, the first question here is: “What public concerns, issues, and problems must INSPIRE our governments, in Africa and Asia to commit themselves to an aggressive drive for sustainable development? The post-independence experiences at policy and reform projects in many African countries suggest that they are almost always responding to crises as the structure and forms of governments that have dominated her history have largely being dictated by emergencies and political misadventures. Therefore, our public policies and programmes, even if they were genuine, were not enduring. Today, many of our countries are certainly in emergencies in terms of development aspirations. The logic here is if emergency management has not yielded sustainable development for Africa; governments in the continent must return to long-term and long-range planning that will ensure enduring transformation and development for their citizens. Consequently, for every reform project, African countries must draw inspiration from countries with similar national experiences and best practices in governance. Brazil, India, and China are good case studies just as there are fine lessons in reforms from Malaysia, Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Singapore. On the strength of these observations, it is possible to probe further other specific questions that should guide Africa and Asia’s quest for reform and transformation and how we should tell these stories, sustainable development stories in the public service mass media.
As Public Service Media, the stories we tell of our continents must pungently ask: What policies must we INITIATE to leapfrog all the countries into the league of the developed nations with commendable human development indices?, Despite huge investment in several social capital projects on the continent since the political independence of many of our countries, especially since the 1960s, much parts of the continent still lacked essential amenities that will qualify the governments as committed to development. So, at any point in time and in every situation, our concern must be delivering policies and programmes that ensure the greatest good for the greatest number of people, with the least compliance lethargy. Health, Housing, Public Transportation, Waste Management and Environmental Protection, Gender Balance, basic education, and economic empowerment must be dominant in our content and themes. This, however, entails rigorous identification and analysis of the issues and problems, real, extant, or potential. Again, this demands foresight and sensitivity from the government to the vitality of evidence based research into public issues and problems before they escalate to national emergencies. Therefore, in the stories we tell, we must be interested in the likely responses to reform initiatives by employing all rational and behavioural analytic tools in our predictions on outcomes of programmes and projects designed to address the development challenges identified.
We must also ask for our stories ask: ,Who Must We INVOLVE?, Critical to the success of any reform project is the support and legitimacy of all stakeholders and interest groups, beneficiaries, or victims. Without consultation, engagement, and collaboration with those to be affected, programmes and reform initiatives are justifiably misconstrued, opposed, and rejected, or they suffer apathy and indifference even from the intended beneficiaries. Strategic communication, wide consultation and close collaboration with beneficiaries and sponsors are necessary to carry all along and ensure they all take ownership of the projects for them to succeed or at least limit obstacles which those that might be negatively affected by the reform projects may present or impose while pursuing development policies.
Our sustainable development stories must also probe ,what policy framework we must be INSTITUTE in our development policy formulation and implementation processes?, In consideration of reform initiatives, experts and officials are always bordered by how well or how soon a programme will yield the desired dividends. Such result is measured by the efficiency, effectiveness, economy, and the impact of the tools and strategies adopted in the implementation process to push through the reform project. Since most reforms are bitter, painful, and unusual, they are necessarily prone to rejection. Therefore, the framework that is best suited to preventing policy shock and glut is one that gives room for learning, coping, and adjustment by those likely to be affected and those implementing the policies. This is because realities on the field of development policy and programme implementation may alter projections in the plan. Such an approach is denoted as incrementalism. This framework of learning and coping gives room for manoeuvring, adjustment, and building on experience to correct mistakes. This is the more reason why public service media is the best gauge for monitoring and evaluation in the policy cycle.
Again, we must ask a cogent question on ,”Who our governments in Africa must INSPIRE.” This evidently is an essential question our stories must try to resolve. Our governments must inspire or mobilize the entire citizenry in various countries by the quality of leadership provided. To inspire or mobilize the citizenry towards sustainable development goals and objectives, they must be visionary, responsive, and transformational. It must project all the elements of good governance. In practical terms therefore, the governments must inspire in the citizenry the readiness for trust, partnership and collaboration through the services they provide, the incentives and opportunities they create for the stimulation of growth, real employment and productivity. Furthermore, they must inspire the entire citizenry through the cost, sacrifices, and denials seen in leaders of the government or the elected representatives. Those visible incentives, sacrifices, and denials, which ultimately result in savings for the citizens, are the stories that the mass media must tell. So, there must be fidelity on the part of the mass media to this function of mobilization.
This leads to the leading to the next question about utilization, maintenance, and management of those physical and human capital that are national assets. Without an appreciation of culture of protection, conservation and continuous investment in national assets and resources, quality assurance, measurement or evaluation and improvement of the processes of delivering public goods and services, public investment in them will only be fragmental, misaligned and wasteful.
The nation must prevent the mistakes of the past in our culture of public management. These are the themes that sustainable development stories must constantly interrogate.
Such stories must also answer such questions as: Who must we INVITE? That is who are those that will partner or even compete with the government in the delivery of these essentials of life that are needed to assure good quality of life that are contained in the Sustainable Development Goals that nations of the world, particularly the poor ones agreed to pursue. The reality of public management and provision of public goods and services suggests that big government is no longer suitable to achieve handsome results as governments in Africa can not do all alone. They need credible partners and collaborators, including foreign direct investors, operators in the private sector, and non-governmental organizations with experience and the financial muscle. Gone are the days that economies of scale are predictably positive and manageable, and public needs are limited. The bigger the size of the government, the more elaborate the hierarchy and processes, and the more cumbersome, wasteful, and costlier will it be in getting things done in public interest. Therefore, the option for our government is to relinquish those areas of less national strategic importance and seek partnership and collaboration with private sector providers and direct foreign investors who have requisite expertise and financial strength. But, their stake in the national economy must transcend profit but include a commitment to national growth and development. They must have qualitative public value to deliver to the nation through their involvement in the local economy. Our stories must reflect how to get such partners and monitor the quality of their performance. The stories we tell must promote investigating the credibility of such partners to ensure that they are actually what they claim to be and not opportunists.
Our stories must also deal with the question of “what we must INCREASE* This question relates to what we produce with our human capital assets, and in which areas we have a comparative advantage. Our experts and technocrats in various analyses presented facts that clearly suggest that even though we are classified among the oil-rich nations, we are still oil-impoverished per capita when compared with many other OPEC members whose production capacity outweighs ours in spite of their lesser population. A resource whose production process, distribution, and marketing does not engage a substantial percentage of our population and does not guarantee us much comparative advantage in the world economy can not be said to be in our ultimate interest. In Nigeria, for instance, the paradox of oil production and dependence is that while it is enriching the national treasury, it is metaphorically stifling productivity and employment in the real sector of the nation’s economy. This is not to advocate the shutting of Nigeria’s oil oil cells. Rather, it is a call to rethink the nation’s economic diversification agenda. When we advocate diversification, we must be shifting focus to saving and investing our oil earnings on enduring and sustainable national assets while also concentrating on sectors with higher comparative advantage and greater prospects of employment generation, productivity and self-sustainability. Our stories must, therefore, explore the theme of diversification of the national economy in such ways that the bigger opportunities that abound in every part of the country become open to all citizens. The successes of the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (EGRP) of the Nigerian government is a clear case study of the type of stories mass media must mainstream in telling our stories of sustainable development. We used to talk about our industries being on the throes of death, producing below installed capacity, diverting to merchandising of imported items or have closed shops to relocate to other countries, With the ERGP being pursued, the stories are already changing. The country is already achieving self-sufficiency in a number of areas, especially agriculture. Being a net importing nation had encouraged conspicuous consumption with less employment generation.
This kind of unsavoury situation should compel us to ask in our stories, ,what must we IMPORT? Collectively, we have to reach an understanding that our imports must be those things that grow and add real value to our capacity rather than being dependent on others for everything through the stories we tell. Our stories must encourage us to moderate the consumption of what is not produced locally. They must, therefore, lead us to be disciplined on ,what we must INHIBIT or restrict and why we must restrict them. This question is easily answered in the previous explanation of what we must import if we must achieve sustainable development. Our governments must discourage commodities and items that prevent the growth of our local industries. But, they must also explain what incentives and subsidies we must introduce in sectors that are not immediately profitable or attractive to local entrepreneurs who need to be protected. So, the media is critically important in explaining or telling such stories that will assist making correct choices in what we import or restrict as well as seek cogent ways of regulating economic activities whose engagement will jeopardize the needs of the future generation. The public mass media.
Similarly, we need to ask, * What must we INVENT or INNOVATE?* We must be sensitive to the two demands of inspiring research and development and growing our local industry. So, our government and the mass media through the stories we tell must encourage invention, investment, and patronage of technologies appropriate for our development stage. It is indeed absurd for us to be importing simple technologies like grinding and shelling machines fabricated in other countries while similar ones produced by our hard-working technologists rot in the roadside showrooms. Our stories must showcase the hardworking and innovative minds and hands that are toiling in all corners of the country to produce inventions and technologies that are appropriate to our peculiarities and development stage. Finding and telling stories of such struggling and unknown local fabricators and technologists will of cause ginger them to work harder to achieve breakthroughs that will solve many problems in the national economy without depending on foreign brands or wasting investment on transfer of inappropriate technologies to the continent.
Furthermore, we must raise issues on “*what we must IMPROVE.” In any reform initiative, it is inevitable that some vulnerabilities and negative externalities will arise. They are the price we must pay if reform must be impactful. We must, therefore, improve our social security deliverables to mitigate the impact of reforms and widen the arena of dialogue and communication to imbue trust and confidence that the evidently harsh and painful decision is temporary. In this regard, the mass media must offer hope and not heighten the desperation of the citizens. In the stories we tell, we must open windows of opportunities for alternatives and reliefs.
Now, in what must we INVEST? The answer is in everyday discourse, but we have been rather slow to address as we engage in conspicuous consumption while enhancing productivity and improving employment in other countries. We must necessarily invest in infrastructure and human capacity development for us to be competitive in today’s knowledge economy. India is also a fine example in its huge investment in ICT. And there are very good stories of Indian nationals making waves outside their shores as expatriates in other countries, contributing immensely to their local economy through what they repatriate home as offshore transfers. However, it is not sufficient to provide the infrastructure and develop human capacity without I establishing effective and efficient legal and regulatory frameworks that will ensure sound, equitable, and judicious distribution of the gains of our investment.
Indeed, mainstreaming issues along these lines of thought will confirm the media as partners in progress or stakeholders in the nation-building projects of their respective nations. Nigeria is in greater need of such a LEVEL OF PATRIOTISM AND PROFESSIONALISM that will qualify the governments as committed to development. So, at any point in time and in every situation, our concern must be delivering policies and programmes that ensure the greatest good for the greatest number of people, with the least compliance lethargy. Health, Housing, Public Transportation, Waste Management and Environmental Protection, Gender Balance, basic education, and economic empowerment must be dominant in our content and themes. This, however, entails rigorous identification and analysis of the issues and problems, real, extant, or potential. Again, this demands foresight and sensitivity from the government to the vitality of evidence based research into public issues and problems before they escalate to national emergencies and plagues such as the world is confronting now and I see the depravity of the writer’s mind that is best suited to preventing policy shock and glut is one that gives room for learning and coping and sensitivity from the government to the vitality of evidence based research into public issues and problems before they escalate to national emergencies. Therefore, in the stories we tell, we must be interested in the likely responses to reform initiatives by employing all rational and behavioural analytic tools in our predictions on outcomes of programmes and projects designed to address the development challenges identified.
We must also ask for our stories ask: ,Who Must We INVOLVE?, Critical to the success of any reform project is the support and legitimacy of all stakeholders and interest groups, beneficiaries, or victims. Without consultation, engagement, and collaboration with those to be affected, programmes and reform initiatives are justifiably misconstrued, opposed, and rejected, or they suffer apathy and indifference even from the intended beneficiaries. Strategic communication, wide consultation and close collaboration with beneficiaries and sponsors are necessary to carry all along and ensure they all take ownership of the projects for them to succeed or at least limit obstacles which those that might be negatively affected by the reform projects may present or impose while pursuing development policies.
Our sustainable development stories must also probe, what policy framework we must be INSTITUTE in our development policy formulation and implementation processes?, In consideration of reform initiatives, experts and officials are always bordered by how well or how soon a programme will yield the desired dividends. Such result is measured by the efficiency, effectiveness, economy, and the impact of the tools and strategies adopted in the implementation process to push through the reform project. Since most reforms are bitter, painful, and unusual, they are necessarily prone to rejection. Therefore, the framework that is best suited to preventing policy shock and glut is one that gives room for learning, coping, and adjustment by those likely to be affected and those implementing the policies. This is because realities on the field of development policy and programme implementation may alter projections in the plan. Such an approach is denoted as incrementalism. This framework of learning and coping gives room for manoeuvring, adjustment, and building on experience to correct mistakes. This is the more reason why public service media is the best gauge for monitoring and evaluation in the policy cycle.
Again, we must ask a cogent question on ,”Who our governments in Africa must INSPIRE.” This evidently is an essential question our stories must try to resolve. Our governments must inspire or mobilize the entire citizenry in various countries by the quality of leadership provided. To inspire or mobilize the citizenry towards sustainable development goals and objectives, they must be visionary, responsive, and transformational. It must project all the elements of good governance. In practical terms therefore, the governments must inspire in the citizenry the readiness for trust, partnership and collaboration through the services they provide, the incentives and opportunities they create for the stimulation of growth, real employment and productivity. Furthermore, they must inspire the entire citizenry through the cost, sacrifices, and denials seen in leaders of the government or the elected representatives. Those visible incentives, sacrifices, and denials, which ultimately result in savings for the citizens, are the stories that the mass media must tell. So, there must be fidelity on the part of the mass media to this function of mobilization.
This leads to the leading to the next question about utilization, maintenance, and management of those physical and human capital that are national assets. Without an appreciation of culture of protection, conservation and continuous investment in national assets and resources, quality assurance, measurement or evaluation and improvement of the processes of delivering public goods and services, public investment in them will only be fragmental, misaligned and wasteful. The nation must prevent the mistakes of the past in our culture of public management. These are the themes that sustainable development stories must constantly interrogate.
Such stories must also answer such questions as: Who must we INVITE? That is who are those that will partner or even compete with the government in the delivery of these essentials of life that are needed to assure good quality of life that are contained in the Sustainable Development Goals that nations of the world, particularly the poor ones agreed to pursue. The reality of public management and provision of public goods and services suggests that big government is no longer suitable to achieving handsome results as governments in Africa can not do all alone. They need credible partners and collaborators, including foreign direct investors, operators in the private sector, and non-governmental organizations with experience and the financial muscle. Gone are the days that economies of scale are predictably positive and manageable, and public needs are limited. The bigger the size of the government, the more elaborate the hierarchy and processes, and the more cumbersome, wasteful, and costlier will it be in getting things done in public interest. Therefore, the option for our government is to relinquish those areas of less national strategic importance and seek partnership and collaboration with private sector providers and direct foreign investors who have requisite expertise and financial strength. But, their stake in the national economy must transcend profit but include a commitment to national growth and development. They must have qualitative public value to deliver to the nation through their involvement in the local economy. Our stories must reflect how to get such partners and monitor the quality of their performance. The stories we tell must promote investigating the credibility of such partners to ensure that they are actually what they claim to be and not opportunists.
Our stories must also deal with the question of what we must INCREASE This question relates to what we produce with our human capital assets and in which areas we have a comparative advantage. Our experts and technocrats in various analyses presented facts that clearly suggest that even though we are classified among the oil-rich nations, we are still oil-impoverished per capita when compared with many other OPEC members whose production capacity outweighs ours in spite of their lesser population. A resource whose production process, distribution, and marketing does not engage a substantial percentage of our population and does not guarantee us much comparative advantage in the world economy can not be said to be in our ultimate interest. In Nigeria, for instance, the paradox of oil production and dependence is that while it is enriching the national treasury, it is metaphorically stifling productivity and employment in the real sector of the nation’s economy. This is not to advocate the shutting of Nigeria’s oil oil cells. Rather, it is a call to rethink the nation’s economic diversification agenda. When we advocate diversification, we must be shifting focus to saving and investing our oil earnings on enduring and sustainable national assets while also concentrating on sectors with higher comparative advantage and greater prospects of employment generation, productivity and self-sustainability. Our stories must, therefore, explore the theme of diversification of the national economy in such ways that the bigger opportunities that abound in every part of the country become open to all citizens. The successes of the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (EGRP) of the Nigerian government is a clear case study of the type of stories mass media must mainstream in telling our stories of sustainable development. We used to talk about our industries being on the throes of death, producing below installed capacity, diverting to merchandising of imported items or have closed shops to relocate to other countries, With the ERGP being pursued, the stories are already changing. The country is already achieving self-sufficiency in a number of areas, especially agriculture. Being a net importing nation had encouraged conspicuous consumption with less employment generation.
This kind of unsavoury situation should compel us to ask in our stories, ,what must we IMPORT? Collectively, we have to reach an understanding that our imports must be those things that grow and add real value to our capacity rather than being dependent on others for everything through the stories we tell. Our stories must encourage us to moderate the consumption of what is not produced locally. They must, therefore, lead us to be disciplined on ,what we must INHIBIT or restrict and why we must restrict them. This question is easily answered in the previous explanation of what we must import if we must achieve sustainable development. Our governments must discourage commodities and items that prevent the growth of our local industries. But, they must also explain what incentives and subsidies we must introduce in sectors that are not immediately profitable or attractive to local entrepreneurs who need to be protected. So, the media is critically important in explaining or telling such stories that will assist making correct choices in what we import or restrict as well as seek cogent ways of regulating economic activities whose engagement will jeopardize the needs of the future generation. The public mass media.
Similarly, we need to ask, what must we INVENT or INNOVATE? We must be sensitive to the two demands of inspiring research and development and growing our local industry. So, our government and the mass media through the stories we tell must encourage invention, investment, and patronage of technologies appropriate for our development stage. It is indeed absurd for us to be importing simple technologies like grinding and shelling machines fabricated in other countries while similar ones produced by our hard-working technologists rot in the roadside showrooms. Our stories must showcase the hardworking and innovative minds and hands that are toiling in all corners of the country to produce inventions and technologies that are appropriate to our peculiarities and development stage. Finding and telling stories of such struggling and unknown local fabricators and technologists will of cause ginger them to work harder to achieve breakthroughs that will solve many problems in the national economy without depending on foreign brands or wasting investment on transfer of inappropriate technologies to the continent.
Furthermore, we must raise issues on ,,what we must IMPROVE In any reform initiative, it is inevitable that some vulnerabilities and negative externalities will arise. They are the price we must pay if reform must be impactful. We must, therefore, improve on our social security deliverables to mitigate the impact of reforms and widen the arena of dialogue and communication to imbue trust and confidence that the evidently harsh and painful decision is temporary. In this regard, the mass media must offer hope and not heighten the desperation of the citizens. In the stories we tell, we must open windows of opportunities for alternatives and reliefs.
Now, in what must we INVEST? The answer is in everyday discourse, but we have been rather slow to address as we engage in conspicuous consumption while enhancing productivity and improving employment in other countries. We must necessarily invest in infrastructure and human capacity development for us to be competitive in today’s knowledge economy. India is also a fine example in its huge investment in ICT. And there are very good stories of Indian nationals making waves outside their shores as expatriates in other countries, contributing immensely to their local economy through what they repatriate home as offshore transfers. However, it is not sufficient to provide the infrastructure and develop human capacity without I establishing effective and efficient legal and regulatory frameworks that will ensure sound, equitable, and judicious distribution of the gains of our investment.
Indeed, mainstreaming issues along these lines of thought will confirm the media as partners in progress or stakeholders in the nation-building projects of their respective nations. Nigeria is in greater need of such level of patriotism.
Abdulwarees, a fellow of the Chartered Institute of Public Diplomacy and Management and 2007/2008 Commonwealth Broadcasting Association scholar in Public Policy at the Universiti Brunei Darussalam is Deputy Director/Head of Strategic Planning and Corporate Development Department Voice of Nigeria
