The Samoa Agreement: A review of communication failures

WEDNESDAY COLUMN BY USSIJU MEDANER

We woke up to, perhaps, the most sensitive issue we have had to deal with in all of our memorable history. Expectedly, it has become the burning issue on all podiums across the country, the religious altars and pulpits, the civil society, the legal community, and across probably every public gathering in our country. It is sensitive enough to receive due attention. However, this is also a time for us to calm down as we all walk together through the solution pathways that will positively resolve the controversial matter. We are at a point where we should be asking how did we get here, and what must we do to get out of here. Certainly, LGBTQ has no place in our community.

The controversy in question is the recent multilateral initiative that has birthed a partnership between the European Union and the Organisation of the African, Caribbean and Pacific States. The primary instrument of the recent initiative to address some global changes is the Samoa Agreement which has generated tons of reactions in the country. We must however organise ourselves to allow a proper scrutiny and interrogation of the document to ascertain the realities of the content and establish whether in truth or otherwise, the claimed sensitive and unallowable clauses are there or not. We should also allow ourselves to effectively peruse other content to the point of deciding what is good for us in the document and take the final decision as to what to do with it as a people and a nation. The way forward should be our priority now.

Nigeria has joined other members in signing the Samoa Agreement, a multi-element international treaty that promises to address a number of critical issues of both positive and negative dimensions from our perspective as Nigerians; and right now, there are palpable fears and anxiety among our people. Justifiably, we are a community of people who hold dear our cultural and religious beliefs. Our government knows this, as much as the international community that is seemingly trying to impose upon us ways of life and a strange definition of human rights with respect to sexual orientation and gender issues. Under no condition should any treaty that proposes or attempts to impose sexual orientations that are offensive to our faiths and culture fly in Nigeria of today, and probably of tomorrow. Not only should our government know and reject such eventually, but our society will vehemently fight against it. We have nothing, absolutely nothing, to fidget about.

It is unfortunate that the Samoa Agreement and the hullabaloo of both the informed and the uninformed, largely local public response, is the new diversion from the reality of our existence as a people and a nation. It is absolutely unbelievable, and manifestly destructive that we spend the whole year round jumping from one issue to the other that does not require the amount of energy we dissipate,  while the real troubles and calamity of our nation are literally ignored. I cannot imagine that at this material time, when we are going through biting food insecurity, economic downturns and insecurity with little or no hope in sight, we would be comfortable jumping from one irrelevant topic to another, to soothe our sentiments, and at times, political desires to attack some targets. I am not in any way suggesting that this is not sensitive. It is, but it is only an attempt that cannot see the ray of light here in our community. We should know this already and rest.

I am going to be as objective, direct and unbiased in my approach to offer a response to this sensitive issue. We all have our share of responsibilities not done at this moment. The government, particularly the concerned public agencies, have failed us by keeping us absolutely in the dark, while taking critical decisions on behalf of all of us. This is a trajectory the government needs to correct going forward if we are to get the leadership-citizenship relationship and interaction right. A situation where the government acts in secrecy while processing critical issues of national relevance must have to stop. It goes against what democracy stands for. If only the people had been carried along, the media would not have the opportunity to publish the half-truth they did and we would probably not be where we are today.

About the Samoa Agreement, who is to blame for the uproars that greeted the signing of the treaty by the Nigeria government? Is it a section of the media that broke the half, undetailed information, the people that bought into the information at their disposal or the government that kept its citizens in the dark all along the process of becoming a signatory to the treaty? And I am going to be very frank as I apportion blame appropriately across all corners.

How do we get to the point that we are all just getting to know about the Samoa Agreement? I am sure there was a process that cumulatively led to the preparation and the eventual signing of the agreement. The Nigerian government was part of the process, and it wasn’t a day’s job.

I took my time to go through the entire pages and lines of the agreement signed by Nigeria and other national governments across Europe, Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific States, and I must confess that I share both admiration and anxiety at the content of the agreements. We must be very careful with our responses and actions regarding the issue on board. Otherwise, we would have a case of throwing the baby with the bath water. The Samoa partnership agreement that I have perused is a submission that offers to drive an international collaboration among nations on a number of critical fronts of importance to Nigeria and every other nation that signed the agreement. There is no way we could have rejected such an opportunity. I saw a partnership that covers human and social development, peace and security, inclusive, sustainable economic growth and development, environmental sustainability and climate change, migration and mobility, global alliances and international cooperation, as well as human rights, democracy, and governance in people-centered and right-based societies. We need these collaborations.  We can do a lot with the benefits that come with the partnerships.

Yes, we have issues with the human rights elements of the agreement. We however seem to single out one element to discredit the whole, yet without certainty that it is what we think it is. We have seen what human rights and unchecked freedom is doing to the Western societies and we are worried. We have seen the spread of LGBQT, and the intense propagation of the same by the European nations. We have therefore concluded in a haste of the possibility of existence of clauses that will drag us into what in our clime are unholy acts and the bastardisation of our cultural beliefs that are hidden in the document.  But we must know for sure that the Samoa Agreement could perhaps be one in hundreds of all treaties we have signed as a nation, that have never taken effect because we do not domesticate them – going by antecedents. There are common processes. Signing a treaty is just one of many, the treaty must be submitted to the National Assembly for ratification before the document becomes binding on us as a nation. Besides, the Agreement’s use of the word gender instead of sex cannot be literally translated to an LGBQT intention. That will be an assumption and a wild one for that matter. There is no explicit mention of the term that is causing the panics.

Another issue we are all missing is the fact that our constitution as a nation supersedes every other document or agreement we subscribe to.  We should know this and stop lingering on issues that should not take our national time and media space. We have a legislative body that would peruse the document once it is placed before it; and if there is only one clause that contradicts our existing law, the document would not be adopted, and that is the fact of the process. To say that it is possible that a mere signing of an international treaty imposes responsibilities upon us as a nation with or without ratification and domestication of the agreement in consonance with our existing law is a complete misinformation that must be dispelled and ignored by Nigerians. That is not possible given our sovereign state status.

But do Nigerians have a legitimate right to be scared and angry? Yes, they do. Our society does not play with religion; no government will tinker with issues that abuse our beliefs without expecting consequent responses, just as much as we would blindly defend the sanctity of our culture. There has been overtime clear cut discrepancies between what we stand for and what the Europeans do. What is human right to us is not what they define as human right as. We cannot feel too comfortable with a system that romances, accepts and promotes same sex marriages and is doing everything to enforce the rights of persons who engage in such practices; and not only that, a system that is not leaving any stone untouched to persuade other nations to do the same, including using the power of economic threats. Nigerians have every right to be scared considering the possibility of an agreement embedded with a hidden agenda to introduce such horrific ideas to our system and culture.

The government failed in its responsibility – and a simple, straightforward one – to the Nigeria people. It is the right of the populace to be carried along in the running of the affairs of their country. The citizens are owed the  civic, public duty to know what the government is doing on their behalf.  We have lost too much as a nation because we always have government after government who believe the people do not need to know. Whether this is borne out of ignorance or arrogance or both is a different matter all together. We cannot run a nation in secrecy, especially a democracy that enjoins public participation on an active basis. The need to talk with the people and for the people is an integral component of the leadership-followership agreement that defines a healthy democratic system. A democratic government does not take the position or liberty of talking to the people when it chooses to arbitrarily; it does not work like that.  When a government does this, the people are forced to assume and we all know that such perceptions create suspicions and tensions.

Regardless of the interesting content of the Agreement and the benefits we can accrue from it, equally, we must not shy away from pointing out the obvious things that are wrong with the signing of the agreement. The handlers of the Nigeria responses to the processes leading to the final signing of the agreement did a shoddy job keeping it away from the media and the Nigeria people. And I wonder why, especially in an age we are whereby public scrutiny is gaining traction. Handling such a sensitive issue capable of reordering our national consciousness, in such a manner says so much about the incompetence or otherwise of the handlers. Another vital consideration  overlooked by the policy handlers, is the somewhat current virulent opposition we have that is ever ready to weaponise anything it can lay its hands on against the present Administration. Therefore, all the handlers of the policy needed to do was to have carried Nigerians along by informing, analysing and debating the processes and the content until a national position was reached; and no one would be setting the country on fire today and setting the present Administration of the incumbent president for a fall.

Perhaps, this incident is a continuation of the de-marketing of president Bola Ahmed Tinubu that I have talked about frequently. There is no way, those handling the processes would not know how sensitive the human right subset of the agreement is to the values our people hold dear; as much as there is no way they would not know the only way to prevent a backlash would be to carry the people along, yet, it seems they chose to keep the entire country in the dark until now, dumping the document on our laps as it was being signed. These set of people have nothing to lose. They are not elected obviously; but the bulk of the anger and attacks stop at the President’s table, and would become cheap political attacks on the legitimacy of his government and future prospect of winning election, in a community controlled by religious and cultural factors. Most of these handlers were not part of the election campaign who may lack the experience of understanding our people. By fortune or opportunism, they may have found themselves in the present government and do not feel responsible to anyone or demonstrate the needful humility to learn the ropes. If the boat capsises, they would probably jump without any hesitation to another one. The president must therefore be weary of these set of people around him and the apparent messy jobs they are doing in his name – given what we have all seen about their capacity and performance in the past one year.

The media, a vital part of our democratic institution, could have also done better. Where goes the once beautiful investigative journalism? We ought to know how destructive dissemination of unverified information, or half truth, could be to a community or system, especially a sensitive one as ours; yet, we keep making this error because the once prided profession has become nothing but a business that runs on appeal to sentiments and biases.  It is better imagined for a renowned media house to allow a half verified publication of this magnitude to pass through its stable, only to begin a damage control that would never ever reach all who have swallowed and ran with the information as projected. It is about time we go beyond mere frowning at these destructive tendencies and both proactively and actively respond in a way to permanently prevent them from reoccurring within our system.

Now that we are here, the government must embark on a better damage control while equally considering overhauling its policy and media machinery before its midterm in the following year. Those responsible for policy disasters must be called out or shown the way out if need be, to pave way for a better image in the remaining life of the Administration. Regardless of these, we must return to the basic and do what we have failed to do before. That is, engaging and informing the people to let them know what the government has done on their behalf. Nigerians must know that the government is committed to protecting their cherished cultures, values, norms and religious faiths with all the instruments of the state without wavering. The government must have a parley with religious and cultural leaders across the country to elaborately inform them about what the treaty contains and does not contain. Nigerians want to see the National Assembly committee on treaties or foreign affairs as the case may be, the ministry of foreign affairs and all other responsible agencies of government to become active and to readdress the document to take a position that is in the interest of the majority of Nigeria population and the sanctity of the nation. It is however commendable that the House of Representatives as reported has swung into action on the matter. This is the right step given that there is a subsisting Act of the National Assembly, the Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Act, or Anti-LGBT law which was signed into Law in 2014 by former President Goodluck Jonathan.

Above all, we are a community of men and women who hold dear the sanctity of heterosexuality. There are no spaces in our community for gays, lesbians, homosexuals, and others in the gang of abnormalities that the Western world has embraced. We do not want it and our present  government should note this.