Please re-brand the poor

Sule Yesufu - updated: Monday 02.11.2009

If it is not panadol, it is not the same thing as panadol. - Radio Jingle.

Do not be surprised about today’s title. After all, what is in vogue in Nigeria is re-branding Nigeria. If re-branding has the magic wand to solve all seemingly unsolvable problems, why then can we not also re-brand the poor?

I have argued in this column that it will be better and more cost-effective to re-name Nigeria instead of re-branding the country, but I am far from where policies are made and our “rulers” never seem to listen to good advice.

My concern in this column has always been for the poor, so if re-branding is good for Nigeria, it must also be good for the poor. After all, nearly 100 million of us live below the poverty line and that makes us poor.

If governance is all about the greater good for the greater number, that figure alone, if nothing else, is sufficient to make the government think seriously of re-branding the poor, who are in the majority in this country.

Jokes apart, I sincerely believe that this whole noise about re-branding Nigeria will simply bombard us with plenty of meaningless and ineffective jingles and Nigeria will remain Nigeria so what do we hope to achieve?

I know Professor Dora Akunyili, the Minister of Information and Communications, by reputation, mostly through her exploits at the National Agency for Food and Drugs Administration and Control (NAFDAC). But let the minister please take this free advice from me. At the end of this re-branding exercise, the only entity that will be visibly re-branded, albeit negatively, will be Professor Akunyili.

If she cares about her image in the future, I will quickly counsel her to call her predecessors in office and task them on how they fared on similar exercises in the past.

Chief Chukwu-emeka Chikelu, Mr. Frank Nweke Jnr and Mr. John Odey are alive, well and just within a telephone call away, yet we are watching as our minister is embarking on another exercise in futility. Something must be definitely amiss somewhere.

I am told the minister is a professor of Pharmacology, so she could be excused if she knows little or nothing about marketing, which the re-branding exercise is all about. That, however, cannot be said about the officials in the ministry, who are assisting her in the project.

In case none of them has been bold enough to tell her the truth, I will tell it to her here and now at no cost whatsoever. In business school, the first thing you learn from a marketing lecturer is that a good product sells itself. That is Marketing 101, which every marketing student will tell you is very interesting.

What Madam Minister is doing now is like taking a pig to London and bringing it back to Nigeria in Gucci shoes, Giorgio Armani suit, Christian Dior sun glasses and Issey Miyake perfume.

On arrival at the airport terminal, the immigration officials will be sociable enough to say, “Welcome Mr Pig, you look cute.” Now, Mr, Pig, with all its expensive designer outfits was still called “pig.” I bet this will surprise its handlers who may have thought that with all the “good works” they had done to improve the pig, it is still called pig. The irony of it all is that these people knew all the while that a pig is a pig and will remain a pig and nothing else. That is the dilemma of all the current noise about re-branding Nigeria.

I know Nigeria well and the race is already on about the new fad called “re-branding.” In spite of all the obvious faults, re-branding we must, so let someone please help me re-brand the poor if that is what will change their status from being poor to being rich.

If anyone successfully does this, there is no doubt Nigeria will be successfully re-branded at no extra cost since the poor in Nigeria are overwhelmingly more than the rich.

I bet you can now appreciate my drift more. Like the Americans will say, let us go back to the basic. If Nigeria becomes good to its people, most of its people will be good and re-branding will come about in form of evolution.

I wonder why this simple fundamental is difficult to understand and be fully appreciated by our “rulers.”

My own concern is for the poor. If re-branding will change their status today, so be it. I am jumping on the train with all my senses intact hoping I will be delivered in one piece at the other side of the divide.

I rest my case.