There is something deeply revealing about a government telling Nigerians that a family can somehow survive on ₦4,200 a day while members of that same political establishment live lifestyles in which a single bottle of whisky can reportedly cost almost 100 times that daily household allowance.
The problem is not that a government official can afford expensive whisky.
The problem is what happens when privilege becomes the lens through which poverty is explained to everyone else.
O’tega Ogra, a senior adviser on digital and new media to President Bola Tinubu, occupies a particularly sensitive position because his job is not merely administrative. He is part of the machinery through which the administration communicates its policies and defends its record to Nigerians.
That makes statements about what ordinary Nigerians supposedly need to survive especially consequential.
If the message coming from government communication officials is that Nigerian households can somehow make do with ₦4,200 a day, Nigerians are entitled to ask a very simple question:
Have the people making these calculations actually lived within the economic reality they are describing?
Because poverty is not a PowerPoint presentation.
It is transport fares.
It is rent.
It is school fees.
It is food.
It is electricity.
It is medication.
It is water.
It is the unexpected ₦10,000 emergency that destroys an entire week's budget.
For millions of Nigerians, the problem is not that they do not know how to budget.
The problem is that the mathematics no longer works.
The propaganda problem
This is where Tinubu's media operation faces a serious credibility challenge.
The government needs communicators.
Every government does.
President Tinubu's administration has implemented policies that require explanation, including fuel-subsidy reforms, tax reforms, monetary reforms and social intervention programmes.
But there is a difference between explaining difficult reforms and lecturing citizens about how little they should need to live.
The first is public communication.
The second risks becoming propaganda.
When citizens complain that food has become unaffordable, telling them that they can survive on an artificially compressed daily figure does not address the complaint.
It trivialises it.
And when that argument comes from someone working inside the presidential communication apparatus, Nigerians naturally interpret it as part of the government's broader attempt to sell an unpopular economic reality.
That is why these statements matter.
Privilege changes how people see poverty
Someone who has never had to choose between transportation and dinner may genuinely believe that ₦4,200 is enough for a household.
Someone who has never stood in a market bargaining over ₦200 may believe inflation is merely a statistic.
Someone who has never watched a salary disappear before the middle of the month may believe Nigerians simply need to “manage.”
That is the danger of elite insulation.
Eventually, poverty stops being something you experience and becomes something you calculate.
You open a spreadsheet.
You divide household expenditure by the number of people.
You produce a figure.
And then you tell millions of people that they can survive on it.
But Nigerians do not live inside spreadsheets.
They live in markets where prices change.
They live in cities where transport costs can consume a significant portion of their income.
They live in households where one sick child can wipe out months of savings.
And then there is the whisky
The reported ₦400,000 bottle of whisky makes the controversy politically explosive because of the contrast.
Again, there is nothing inherently wrong with a wealthy person buying expensive alcohol.
Ogra is entitled to spend his legally earned money however he wishes.
But once an official becomes part of the public argument about how ordinary Nigerians should survive, his own conspicuous consumption inevitably becomes part of the conversation.
That is the unavoidable consequence of public advocacy.
You cannot tell people that they need less while demonstrating that the people making the argument need dramatically more.
You cannot ask citizens to accept declining purchasing power while the political class continues to display lifestyles completely detached from the economic pain outside the corridors of power.
And you cannot expect Nigerians not to notice the contradiction.
Nigerians aren't asking for whisky
The government's defenders may respond that this criticism is childish.
“Why should an official's drink matter?”
Fair question.
It shouldn't—if the argument were simply about what an individual chooses to drink.
But the issue isn't whisky.
The issue is distance.
Distance between the people making economic policy and the people experiencing its consequences.
A government that asks citizens to sacrifice must demonstrate that sacrifice is not exclusively a burden imposed on the bottom.
Otherwise, every request for patience sounds like another demand that ordinary Nigerians should become poorer so that those at the top do not have to change their lifestyles.
That perception can become politically fatal.
The problem with the ₦4,200 argument
There is another problem.
Even if one can theoretically construct a household budget around ₦4,200 per day, that does not mean a family can live adequately on that amount.
Survival and living are not the same thing.
A family might technically survive while eating nutritionally inadequate meals.
A child might technically remain in school while lacking books, uniforms or transportation.
A household might technically survive without electricity by reducing consumption, while its quality of life deteriorates.
A worker might technically survive by walking several kilometres to work, while losing hours every day in transit.
This is how poverty can be manipulated statistically.
Reduce the definition of a decent life until almost anything becomes “survival.”
Then announce that people are coping.
But Nigerians know the difference between coping and living.
Tinubu's communicators have a credibility problem
The administration's communication challenge is therefore bigger than Ogra.
The problem is structural.
Tinubu's government increasingly needs to convince Nigerians that painful reforms today will produce prosperity tomorrow.
That argument requires trust.
And trust cannot be manufactured through relentless messaging.
It has to be earned.
When government officials appear to minimise the economic pain citizens are experiencing, every subsequent economic announcement becomes harder to believe.
When officials present government programmes in the most favourable possible terms while ignoring their limitations, Nigerians become suspicious.
When media aides attack critics instead of answering substantive questions, the government looks defensive.
And when officials appear disconnected from the lifestyle of the average Nigerian, even legitimate government achievements can be dismissed as propaganda.
That is the danger.
Nigerians don't need government officials to be poor
There is an important distinction here.
Nobody should demand that government officials become poor before they are allowed to speak about poverty.
That would be absurd.
The issue is not whether Ogra should drink whisky.
The issue is whether someone enjoying a privileged lifestyle should be telling Nigerians at the bottom of the economic ladder how little they need to survive.
There is a profound difference between saying:
“We know Nigerians are suffering, and here is what the government is doing to reduce the burden.”
and saying, in effect:
“You don't actually need that much money.”
The first recognises people's reality.
The second can sound like condescension.
This is why the propaganda is becoming counterproductive
Tinubu's government has invested heavily in communication.
Ogra's own public profile reflects that role: he describes himself as a strategic communications professional and identifies himself as a senior adviser on digital/new media to the President.
But there is a fundamental lesson in political communication that governments frequently forget:
You cannot communicate your way out of a material crisis.
If food prices are high, no amount of social-media messaging can make food cheaper.
If electricity is expensive, propaganda cannot reduce the electricity bill.
If transport costs are rising, hashtags cannot lower the fare.
If wages are stagnant, government talking points cannot increase purchasing power.
Communication can explain policy.
It cannot replace policy.
And the more aggressively government communication attempts to convince citizens that their economic reality is better than they believe it is, the more citizens may conclude that the government simply does not understand them.
The question Nigerians should ask
Instead of asking Nigerians whether they can survive on ₦4,200 a day, the government should be asking:
Why should a Nigerian family have to survive on ₦4,200 a day in the first place?
Why are wages not keeping pace with the cost of living?
Why is food consuming such a large proportion of household income?
Why does housing consume years of income?
Why do transportation costs keep rising?
Why are millions of Nigerians working harder but becoming poorer in real terms?
And most importantly:
What is the government doing to increase Nigerians' purchasing power rather than simply teaching them how to survive with less?
That is the conversation Nigerians want.
Not another propaganda tour.
Not another government spokesman explaining poverty to people who are already living it.
And certainly not another lecture from a political class whose own consumption patterns appear to exist in an entirely different economic universe.
The problem isn't that O'Gra can drink a ₦400,000 bottle of whisky.
The problem is that the same political establishment cannot convincingly tell a struggling Nigerian family that ₦4,200 a day is enough while asking that family to believe the government understands what hardship feels like.
Nigeria does not need officials who can explain poverty beautifully.
It needs a government capable of making poverty less brutal.
Until then, every claim that Nigerians can simply “manage” will sound less like economic analysis and more like privilege speaking through a government microphone.
Comments
Post a Comment