Challenges of Lagos Police image maker

When Ngozi Braide was made the Lagos State Police Command Public Relations Officer (PPRO), tongues had wagged.

Tongues wagged because she was the first female police officer to become a PRO in the command.

Since the creation of the Nigeria Police Force, for some unfathomable reason, the office had always been occupied by men.

When she stepped into the office, she was practically stepping into the shoes left by several men.

The fact that she’s a woman and one with a pretty face and sexy luscious body makes her a target for gossips, speculation, envy, jealousy, rumour and attention.

The fact that she’s even a young female officer further makes her an enviable symbol among the older female ones.

If there are two police officers who handled the police PRO office in Lagos State with aplomb, it was Mr. Bode Ojajuni and Mr. Frank Mba. Mba is now the Force Public Relations Officer.

Mba is not just blessed with a sugar coated tongue, making him a darling subject to engage in wits, but he is also extremely intelligent, beginning with the native intelligence.

Even if robbers had overtaken Lagos State, and a journalist calls Mba, and Mba apparently did not know about the incident, or had not even heard about it, he would still have something to say. Something that will make the journalist shakes his/her head in stunned admiration.  One is yet to see the person who can catch Mba unaware on any subject that has to do with the image of the police.

It was into these shoes of Mba, that Braide was expected to step into, not counting her predecessors, Mr. Samuel Jinadu and Mr. Joseph Jaiyeoba.

Many people thought Braide is just a pretty face, but five minutes chat with her, usually shows that she is not a bimbo.

But many people, especially journalists and even her male colleagues are not too impressed with the way she had been handling her job as PRO so far. If anything, many expected her to use her natural wit and feminine wiles and charms to do better than Mba and other male predecessors.

So where has Braide gone wrong? Why are policemen calling her, ‘celebrity PRO,’ both in Lagos and Abuja?

Journalism, especially in Nigeria, is microcosm of the larger society. It comprises of the good, bad and the ugly of journalists.

Braide has to be able to decipher each of these journalists and know how to relate with them.

In a chat with Daily Newswatch, Braide said that in Nigeria Police Force, there was no marginalization where women were concerned. She had gone further to say that her greatest challenge so far is being the image maker of the police in Lagos.

This means that both women and men in police are given equal level playing ground.

So why is Braide being in the news and internet for all the wrong reasons? Why is she not flying like her predecessors, Mba and Olubode Ojajuni?

The answer is simply because there are too many distractions.

One of these distractions appears to be police women and female journalists and sometimes even male journalists who are bent on giving her hell.

The internet articles against Braide have always been one sided, making such articles mistrustful.

In a quarrel, there are supposed to be two parties, yet in all, it’s always Braide name that is mentioned. The other adversaries remain phantoms. 

Perhaps Braide’s greatest weakness is her emotion. She is quick tempered and also quick to respond to even actions that she should sometimes ignore. Braide is yet to learn and cultivate the power of being a woman; to act weak when people expect you to be strong, to be strong when they expect you to be weak.

She is yet to learn to smile, while seething with anger, and to laugh when she feels like crying. In a nutshell, she needs the poker face.

She is also yet to learn that the character she puts at home is not the same one she should bring to office. For now, because of her office and what it symbolises, she has to wear many facial masks, to suit different situations.

If Braide must succeed, she should work on the blue print already laid down by her predecessors and improve upon them. She should limit her granting of personality interview, which has warranted her colleagues dubbing her, ‘celebrity PRO.’

Her focus should be on granting interviews and confirming police side of stories which had just broken.

She should stop making people see her as a bimbo who cannot do her job or who attained her present position through the backdoor. And she can do that by always making sure, she not only pick her calls but also endeavours to call back any journalist who needs confirmation of a story,  after she had got the situation report to whatever story the journalist wanted.

Many times, Braide will promise to call back after a journalist calls her for a story confirmation, but nobody bothers to wait anymore. Every journalist now knows she won’t call back.

Most importantly, she should begin to learn how to entrap and gather evidence against dirty journalists who try to blackmail or extort money from her.

One of the ways to do that, is to record such person via phone. Most phones now come with such recording devices. She can also tape record even those who have the effrontery to walk into her office and use their pens as weapons of blackmail.

Blackmailing somebody for whatever reason is a criminal offence and usually attracts imprisonment.  No matter the person’s social status or job, a blackmailer should be made to face the wrath of the law. And for the charges to stick, evidence is needed.

Braide just needs to use one person as an escape goat, to serve as deterrent to others, if her claims that she is being blackmailed by some journalist are true.

She should also look for a way to make her office sacrosanct, in order to disabuse aimless journalists from finding comfortable seats to sit and gossip. Familiarity after all, breeds contempt.

Not only that, she must also learn to use the junior officers under her to make her job easier and less stressful. The officers under her should make sure that the ‘Daily Press Bulletin,’ otherwise known as ‘Situation Report’ (SITREP), which has now become a monthly bulletin, comes back to being daily one, which it had been for decades. Braide as a human being cannot do everything herself, thus job delegation is vital.

She also should be able to convince her superior officer, Prince Manko Umar,  the State’s Commissioner of police, that it is vital to give her notice of any press briefing, 24 hours ahead of event,  to enable inform journalists, than to leave out some of media personnel and incur unnecessary anger and make mortal foes.

To further make the job easier, she should have a particular officer, who should be in charge of sending a bulk SMS to journalists whenever there is going to be a press briefing.

Braide has a lot of natural endowments, beginning with native and academic intelligence to make a good image maker. The onion now lies on her to realise this and work on it. Braide ought to also wake up to the fact that what sees as challenges in her present station, are really surmountable ones.