On communication, managing crisis and public governance

Communication is the transmission or transfer of information from the transmitter to the receiver. The term can also refer to the message being transmitted itself or the field of inquiry studying these transmissions. This is also known as communication studies or mass communication. Communication can be verbal or non-verbal (sign, body language, writing, prints, artwork etc). In life, communication is a combination of all these. Communication helps you connect with others and share ideas. Effective communication clarifies information, drives home the importance of policies and builds trust between two or more parties. It broadens people’s knowledge about different issues, especially those that can cascade into crisis.

Being able to communicate effectively and efficiently is the most important of all life skills. It is what enables us to pass information to other people and to understand how they feel about what we have communicated. Communication is life! While some private organisations take effective communication seriously in their operations, most public organisations do not take it seriously, especially those that have direct relationship with the members of the public. Private organisations have substantial budgets on advertisement and public information. They see communication as an effective and new means of doing business. Public organisations do not see any business-sense in informing the public about their activities that affect the public.

When it comes to service, most governments in Nigeria, except a few states like Lagos, Ogun and Edo States, do not bother to get the public buy-ins in their operations. We all know that construction brings about infrastructure development, creates skill development, jobs and incomes and contributes immensely to the gross domestic products (GDPs) of nations, but it also has its ‘burdens’. These burdens include the financial (cost), health (stress and pollution), economic (man-hour lost by commuters during road construction, void created during building gestation period, opportunity cost etc) and social challenges (construction sites are eyesores during construction process), yet most of the public organisations involved in construction do not see any pertinence in communicating and appealing to the public to bear with these burdens. This has been the established practice in Third world nations.

The worst show of lack of effective communication in the public sector has led to serious protest in Abeokuta, Ogun State, where protesters burnt the canopy in front of a bank and one person was shot due to cash scarcity caused by failed naira swap exercise. There was also a damaging protest in Lagos over the same issue. The dividends of democracy are not being realised effectively in Nigeria because there is no effective communication. While one is not necessarily condemning the naira swap policy, it should be noted that the timing is inappropriate because of the nearby general elections. If it was meant mainly to curb vote-buying by desperate politicians, the approach adopted by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) is bad. It is glaring that corrupt Nigerians combined have more naira notes in their homes than all the commercial banks in Nigeria. Any effort to make these enemies of business-development lodge these ill-gotten money in the banks is a good sign for the masses.

Communication process has five steps which are: idea formation, encoding, channel selection, decoding and feedback. Key necessity of formulation is consultation with the related areas that the policy will affect and the major stakeholders. The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) ought to dedicate resources, including time and finance, to educate the members of the public on the benefits of naira redesign and swapping in order to have their buy-in. Though there are many benefits of naira redesign and cashless policy to the ordinary Nigerian and the economy as a whole, the October 26, 2022 policy decision by the Central Bank of Nigeria to redesign the N200, N500 and N1,000 denominations, and the setting of cash withdrawal limit generated negative reactions and unnecessary protests by the masses throughout the nation. The ten day extension granted by President Muhammadu Buhari did not help to alleviate the sufferings of the people.

Less than two months of window for Nigerians who have no bank accounts, and there are many of them, to open an account and deposit their old naira notes there and existing customers to turn in their old notes is damn too small! It is believed that the cashless policy and naira redesign will hit the bandits and kidnappers below the belt. The policy, if well implemented, will improve the number of bank customers in Nigeria. Nigeria has one of the lowest bank customers in sub-Saharan Africa at 55.56 percent. Statistics show that over 80 percent of the currency in circulation was outside the banking system with many Nigerians hoarding the naira, especially from proceeds of crime. It is also not impossible that the coming general election will become another ‘horse-trading’ event going by the experiences of the two recent elections.

If CBN is able to increase the number of bank customers in Nigeria and these customers can lodge their cash in commercial bank vaults, one can imagine the amount of money that will be available for the banks to trade with. The result will be reduction of bank loan interest rates and availability of cheaper loans. The interest rate is expected to be 13.17 percent at the end of the first quarter of the year 2023. Funding has been the major bane of infrastructure provision and job creation in Nigeria. With a reasonable rate for loans, more Nigerians will be able to set up industry and employ the teeming unemployed youths. Unfortunately, CBN did not sensitise the public enough about the aim and burden of the naira swap, and did so at a time that there was fuel scarcity. The burden created by the short window of opportunity to turn old notes in, is just too harsh for the people to bear.

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