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LAGOS. — Facing censure at home and overseas for perceived failure to protect civilians from violent Islamists, Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan has launched an international media offensive to try to turn the tide of public opinion in his favour. But those efforts have backfired abroad, where many greet his defence with scepticism and at home, where he was slated for hiring US public relations firm Levick for US$1,2 million, in what critics called a waste of money.

President Jonathan and Nigeria as a whole, have suffered a worsening image problem since Islamist militant group Boko Haram kidnapped more than 276 school girls from the northeast village of Chibok, Borno state, in mid-April. Over 200 remain in captivity.

The attack overshadowed Nigeria becoming Africa’s biggest economy after a GDP re-basing in April, and its hosting of the World Economic Forum in May. Security is a major headache ahead of national elections in February that are likely to be the closest-fought since democracy returned in 1999.

An opinion piece by president Jonathan in the Washington Post last month — in which the president wrote, “nothing is more important than bringing home Nigeria’s missing girls,” but added that he had to “remain quiet” for their safety — drew open scorn.

Soon after, the Washington Post’s Karen Attiah published a satirical send-up of Jonathan’s op-ed. Her piece included lines such as: “Nothing is more important than stopping the machinations of Boko Haram, except maybe my desire to keep up appearances and show the international community that Nigeria was winning the war against the group.”

Analyst Bismarck Rewane, CEO of Lagos-based consultancy Financial Derivatives, thinks the president’s timing was wrong.
“That op-ed backfired partly because the negative narrative was still so strong,” he told Reuters. “But often the PR guys advising want the upfront fees and don’t care about the result.”

President Jonathan’s media team declined to comment on their PR strategy. A presidency source confirmed Levick’s contract but said such PR initiatives were standard practice for governments.

“All over the world governments engage PR firms and lobbyists to achieve certain objectives within a particular time frame,” the source, who declined to be named, told Reuters. In this case those objectives involve reversing months of damaging publicity over the Chibok girls’ abduction, magnified by a #BringBackOurGirls Twitter campaign that drew in celebrities including Michelle Obama and Angelina Jolie.

In the past week, finance minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has toured the world doing press interviews, for example with CNN’s Christine Amanpour.
These often include earnest assertions that the Nigerian president is “doing his best” to get the girls back.

Ultimately, the bad publicity is unlikely to doom president Jonathan’s 2015 re-election chances.
President Jonathan’s supporters and the army — the defence spokesman did not respond to a request for comment — see PR as a key part of the war against Boko Haram. They view each negative report on the security forces or president as a psychological victory to the “terrorists”. And there have been a lot of them.

Footage circulating showing Jonathan dancing at a political rally in the northern city of Kano shortly after the mass abduction didn’t help, neither did comments from Jonathan’s wife Patience, in which she publicly told the protesting parents of the abducted girls in the capital Abuja to “go back to Borno.”

“No PR firm can save Jonathan’s battered image,” Jibrin Ibrahim, director of the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD), a Nigerian NGO, wrote in the local Premium Times website.” — Reuters.