Lagos — Contrary to the common trend of opinion on the new national branding initiative by the Ministry of Information and Communication, I support the project but with a fundamental caveat. First, the central theme assertions are affirmative. Nigeria: Good People. Great Nation. These truths are self evident.

For me, however, the essence and necessity of the re-branding effort is in what it does not have the courage to state, the eloquent silence. The missing leg is a screaming silence in the theme which ought to jolt us all into seeing the necessity for some sort of massive self re-invention by government. The complete theme declaration ought to be: Nigeria: Good People, Great Nation. Bad Governments! Once we accept the third leg, then the necessity for re-invention and perhaps the costs become self justifying. By all means, let us spend any amount of money to get our government to clean up its acts. But let us not waste money telling Nigerians and the world what they have come to know, essentially, that we are good people blessed with an exquisite nation.

Nigerians are inherently good. Our people are hospitable, hard working and largely honest. It has been said that Nigeria has the highest number of entrepreneurs per square kilometer than most other nations in the world. We are loud, proud and assertive. Our exceptionalism as a people lies in the shared belief among even the most lowly Nigerians that national greatness is our entitlement if only we could get governments that match our collective vision for greatness..

At the Ikeja bus stop vendors' stand where I occasionally stop in the mornings to get a feel of our national pulse, there is always a daily informal parliament. They consist of pundits of all persuasions. They are mostly unemployed, part time peddlers of inconsequential merchandise and just plain folk who wake up, dress up and head in no particular direction except to the bus stop in the hope that the newspapers will contain something to reinforce their nobility of spirit. But they are united by one thing: nearly everyone of them believes that our nation is well endowed but our leaders have been our undoing.

The most accomplished Nigerians demand and take up a seat in the front row of human achievement. At the level of individual accomplishment, therefore, Nigeria has no image problem. As a matter of fact, Nigeria is recognized more in terms of the sterling achievements of its nationals in nearly every field of human endeavour. Our artists and writers, engineers, scientists, footballers, medial experts and financial managers have left their marks in nearly every country of the world.

Implicit in the outstanding achievements of our nationals abroad and the inherent goodness of the majority at home is a rejection of the negativity which a succession of sad governments has spurned. Perennially frustrated that our history has produced governments that have continuously frustrated and thwarted this dream, individual Nigerians have broken forth in outstanding achievements in nearly all fields of human endeavour. These people have branded themselves and their country effectively without setting out consciously to do so.

In recent times, some individuals and organizations have taken of the task of correctly positioning Nigeria (not re-branding). Nduka Obaigbena and Thisday through a series of creative events involving international participation has created more awareness and credibility for Nigeria where it matters than both the Ministries of External Affairs and Information put together in the last eight years. Thisday and Nduka were not dressing up Nigeria. They were showcasing it at its best. Similarly, both Zenith Bank and Bank PHB through their sponsorship of Afrocentric programmes on CNN are doing much more for Nigeria than the expensive re-branding schemes of government agencies.

Cast adrift by a succession of governments that have tragically failed to rise to the level of the lowest common denominator of our citizenry, our people have moved on with their lives and careers and in the process compelled the world to recognize them and their country.

This is not to say that our people are so heretical or iconoclastic as to write off all governments. When on a few occasions, a government, military or civilian, has risen to anywhere near the expectations of the people, our people have shown it support, patience and good will. When Murtala showed up briefly with unmistakable patriotic fervour, we celebrated him. In today's language, he would be a brand like Che Guevera. When Babangida first showed up as a soldier with the funny title of 'President' and initial gestures of unusual liberalism and compassion in military fatigue, the State House was flooded with popular support and good will in the form of suggestions and shows of solidarity. He, too, almost became a brand of national leadership until the hubris of June 12. After Abacha, Obasanjo was shoe-horned into the presidential mansion and accorded unparalleled support by nearly all Nigerians. He enjoyed the goodwill of a nation that mistook him for a quintessential statesman and nationalist. At first, we were ready to allow him to get away with unlimited unconstitutional acts if only he would lead us out of national sclerosis and point the path to the greatness that has continually eluded us. Again, we were wrong.

As matters stand today, what urgently needs re-branding in Nigeria is government itself. But in order to understand the urgent re-branding needs of the government, we must make the distinction between state and society. What we have in Nigeria is a wide chasm between a very advanced and sophisticated civil society on the one hand and a toddler state at the national level on the other.

The Nigerian state needs re-branding because it also happens to be the well spring of most of the negative things for which our otherwise innocent people have been vilified abroad and traumatized at home. When our youth go abroad to traffic and peddle narcotics, it is mostly because the structures for self actualization and opportunity are limited or absent or that the law enforcement machinery is defective. When our young girls are hauled in droves into prostitution abroad, it is because the state has failed in providing either a morally ennobling environment or is itself manned sometimes by pimps and pick pockets. When our youngsters write silly scam letters to unsuspecting people around the world, it is probably because the job applications they send at home never get even an acknowledgement.

When foreigners come here, they are first greeted by disheveled and beggarly immigration and customs officials who, incidentally, are the first ambassadors of government that a foreigner arriving at any country by air encounters. The international airports themselves are either airless dungeons or fetid breeding grounds for an assortment of touts and apprentice gangsters. What we perceive today as Nigeria's negative image is conferred on us by a succession of ineffectual governments that have a state that is perennially disabled. Each time a Nigerian is subjected to special attention at a foreign airport, it is not that individual whose integrity is being questioned, it is instead the doubtful integrity of a passport issuing sovereign that can sell the same passport to any number of crooks.

Yes indeed, nations today embark on self advertisement especially in the age of satellite television networks and rabid competition for tourists and investors. You can brand and advertise your industrial prowess, your tourist potentials, your culinary skills or investment promise. Incidentally, national identity is hardly synonymous with the brand identity of a particular government. National brand identities is a manifestation of cumulative national history and experience. That is what Soyinka calls 'the accumulated heritage' of a people.

On the contrary, specific governments 'brand' themselves by doing what they are elected to do in exceptional ways. In the process, they can cast their nations in whole new lights. Enter brand Sarkozy. Take a bow brand Obama. These leaders of government are branding themselves and in the process re-branding their nations through painstaking, unrelenting, informed and systematic application of the best available solutions to pressing national problems and in the process they are emerging as brands in their own rights.

If the intention of the new re-branding initiative is to re-position the Yar'dua government as a serious one, then let the government get serious and do what governments elsewhere are doing: quit siesta and go to work When it is time to address the United Nations General Assembly, let the President go there. When the rest of the world goes to Davos to deliberate on the imperatives of the troubled world economy, let us not be absent or send people who do not understand the difference between GDP and GNP.

I have no doubts that Mrs. Akunyili means well. But whether she understands the full import of this gambit for her admirable career is another matter entirely. But if care is not taken, one tragic outcome of the new project may be the re-branding of Mrs. Akunyili herself. Here is a respectable professional pharmacist with sound intellectual predigree who has risen from the relative obscurity of the Nsukka campus to emerge as a major brand of the Nigerian promise. Her reputation as a no nonsense crusader against a monumental ill reached far and wide. By drawing attention to an area of darkness in our national soul-the penchant to make money even with the blood of innocent children, Mrs. Akunyili triggered a global movement that has brought her global acclaim and tremendous influence, visibility and deserved fame. To that extent, she has become a national brand and indeed a very strong brand ambassador.

Akunyili's burden is to ensure that this re-branding gambit does not take her otherwise excellent career down with it.