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By Romanus Ugwu, Abuja
The All Progressives Congress (APC) has found itself under unprecedented media assault from the African Democratic Congress (ADC), a coalition that emerged as the most vocal opposition ahead of the 2027 general elections.
The ADC’s calculated media strategy appears to systematically erode any confidence the public has in the ruling party while positioning itself as a credible alternative and painting the APC as ineffective and out of touch with the average Nigerian.
ADC’s media offensive
Over the past month, the ADC’s publicity machine, led by Bolaji Abdullahi, has launched a sustained campaign against the APC government. The attacks have targeted everything from economic policy failures to allegations of corruption and broken campaign promises.
The coalition’s most recent salvos have focused on the government’s handling of Nigeria’s refineries, questioning the Bola Tinubu administration’s decision to spend $2.8 billion on repairs before declaring the facilities moribund. “Successive APC administrations have poured over $18 billion into the so-called rehabilitation of Nigeria’s refineries. Yet there is no verifiable increase in refining capacity, no observable cost efficiency, and no fuel security benefit accruing to the Nigerian people,” the ADC stated in a recent press release. It also lampooned the APC-led government for “desperately exploiting Muhammadu Buhari’s death to whitewash its battered image.”
As if it had not delivered enough catalyst to jolt and stampede the ruling party, which is already struggling to cope with previous attacks, the coalition ADC also reproached the Federal Government’s recent appointment of certain individuals from the Northern region as an antidote to assuage the growing anti-President Tinubu sentiments in the northern states.
For many Nigerians, the examples of several members and chieftains of the ruling party brazenly abandoning it to join the ADC may not be unconnected with the impact of the resurgent media onslaughts from the ADC aimed at discrediting the ruling party. The attacks from the ADC on the ruling party and its government’s socio-economic policies were so ferocious that no day passes without the ADC winning the media war, which apparently may have necessitated recent efforts by the ruling party to rejig its information strategy.
For too long before now, in the consideration of pundits, when the APC enjoyed the comfort of negative publicity and media attention focused on almost all the opposition parties going through one form of internal leadership crisis or another, the ruling party could go weeks without issuing any statement apart from celebrating birthdays and milestone achievements recorded by party members.
Today, the reverse is the case, especially since the official transformation of the National Opposition Coalition Group (NOCG) into a political force under the ADC umbrella, which has pulled the ruling party, hitherto in a comfort zone, out of its shell to contend with the volcanic media onslaught erupting against it and its administration’s policies and programmes. Surprisingly, for some unexplainable, inexplicable, and unjustifiable reasons, the ruling party has been on the reactive and defensive side instead of sitting comfortably in the driver’s seat to determine the trajectory of media direction.
Miffed by the ugly, biased information dissemination trend, the presidency’s media team, in collaboration with the ruling party’s publicity department, last week returned to the drawing board, bringing along the party’s zonal and state spokespersons to review the development behind closed doors. Their mission and target were simply to appraise, reappraise, and re-strategize on how to perfect and launch a robust media arsenal to counter the opposition’s propaganda narrative in favor of the ruling party.
It became very necessary because the participants could not understand why the laudable achievements the President Tinubu-led administration has recorded in just two years of its four-year tenure should be overshadowed, eclipsed, and debased by the ceaseless media offensive of the opposition party’s media propaganda. It is very strange, according to the presidency and ruling party, that the opposition should celebrate to high heaven the negative ratings from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank on Nigeria but refuse to give kudos to the government for many favorable ratings from the same organizations.
They equally cannot comprehend why Nigerians, instead of commending the administration for making the Naira one of the best-performing currencies in the world, contrary to the doom-based scenario of many thinking that it would climb beyond N2,000, would turn the tables against the government that is performing this laudable magic.
To calm curious, agitated minds, a one-day seminar organized by the APC Publicity department and the presidency’s media team in collaboration with zonal and state publicity secretaries was the best place to tackle and resolve the media conundrum.
Speaker after speaker at the event, ranging from APC National Publicity Secretary Felix Morka, the party’s national chairman Ali Bukar Dalori, Chief Scribe Ajibola Suraju Basiru, to the presidency media team comprising Bayo Onanuga, Sunday Dare, and Tope Ajayi, and by extension, the Minister of Solid Mineral Development Dele Alake, concurred that the time is now for the ruling party’s spokespersons at national and state levels to come out of their cocoon and live up to their responsibilities. In doing so, they expressed shock at why the party should fold its hands and helplessly watch some Nigerians continue to weaponize falsehoods as an instrument of politics against the President Tinubu-led administration.
They can no longer continue to be reactive instead of proactive in responding to the unending attacks from the Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi-led ADC Publicity department, which is continually turning the heat on the ruling party, debasing and discrediting its credible policies.
APC spokesperson Morka, in his battle cry while reading the riot act, admitted how daunting the challenge of speaking for the ruling party, which is facing several battles on many fronts, could be, lamenting that they have become extremely reticent recently, backing his claims with facts and figures.
“Make no mistake, this is a very exciting time for all of us to take up this enormous responsibility of speaking on behalf of Africa’s largest political party in Africa’s most populous country. But it is also very daunting to take up that responsibility at a time like this, at a very challenging period for us, our party, and our country,” he admitted.
Meticulously enumerating why the enormous challenges ahead of them are quite daunting, Morka explained that “It is a time of great expectations from our people for those who govern. It is a time when public consciousness has never been more heightened and a time when information travels faster than human thought, and certainly faster than the human mind can comprehend.”
Continuing, Morka said: “It is also a time when political communication must be and become more intentional, not only in substance but also in attentiveness to the sensibilities of audiences. And it is also a time of great hope in our country, a time when a leader, a president elected by the people, has come along with hope and willingness to enact hope into existence for every citizen of our country,” he catalogued.
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Equally, rallying the spokespersons from national, zonal, and state levels to stand up and be counted, APC’s chief scribe Ajibola expressed concerns over why the mouthpiece of the party could watch disgracefully as ethnicity and ethnic fault lines are weaponized to turn the tide to the disadvantage of the ruling party.
He said: “This gathering is important because even before the 2023 elections, we have seen the weaponization of falsehood as an instrument of politics in Nigeria. Now, people will go and pick images from Somalia, images from Chad, images from where there is war footage, and put an address to depict that it happened in Nigeria to create misinformation.
“We also have a situation where people who have had the opportunity of governing sub-nationally without any achievement beyond establishing a beer factory would come and tell us what happened in China, in Malaysia, when in their backyard, their community is ravaged with floods, and they did not build a single school for eight years of administration.
“So, this gathering is important for us to be able to tackle those who have also weaponized ethnicity. Growing up in Nigeria, the ethnic fault line was not as pronounced as it has been made ahead of the 2023 election, and unfortunately, they are still continuing to carry it over post-2023 election.
“Another front line is that of religion. We are seeing the weaponization of religion on political grounds. Even people whose sanctimonious attitude is very dubious now try to wear the toga of religion for political ascendancy.
“These are part of the efforts that we need to put in place to iron out how we could effectively tackle the weaponization of falsehoods, weaponization of ethnicity, and weaponization of religious bigotry in our country,” he challenged the zonal and state spokespersons of the party.
Apparently rattled Presidential spokesman Bayo Onanuga, reputed for guerrilla journalism in those days, equally expressed disappointment over the biased and skewed misinformation against the party and government, strenuously reminding the participants that the Renewed Hope Agenda of the current administration is not just a mere slogan.
“We need to leverage more, especially at the grassroots, and share with our people what this government and party are doing to improve the lives of Nigerians. Our Renewed Hope Agenda is not just a slogan. It is real and becoming a reality,” he emphasized.
Updating the spokespersons across the zones and states further on the achievements of the Tinubu-led administration, Onanuga stressed that “under the present government, the economy is picking up and a lot of confidence has been built in the administration. But it seems they are not given enough and adequate coverage.”
“The Tinubu-led administration is reaping the desired gains as the economy is attracting investors in all sectors, and we have to appeal to you as spokespersons to preach the Renewed Hope Agenda with renewed energy,” he noted.
In his contribution, Alake challenged the spokespersons across the country to put in more effort to widen information dissemination to lessen tension in the country and sufficiently inform ignorant Nigerians who populate the social media space.
“This is why information communication is essential and a critical factor of democracy. That is why we are here, to really remind our colleagues at the state level, so that together, if we are doing ours at the federal level and they are doing theirs at the subnational level, the Nigerian population will become more aware of what the government is doing.
“There will be a lessening of tension. And of course, with adequate information, ignorance is removed because we have a large dose of ignorant people out there, especially on social media,” he said.
However, in the calculations and contributions of former Minister of Sports Development Sunday Dare, there is every reason for the ruling party and the government to rebrand their information strategy with a politician and journalist like Bolaji Abdullahi in charge of the publicity department of the enemy camp.
“We are here today because we have seen that we are not showcasing the myriad achievements of this administration well enough. We want to see how we can better equip and provoke ourselves into knowing how best to inform Nigerians of the actualization of the renewed hope agenda. You are a great resource to us in disseminating the good news.
“I think that telling our story once and walking away is the problem. When you have Mallam El-rufai lying with statistics today, three days later, you have a Bolaji Abdullahi, Paul Ibe parroting the same lies, and then PO telling the same lies, and we are just in one small room claiming that they were lying. We will fight their disinformation consistently.
“We should be prepared to put content on social media and appear on television and radio. We must be consistent and repetitive in putting out these facts about the government’s achievements in their faces. The whole plan of these people I have mentioned is to shut out the APC and suffocate Mr. President because they retreat the moment we come out to challenge them, but before you know it, they will come up with another falsehood.
“When you have a Bolaji Abdullahi who is a politician and media person, we better prepare for more lies and propaganda, as we have seen in the last few weeks with lots of wild allegations.
But we must be cautious when we want to respond, not to be drawn deeper into their allegations,” he stated.
