"Better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool that the open your mouth and remove all doubts" is a very popular maxim; a cliche, perhaps. But, it is a truism, nonetheless. It is, essentially, the type of thinking that would scare the pants off of an incumbent President and his deputy at the mere mention of the word "debate".
"Better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool that the open your mouth and remove all doubts" is a very popular maxim; a cliche, perhaps. But, it is a truism, nonetheless. It is, essentially, the type of thinking that would scare the pants off of an incumbent President and his deputy at the mere mention of the word "debate".
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So, Dr. Jonathan heeded the age-old cliche, zipped his mouth shut, hid under his presidential bed and refused to come out and take questions from Nigerians, while his opponents humbly subjected themselves as true servants of the people do in a democracy. A smart play, one would say. That was what we thought, too, until we stumbled upon a new book, "My Friends and I", ostensibly written by the pResident himself.
Sounds like the title of a "book" your kindergartner would write? We thought so, too. But the title of the book, jejune as it may be, is, arguably, the least of our concerns. In "My Friends and I", Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan ignores the entreaties of whoever said "better to keep your mouth shut", the same advise he managed to take by not showing up for debates. GEJ did not just merely open his mouth, he opened it so wide the flies built a mansion in the cavity. In "My Friends and I", Dr. GEJ clearly demonstrated his abject lack of understanding of the most basic concepts of the subject he pretends to command - Facebook. In writing "My Friends and I", pResident GEJ clearly demonstrated that his occupancy of the position of the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria put the nation of Nigeria in grave dangers. The naivety demonstrated by GEJ in "My Friends and I" portends a security risk for the decision making and governance of the country. That GEJ manages to clearly demonstrate all these while telling one or two bald-faced lies in the process is mere icing on the cake, but it is something worth noting because it was an unnecessary made in a stupid attempt to burnish and otherwise pedestrian history of "achievements".
We read "My Friends and I" so that you don't have to subject yourself to the inanity and amateurish attempts by GEJ to wrap himself in "populist" garbs as the "Facebook President".
In a scurilous attempt to prove that he is personally involved in the administration of his Facebook fan page, Jonathan told us (all Nigerians) in "My Friends and I":
"Many may not understand why I decided to open a facebook account. The President is too busy to have time for facebook, many will say."
Many more would say that, if the President of a country takes it upon himself to personally open and maintain a Facebook page, that president is not only not busy or engaged enough, he is also a tad unserious and (to be charitable) monumentously ill-advised. Jonathan not only dismissed the relevance of his advisors in his mad quest to position himself as the Nigerian Facebook pResident, he also couldn't resist the temptation to grossly exagerate the "results" of his use of social media.
Jonathan made the following claim in his fairytale "book":
"Also, a Finland-based student, Dipo Daramola, and his colleagues made a suggestion to me on the way to fight insecurity and kidnapping using technology. I promptly invited them for consultation. These are indications that interacting with me on the facebook is not a waste of time. Every Nigerian has a stake in the country and has a right to be heard."
Here, Jonathan is clearly trying to convey the misleading impression that he did, indeed, put Facebook to some form of productive use. What he failed to disclose is that the student and the idea he cites here are still waiting ad-infinitum for the promised "invitation for consultation" letter to materialize. The referenced "conversation" took place eons ago, and it was just a chanced interaction that has since then not been revisited, not once since the many, many months that have since elapsed. And our "I'm soooooooo Obama-like" pResident is already making a book out of the event, an additional feather in his over-sized cap.
Having asserted his personal administration of a Facebook page, pResident Jonathan went on to claim:
"For one, I would say I was motivated in no little way by President Barack Obama of the United States. His novel use of social media network, especially facebook, starting from during his presidential campaign, has stimulated new thinking on participatory governance across the world."
This is the point at which the accidental pResident's naivety begins to rear its ugly facade. An otherwise intelligent, informed and hip public figure would have been apprised of the fact that celebrities and public figures do NOT use the social media in the way pResident Jonathan has been led to believe. Jonathan sees himself as the second coming of Barack Obama. That, in itself, is a very sorry admission, but it is of less importance and consequence as his inability to understand that Barack Obama (the candidate) did NOT operate a Facebook page by himself. No. The referenced Facebook page and other numerous social platforms Obama leverage to much success were operated entirely by operatives to whom he had delegated such mundane tasks. Obama the President uses these mediums periodically to engage Americans, on important occassions and for specific events. He does not "operate" these mediums the way Jonathan would have us believe. We have first-hand knowledge of how the social media were utilized by Obama-the-candidate, having been part of the armies of operatives and volunteers who kept those medium well-oiled during the said period. The intricacies and technicalities of how these things work appear to be lost on our accidental pResident.
If Jonathan had stopped here, one may be tempted to forgive him rather than accuse him of abject ignorance. But, he didn't. Jonathan went on to boast:
"I am impressed with the growing followership. I understand I am the President with most facebook fans in the world after US President Obama and French President Nicolas Sarkozy."
Sad. So very sad. Someone is being joe-jobbed here, and we know that it is none other than Jonathan. Whoever has made Jonathan to understand his "popularity" in the way he described is definitely not his well-wisher. Otherwise, he would have been made to understand that neither Obama nor Sarkozy sees Facebook as a governing tool the way Jonathan is describing in his book (more on this below). The hangers-on that have been whispering this "understanding" in Jonathan's ears do not appear to think much of him. Otherwise they would have told him that there are so many reasons no other intelligent head of state pound their chests over the size of their Facebook "fans". They would have told him that real leaders engage their people through things like town hall meetings (where ordinary citizens get to question their leaders without filters), press conferences (where members of a free press get to grill the president without fear or expectation of "transportation money" at the end) and (God forbid) ACTUAL debates.
As if that were not enough, Jonathan proceeded to confess his ignorance of the ways a Social Medium (Facebook in particular) works:
"It is one tool of social media that allows for interaction between the government and the governed. Opinions on issues, policy and governance can be expressed in an unedited, uncensored way by the citizens. The access is unlimited. While you used to wonder if your letter would ever get to the President, such doubts are eliminated through facebook."
If Jonathan knew ANYTHING about Facebook, he would know the following simple contradictions of his ridiculuous statements above:
Facebook is highly censorable. Not just by a government, but by the Facebook page owner or administrator.
A Facebook owner can EDIT his/her page any way and at any time he or she wishes.
Access is indeed "limited". A Facebook admin or owner can RESTRICT posting, can hide postings, delete postings, show only a subset of all the materials on his or her page
You have to wonder if your posting will be accepted at all, much less reach a pResident.
Jonathan's claim above is a manifestation of the ranting of a luddite who knows squat diddly about the technology he/she is describing. Given what Jonathan has stated, it is highly doubtful that he even has the knowledge to navigate Facebook, much less"interact" with anyone on that medium. Jonathan may be a Doctor, but a PhD does not necessarily make you hip to tech. One wonders then why Jonathan feels compelled to not only so totally expose his ignorance, but to also do so in a book.
And, why lie in the process?
In describing his reliance on Facebook as a governing instrument, Jonathan recklessly stated:
"I love facebook also because it allows me to get some information that may normally not get to me, having been "edited" along the. If, for instance, my aides are reluctant to tell me certain policy positions do not have the buy-in of the citizens, I could get first-hand reviews via facebook. This, to my mind, can only strengthen the policy discussion process."
Please read that and weep for Nigeria. Jonathan not only dangerously impugn the integrity of the advice he may be getting from his advisers ("aides"), he also just clearly admitted that his deliberations and decisions could be more influenced by the vagaries of suspect "First-Hand" feedback from Facebook. If true, Jonathan is guilty not only of stupidity, but gross negligence for exposing the welfare and security of the country to such an easily manipulable method of governance. If what Jonathan is stating here is true, the pResident has lost any measure of credibility he may have hitherto been able to command. Why?
In this Web 2.x era, one of the most unreliable medium of interaction and communication is the Social media. How so? Well, social media is all about personas. Across the internet, it is quite easy to obfuscate your persona. Actually, there are businesses making unthinkable amount of money EVERY DAY on the internet, and the only "product" they have is persona creation and manipulation. You need 100,000 different "people" influencing a given topic of interest to you? You want them to support or oppose xyz? You need to see a certain subject "trending" one way or the other across multiple media and social platforms? Oh, you want to see a story "burried"? Or "dug"? How about amplified? You need to see massive numbers of "people" inundate a given target with phone calls to voice a given "talking point"? All you need to do is ask. Oh, and for this much money, we will make it happen, pronto. There are computer programs that do nothing but randomly generate personas and automatically channel them to specific forums or blogs to do whatever a paymaster desires. Bots, anyone? You can live in Lokoja and own thousands of bots in Indonesia. And you tell them what to do and when you want them to do it. Friend someone on Facebook and post something on their page? Well, that would be NGN100 for 500 such postings, thank you very much.
Jonathan would rather listen to these bots (sorry, people) than to his advisers? Imagine a foreign aggressor (or the more benign form of industrial espionage), learning that pResident Jonathan is susceptible to Facebook influence because he likes the size of his Facebook "peeps"? No, don't imagine. Let Jonathan speak for himself:
"When I decided that we needed to put our football house in order by withdrawing from international competitions, I was impressed with the way Nigerians reacted. Indeed, the football autohrities themselves quickly acted to cleanse themselves and I had no hesitation whatsoever in keeping faith with the majority of my facebook fans who believe the suspension should be lifted."
THAT, fellow Nigerians, is your President. Want Jonathan to undress in public, dance on the table top and do triple summersault and a split? All you need to do is fire up your bots and have them bombard his Facebook governing tool and, voila! You got yourself a show. Pathetic doesn't begin to describe the spectable painted by our President.
What is Jonathan hoping to accomplish with this Facebook infatuation? Let's hear it from the ass' mouth (as you read the following paragraphs, please bear in mind that these are the words of a "leader" who REFUSED to debate issues with his opponents in front of the people he wants to rule. Please remember that Jonathan and Sambo refused to engage Nigerians on the issues and failed to show up for the 2 NNTV24 debates):
"As more and more Nigerians get involved (on his Facebook Fan Page), the community will grow and the impact will be better felt in the democratic process."
"Facebook also offers a platform for the citizens to reason with one another. The multiplicity of opinion, the variety of thoughts and the engaging argumentative nature of the posts are very essential to breeding understanding and building consensus in the democratic process. At the end of the day, it is not about one person knowing is all, but about our readiness to reason together and arrive at reasonable viewpoints. On the one hand, you are contributing to debate. On the other hand, you are learning from others."
"A major problem of democracy today is the absence of a sense of belonging by the citizenry. Many citizens believe they are only of importance to politicians at election times. After that, nobody cares about them any more. With facebook, this gap is being bridged."
The Facebook Jonathan does not appear to have anything in common with the real life Jonathan cowering at the mention of "Debate". Is that because the Facebook Jonathan feels much more secured in the cocoon of his palatial abode, behind the computer screen, playing "peekaboo" with his imaginary "Face Friends"? Facepalm. Jonathan would have us believe that he believes so much in "participatory" democracy, so much so that he engages with his imaginary bots (we mean "fans") on Facebook. But, unfortunately for Nigeria and Nigerians, he is so into Facebook that he has little or not time left to do any actual governing, engage in real debates, provide electricity, roads, medical failities, or any other social welfare for the ACTUAL PEOPLE that he pretends to rule. Will Jonathan be counting on his imaginary "Friends" to also manufacture the required amount of stuffed ballots for him, come April? There just may not be enough of them to save him from the consequences of such imaginary ballots.
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