The Lagos State Government has taken note of an article in the latest edition of The Economist magazine entitled “Paralysed: Why Nigeria’s largest city is even less navigable than usual” and has considered a rebuttal necessary, in view of the bile and bias contained in it.
The said article has since gained frenetic, orchestrated spread in both social and traditional media in Nigeria, helped in part, ostensibly, by a push from a recalcitrant legion of traducers still struggling with the reality of a new helmsman whose idea of progress in Lagos State factors in electoral promises and respect for human dignity.
If we excuse the fact that the offensive article in The Economist came out last weekend just about the time that Lagos State Government has added some bite to its security and traffic management efforts, what shall we call the curious ‘culling’ of the said article by some local media? For only last Friday, the media had widely reported Governor Akinwunmi Ambode’s comprehensive enforcement effort on traffic management, which in a matter of days has already started yielding positive results and wooing converts to the Ambode cause.
Is it not painfully obvious that fifth columnists have hijacked this one-sided reportage in The Economist that failed to take into account the bigger picture of an emerging reform policy, designed to address the larger concerns in the management of security, traffic and the environment? If we were to conclude hastily, like the article did, we would have described the magazine’s effort in the same words it once famously used as “an unpleasant nose-to-stranger’s-armpit experience.”
But we won’t necessarily query the original motive by asking “what is it about foreign correspondents that makes them believe they are the ultimate authority” on a city they have only covered for a few years, as India’s Swarajya magazine did last year in taking The Economist to the cleaners when it ran a harsh report on Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s appearance at Madison Square Garden in the United States.
However, because the magazine got its report on Lagos wrong on every score, what is important is to deconstruct the fallacies therein:
Firstly, The Economist claimed Governor Ambode cut the powers of “traffic controllers by banning them from impounding cars” and “officers have refused to enforce the rules.” This is inaccurate and preposterous.
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