IPOB’s propaganda as a window into the state of our education system

Propaganda is misleading information put out with the aim of gaining political advantage.

Ok, all sides in a political jostle do this and it is fine (or not). But when it is done, the authors of such information spin their information with the audience they are targeting in mind. The more uninformed or unenlightened the audience is, the more audacious the pieces of falsehood strung together as propaganda will be.

Last week, when operatives of IPOB had skirmishes with the Nigerian military, a number of rumours, falsehoods, and incredible misinformation was unleashed on social media. We saw pictures of people allegedly killed by soldiers in places in the South East. We saw pictures of people alleged to be members of the Igbo ethnic group maimed or killed, and property up in flames. WhatsApp was filled with accounts of thousands of Igbos dead or dying either in the hands of the military or northerners. Facebook had entities believed to be IPOB members giving gory accounts of death and destruction. All of these ended up unsubstantiated.

IPOB really went for broke this time. The organization unleashed its propaganda machinery on the country in a way that has not been seen before, and it almost succeeded in converting the gloom into an outbreak of mayhem and anarchy. We saw videos of Igbo youths stopping buses hunting for people of Hausa/Fulani extraction. Nobody can say what the motives for such were. We heard news of skirmishes between IPOB members and an Hausa community in Rivers. There was also a near breakdown of law and order in parts of Jos and Bauchi. Thanks to quick thinking of the governors of Rivers, Abia, Plateau, and Bauchi, things could have gone really bad. We must also commend the Northern governors who acted in a statesmanlike manner, in conjunction with their South East counterparts who acted like wise men, who in a nonpartisan manner nipped IPOB’s attempt at precipitating trouble in the land in the bud.

I still maintain that IPOB was pushing for things to go really bad in the South East, maybe lead to the maiming or killing of a northerner, thereby leading to retaliations. This would have played nicely into the organisation’s agenda. It would claim the retaliations were part of a ploy at ethnic cleansing of the Igbos. IPOB failed soundly, all thanks to the resolute stand of majority of Nigerians.

Our education system has really become weak. This is part of the reason IPOB has made deep inroads in the South East. What MASSOB failed to harness, they did. We now have a population of Nigerians who are bereft of the ability to look at a piece of information, interrogate it logically, and seek second opinions, in a bid to establish the authenticity and completeness of the information. This is 2017, a lot of tools exist to make this a walk in the park.

Take for example many of the pictures and videos strewn all over social media. Even seemingly educated and informed people jumped on them to make a case for IPOB. Nobody thought of fact checking. Reason was sacrificed on the altar of emotions. Remember, in a charged environment like we have found ourselves in, emotion is more incendiary than petrol. IPOB is not relenting though. For them last week was a lost battle. They still fancy winning the war. If you follow their YouTube or Facebook accounts, you will see they are still spewing falsehood.

Just this Monday, an IPOB affiliated YouTube channel uploaded a video made by some lady named Ogechi Njanka. In this video she gleefully announced (she even added she shed tears) that the United Nations has agreed to fix a date for a meeting on the Biafran referendum.

For reasonable people, this is clearly false. The video was made to keep the base from becoming disillusioned. Knowing how low our education system has gone, not a few people have swallowed that piece of garbage hook, line, and sinker.

Another example is that yesterday, a video was uploaded about IPOB members confronting the President of Nigerian at the ongoing United Nations General Assembly. The first frame of the video showed the iconic red double decker bus of London pulling round the corner. IPOB members were thousands of miles away from 1, UN Plaza, New York City. Their supporters must have watched the video and erupted in fist thumping and back slapping. Some probably shed tears of joy.

IPOB is feasting on how gullible its supporters are. It seems like a potent strategy straight out of Nnamdi Kanu’s brand of demagogy play-book. It tells a sad story of how a mix of emotions and a weakened education system is perpetuating a situation that could ignite a very unfortunate and telling conflict in the land. It is a wakeup call on the government to do something urgently about our education system. Rather than declare a state of emergency in the South East because of the activities of Nnamdi Kanu and his IPOB band of falsehood peddlers, we should be considering a state of emergency in our educational system. That will help us defeat the Nnamdi Kanus that will rear their ugly, demagogic heads in the future. This is urgent.

Henry is a techie and writer. He writes from Abuja.