NigeriansTalk

The news that Pres­i­dent Good­luck Jonathan of Nige­ria had cre­ated a Face­book page even­tu­ally got to me through Google Buzz where com­ments had been made to the effect that the power infra­struc­ture issue should be easy to solve.

Appar­ently, the Pres­i­dent had zeroed in on a com­ment and arranged for his aides to con­tact some “vision­ary” who appeared to have a sort of solu­tion to the power problem.

Power is a tough nut
Whilst some com­ments on Google Buzz were less than char­i­ta­ble about this crowd-sourcing approach to prob­lem res­o­lu­tion, I felt for the first time we had a leader who was seek­ing advice, ready to lis­ten and respond­ing pos­i­tively to suggestions.

More impor­tantly, the power infra­struc­ture prob­lem is really a dif­fi­cult one for too many rea­sons to recount here as I threw the idea that if it were easy to solve the least com­pe­tent leader would have done it and the most polit­i­cal leader would have built on it – The fact is rad­i­cal ideas are needed on that mat­ter and it would do well that we restrain our crit­i­cism and cyn­i­cism for an oppor­tu­nity to lis­ten first and keep our peace for a while.

A new lead­er­ship approach
Mean­while, Good­luck Jonathan as he has plainly iden­ti­fied him­self on Face­book has the pro­fes­sion of a politi­cian rather than a zool­o­gist, I sup­pose, that is what he had become now has 100,335 peo­ple who like him since he joined just 11 days ago on the 28th of June 2010.

His first sta­tus post was — Today, in ful­fill­ment of the promise I made at the 26th con­vo­ca­tion of the Uni­ver­sity of Port Har­court on Sat­ur­day, 15 May 2010, I have cre­ated a face­book fan page to inter­act with Nige­ri­ans. As I said on that day, there is an unchal­lenge­able power of good in the Niger­ian nation and her youth and through this medium I want Nige­ri­ans to give me the priv­i­lege of relat­ing with them with­out the trap­pings of office. GEJ

This is a laud­able goal, in the main that he first kept the promise and in recog­nis­ing that the trap­pings of office might pre­vent him from get­ting a feel of the peo­ple he leads.

More humil­ity than hubris
For his pro­file, he writes — My life has always been about ser­vice. I am focused on serv­ing my Cre­ator, fam­ily and my coun­try to the best of my abil­ity and with your help I aim to be bet­ter at doing that.

This prob­a­bly is some­thing Nige­ri­ans can relate to as a very reli­gious coun­try; it does appear to say a lot in terms of his pri­or­i­ties which puts his faith and imme­di­ate respon­si­bil­i­ties first and then the coun­try for the greater good.

He recog­nises that his abil­i­ties are not omnipo­tent or omni­scient as many African lead­ers tend to demon­strate by never allow­ing oth­ers in power think­ing they only have the where­withal to rule like emper­ors whilst fail­ing to men­tor suit­able suc­ces­sors to their “thrones”, with our help, Pres­i­dent Jonathan hopes to improve on what he is doing – for once, a sense of humil­ity rather than hubris is expressed by leadership.

A voice in the wilder­ness
I can­not help but think after read­ing many of the post­ings by the pres­i­dent than they all sound quite pro­fes­so­r­ial almost to the extent that it is impos­si­ble to iden­tity the sub­stance of his state­ments. The voice is too col­lec­tive some­times relayed in plat­i­tudes that bor­der on the rhetor­i­cal, where the 1st per­son is used there is almost a con­flict between the assertive and the acqui­es­cent – it makes you won­der if you are being lead or you are half-persuaded to follow.

I would think that the pres­i­dent does read many of the com­ments but he would def­i­nitely have to engage a Face­book man­age­ment team that weeds out the chaff and high­lights the wheat.

Yes sir, yes sir, 3 bags full sir
The com­ments are pre­saged with unnec­es­sary and flow­ery obse­quious­ness each one seem­ing to try to out-praise the other with all the reli­gious padding that detracts from get­ting straight to the point – ver­bosity is our undo­ing in many cases being suc­cinct, con­cise or pre­cise is too good for our expression.

With an aver­age of over 1,500 com­ments per sta­tus, this a Face­book page I nei­ther want to like or leave a com­ment on, for this one page the respon­si­ble thing would be to switch off all noti­fi­ca­tions or stream­line your set­tings to take noti­fi­ca­tions from lists of friends whilst exclud­ing the traf­fic gen­er­ated at the President’s page.

There are ways in which this looks like tak­ing sug­ges­tions from a crowd at a polit­i­cal rally, the noise, the heck­ling, the robust sup­port­ers who will lis­ten to no one but their patron and much worse – this is for a par­tic­u­lar fol­low­er­ship and audi­ence that needs to extend their Face­book foot­print to include politi­cians, celebri­ties and pass­ing fads or trends.

The new talk shop
As a forum for ordi­nary Nige­ri­ans to engage with their pres­i­dent, this a wel­come devel­op­ment; as an oppor­tu­nity to glean new ideas for issues that Nige­ria faces, this widens the resource and tal­ent pool beyond the fos­sils that crowd the polit­i­cal space in Nige­ria – it would become the new Niger­ian talk­ing shop but for the wise, this is best observed from afar.

You prob­a­bly need to be a mem­ber of Face­book to visit http://www.facebook.com/jonathangoodluck

As the first wired Pres­i­dent of Nige­ria on a pop­u­lar social net­work, all one can say is Good­luck Jonathan – wel­come to Facebook.