It is no news that the governments of the world claim to do no wrong even when they are caught in the act. Governments have the Public Relation department where their jobs are to create propagandas, paint the image of the government to be perfect before the masses and counter every bad publicity or any publicity against the government.
The Nigerian government have taken this Public Relations game to another level; the make sure that the prove that the government does no wrong and whatever decision (wether good or bad) taken by the government is for the good of the masses. So, when the government is caught pants down the strategy employed is the denial, dissociate, pass the blame and push buck ‘system of governance’.
The government is not aware…, the government disassociate itself from…, etc’. These are some of the starting phrases of the denial statements issued by the government whenever they have messed up.
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When the government denies or disassociates from the act, the subordinates that carried out the act that the government has already denied will claim that they acted from the instructions and directives from the top or that they mistook the instruction. They will all keep passing blame and pushing the buck around till everyone forgets and move on.
Recent instance; on 29th of October, 2021, it was in the News that the members of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), State Security Service (SSS) and the members of the Nigerian police force all working from the instructions of the Attorney General and Minister for Justice of the Federation obtained a search warrant from the Magistrate court to search the house of Her Lordship, Mrs. Mary Odili, the second most senior justice of the Supreme Court of Nigeria and the wife of the former governor of Rivers state, Mr. Peter Odili.
The search warrant carries no name and bears the wrong address of the house to be conducted search on which makes the warrant void abnitio (but let’s leave this for another day). They claimed to have coincidental found themselves in the house of the of the honorable justice of the Supreme Court of Nigeria to execute the search warrant.
The purpose of the search was and is still unknown; whether it was politically motivated or they are just doing their jobs or it was a honest mistake, which ever it is, everybody associated with the failed search has denied it or claimed ignorance of it which is pointing to the fact that something is wrong somewhere and the purported search conducted was way out of line.
The Magistrate court revoked the search warrant claiming the court was misled (the court denied being aware of the purpose of the warrant), the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) released an official statement to that effect denying Knowledge and disassociating themselves from the failed raid, the State Security Services (SSS) also denied participating in the raid when contacted, the Ministry of Justice where the purported instruction came from also release an official statement denying the knowledge of the Attorney General and Minister for Justice of raid and disassociating themselves from it, the police agency are also cutting themselves loose.
It now seems that just like divide and rule is a system of governance employed by the colonial masters during colonial era and recorded a huge success, act and deny, shrug your shoulders and claim you are not aware, issue a statement disassociating yourself from the actions and deny every knowledge of it and propaganda is also a system of governance in Nigeria at the moment which have also recorded a huge success starting from the presidency down to the least member of the government.
