How I Would Run A Presidential Media Chat...

I was catching up on my daily dose of gossip from Linda’s Blog today when I happened on the sentence highlighted above.

I have watched enough Presidential Media Chats to know this means he will only address the easiest, low-impact questions. The tough questions will be ignored, denying Nigerians the right to understand ongoing events.

Here is how I would run Presidential Media chats if I could…

1.    A few weeks to the Chat, a custom-designed web-portal would start to accept questions from Nigerians everywhere in the world. Questions could be posted directly to the site or via SMS.

2.    The portal would be open for people to read, comment on, and share the questions they would really love answers to. Most importantly, people would be able to up-vote (and down-vote) questions (very much like Pigeonhole).

3.    The President would be obligated to answer the top-five questions (i.e. the five questions with the most up-votes) in as much detail as possible – regardless of the subject.

4.    The President’s media team would write and post detailed answers to the questions that were not up-voted enough to be answered during the media chat. (This would give them a chance to earn their salaries after all).

5.    The cycle would re-start for subsequent media chats.

Admittedly, this approach leaves out the majority of Nigerians without internet access – but would be more useful than the current farce. One might also posit that those who would actively participate in the up-voting/down-voting process would reflect the mind of the Nation at large.

However, until we elect a President who actually owes his mandate to us and is obligated to answer our questions – we have to continue to suffer the current farce.

Cheers.