When Propaganda Backfires

Nigeria

What happens when a carefully-planned, lavishly-funded campaign of family planning 'motivation' goes off track? From 1988 until early 1994, Nigeria was the target of what may well be the world's most intensive campaign of population control in history. Its primary aims were two: (1) to impose and sustain a national policy of population control on Nigeria at the federal, state, and local government levels, and (2) to carry out a massive and extraordinary propaganda offensive in the mass media, intended to erode resistance to birth control and literally to make small families the 'norm' throughout Nigeria by project completion.

The population policy was put in place, largely because of pressures and conditionality on the part of the World Bank. But it faltered under the weight of weak commitment on the part of officials and enormous popular resistance. As a consequence, by the time the bilateral (USAID-FMG/Nigeria) agreement collapsed, hostility to western population programs was actually greater than before the program was begun.

Using the mass media to change the values, lifestyles and beliefs of an entire country - by introducing ideas at odds with local custom and culture in newspapers, film, television, radio, popular and traditional music, commercial entertainment, as well as visual symbols, special events, and other psycho-social influences - is no easy task for a foreign power. A vast amount of preparation is required even before the effort can begin. Care must be taken to develop themes that will avoid arousing suspicion, and a base must be created - far from public view - from which to begin the process of quietly, secretly penetrating the very institutions and social systems that make up the country's communications.

Since an undertaking of this sort would, in the event its foreign sponsorship were known, be considered a hostile intervention of monumental proportions, certain basic precautions had to be taken. At the top of the "rules of engagement" list is the requirement that the campaign be undertaken in such a way as to give the false impression that it is coming from within the target country. In other words, it is imperative that the face presented to the public must be a Nigerian face; in fact, proxy communicators would be needed from scores of major ethnic groups scattered all around the country. And getting their participation is no easy task. Few trustworthy people will deliberately and knowingly cover for a politically explosive foreign intervention, only to become publicly associated with a hated ideology. Thus, the recruitment phase requires that channels be created by which money can be transferred through front groups and dummy corporations to disguise its origin. Even collaborators have to be deceived.

Since it is of utmost importance that propaganda themes are tailored to the sensitivities of the intended audiences, extensive research must be done into the worries and concerns, beliefs, taboos, aspirations, expectations, hopes, and desires of each unique group targeted under the nation-wide offensive. This is in itself requires a great deal of money and even more caution. Then, as propaganda messages are developed, they must undergo a thorough testing process before small sample groups, being repeatedly refined until it there is a reasonable certainty that they will evoke the desired response from the intended audience. Then the emphasis shifts to finding actors and spokespersons to convey the messages and the media by which the messages will be disseminated. Again, concealment of the funding source and the intent of the campaign is a perquisite to a successful propaganda strategy. And there is more. Once the campaign actually begins, a continuous process of evaluation is carried out to measure the month-to-month impact of the campaign.

Campaigns of this nature are a high-risk endeavor. Any hint as to the identity of 'secret' funding sources, or any suspicion about the motives behind the propaganda operation, can easily cause the entire program to backfire. And that is precisely what happened in Nigeria.

What follows is a summary of a report made following a series of surveys done in the northern part of Nigeria during 1995 by researchers from Princeton University. The quotations are from "Perceptions of Population Policy, Development, and Family Planning Programs in Northern Nigeria" by Elisha P. Renne of Princeton University's Office of Population Research. Renne's report appeared in the journal, Studies in Family Planning, Volume 27, Number 3 (May/June 1996), at pages 127-136. Citations are omitted.

The report begins by stating that distrust toward family planning has a long history in Nigeria but that it was even more prevalent when the research was conducted. Among those interviewed during the 1994 report,

[The] responses suggest that although suspicion regarding family planning programs is not new in Nigeria, it has increased . . . Furthermore, mistrust of the motives of Western aid donors may be intensified when primary health care services are declining while family planning programs appear to be advancing, or when a growing sense of the unequal distribution of wealth among nations suggests that the motive driving population programs may have more to do with maintaining the economic status quo than about promoting the well-being of developing countries' citizens.

Moreover, interview subjects tended to question "the legitimacy of governmental authority in matters concerning reproduction."

From the start, the process of conducting household interviews that included questions about fertility and family size were met with suspicion which quickly fueled rumors about the investigation. Those women who actually consented to the interview process were given bouillon cubes as a gratuity for their time. Renne states:

Soon after we began questioning women in Zaria City about childbirth practices, rumors emerged about the Maggi (bouillon) cubes that my research assistant and I were giving to women as interview gifts. According to the rumor, the cubes were contaminated with family planning "medicine," and therefore, women should not speak with us. Although we replaced the cubes immediately with five-naira banknotes, rumors continued to circulate about a wide range of vital commodities including sugar, salt, and kerosene that we were supposedly distributing and that were all adulterated with contraceptives. These rumors appear to have been expressions of uncertainty and of suspicion about our real motives. Despite their ostensible generosity, Westerners -- including US government officials, NGO workers, and anthropologists -- may be perceived as having questionable intentions . . .

But the people were not just anxious about the possibility of their being given contraceptives through adulterated commodities. They thought the conspiracy extended even to scientific research that would turn local remedies into birth control agents. Says Renne,

The fear of Westerners' hegemonic powers was most explicitly stated in one rumor claiming that because I had been unsuccessful in limiting local women's fertility with bouillon cubes, I was taking various Hausa traditional medicines back with me to the United States where they would be treated with contraceptives and distributed upon my return. Although this rumor was probably sparked by my questions about traditional medicine used in home child delivery, it may be interpreted both as a counter-hegemonic assertion of the efficacy of Hausa traditional medicine and as a warning that even traditional practices and medicines are not immune from the machinations of Westerners.

The rumors, says the writer, appeared to reflect "collective hostility toward me as a Westerner and toward the practice of family planning generally." But, adds the text, it was soon discovered that "rumors about the contraceptive contamination of various Western commodities- in particular the headache remedy Panadol -- had circulated in 1994." And such fears were not confined to Nigeria:

The association of Western commodities with loss of fertility has occurred elsewhere in Africa. In the former Northern Rhodesia and the Protectorate of Nyasaland, for example, [an earlier survey-taker] related a story according to which Europeans were doctoring and distributing sugar to cause impotence and sterility among Africans. More recently in western Kenya, a school milk-distribution program suffered from similar accusations. At one level, these rumors and responses reflect genuine fear about the unknown -- for example, about the ingredients of foreign substances and about the ambiguous intentions of strangers. One Zaria City woman said that distrust of my motives was the main reason for the widespread belief in the family planning rumor about Maggi cubes.

The report theorizes that the rumors may have been in reality "a form of resistance to the impositions of powerful Western intruders." And while the fear of contraceptive-laced bouillon cubes might seem farfetched, Renne concedes, "the concerns that these rumors represent are entirely serious."

The article quotes a community leader who advised,

Maybe the most important thing is your skin color and . . . the fact that now they [whites] are setting every interest on family planning, and they [Zaria City residents] view things with suspicion.

A religious leader in the same region suggested that because the interviewer was asking questions about family size, it was assumed that the purpose was to promote family planning. "According to him," the text continues, "the bouillon-cube rumors reflected people's dislike of family planning and of foreign strangers asking about anything that seemed to pertain to it."

The writer also quoted a former Nigerian diplomat:

[P]eople are very suspicious about Americans in this country. They have very large populations in America . . . [So] why are they insistent in developing countries like Nigeria, why are they taking so much interest in controlling our births?

Objections were raised not only on racial grounds, but along religious lines as well. One intellectual expressed the view that the US interest in birth control is based on "a fear of large Muslim populations." And an Islamic legal scholar said:

[T]here is a vigorous campaign by youth and religious organizations about this family planning [because they think] that it is an American project that they want to eliminate Muslims, they want to stop the population growth of the Muslims.... I think that is why people in the city are jittery.

And finally, there was the larger hostility toward America that focused on larger US foreign policy matters. "[O]ur people suspect America," said another Muslim leader, "by virtue of what they are hearing every day about American injustices, [such as] American interference in the internal affairs of some other countries . . . especially [the] Gulf crisis.

Renne's report concluded that the rumors about tainted foods and medicines, given with the intent to prevent births, were "not unreasonable" because residents in the area had been frequently exposed to such ideas at local mosques or over Radio Kaduna.

Furthermore, the author noted the widespread believe that "children are a God-given blessing and that procreation is an important part of Islamic marriage." Indeed, for some in Nigeria, "the idea of calculating births is anathema."

Many likewise objected to the idea of any government involvement in family planning and procreation whatever. As the study explains, several interview subjects argued that government . . .

. . . should not interfere in such matters for they are not considered to be part of its legitimate domain. Nor should such private affairs as human reproduction be treated as a general public concern. Rather, family size and the timing of childbirth are subjects for personal discussion between husband and wife . . . Thus to treat childbearing openly as a matter of calculation for the economic benefit of individuals and families and as a program of national development is considered offensive by some, because it associates childbearing with material interests rather than spiritual ones. When asked what Nigerian government policymakers could do regarding population programs, the ambassador quoted above answered, "They have the Islamic view. But for them to pass [family planning] laws, that would be extremely unwise."

Family planning was also associated by some with "Western indecency and materialism," and some survey respondents deplored the "economic calculation of childbearing characteristic of family planning programs as "yet another example of Western immortality." Scholars also argued that a growing population was necessary for development," blaming international aid agencies and lending institutions for undermining economic development in Nigeria.

The researchers found still more evidence of hatred for Western-imposed family planning programs outside the interview project. There was, for instance, an incident involving the destruction of signs and posters advertising a "Space Your Children" campaign. Such notices, the article continues, "have been torn down systematically" by youth opposed to population and family planning programs. But there was still more. The belief that family planning was in some way linked to an immunization program in Katsina State brought about a strong revolt. A one Nigerian employee of USAID remarked:

What happened was that at the time they were preparing for national . . . immunization, they were thinking that a lot of people would come out and that they should integrate it with . . . some posters on family planning. So [as soon as] some people saw that, they said in fact the purpose of the immunization was to sterilize the children [and] because of [that], they just pulled their women back.... [So when health workers] found it difficult to get people out . . . they went and ripped off all the family planning posters; that was when the Ministry of Health was to start their campaigns. Whereas, from our own end, we [USAID] paid a national company to go and fix the posters. Of course they [the health workers] ripped all of them off and destroyed all of them before the Ministry was [able to immunize], even though the Ministry approved of the posters that were specially made for the north.

The same USAID official explained that some clinic workers had talked about injectable contraceptives and, as a consequence, parents feared that immunizations might be a trick to make the children infertile in their adult years. According to a physician who spoke with the writer,

A lot of people don't get the EPI vaccine now because they believe that family planning drugs, fertility control drugs, are incorporated in it.

The report also concludes that the integration of health and family planning programs "may not be well-received in northern Nigeria." In fact, to run birth control side-by-side with health services would only put in jeopardy women's patronage of the latter, local advisors said. Indeed, where Nigeria is concerned, health care programs can only be harmed by an association with family planning. And the hostility toward western birth control has increased for a number of reasons, including the 1991 Gulf War, which aroused strident anti-American sentiments. This is aptly illustrated by a quote appearing in the article:

[G]enerally speaking, America is not . . . extremely popular . . . among the Muslims, especially after the Iraqi affair. People are mostly of the opinion that it was religious bigotry that caused Americans to [do] that sort of thing.

Many Nigerians were also aware of the role of outsiders in pushing for the population policy that was introduced in the 1980s. For one thing, it followed the introduction of a World Bank structural adjustment plan and the devaluation of Nigerian currency, producing, in the words of the report, "a sense of government collusion or capitulation to the pressures of foreign powers." And while large USAID grants supplied enormous amounts of contraceptives, "other aspects of public health, such as treatment for malaria or provision of clean drinking water, [were] being ignored."

The theoretical linkage of population control to economic betterment is rejected in Nigeria, Renne notes.

Not surprisingly, arguments against a linking of population and development and against federal- and foreign-sponsored family planning programs are often couched in moral terms, because it is precisely on these grounds that the authority of the Nigerian government and the actions of Western governments are being questioned. These arguments are conducted not only at the national level but also locally -- in the villages, towns, and cities of northern Nigeria. They are reflected in the rumors about Western commodities being adulterated with contraceptives, in Friday mosque sermons, and in Federal Ministry of Health "Space Your Child" publicity promotions -- and in countervailing activities.

Renne's report urged that maternal and child health projects should be stressed by donors, "with a shift away from the emphasis on family planning programs at this time." Otherwise, warned the report, "officials run the risk of jeopardizing the reception of other health initiatives as well as of future social science research, including demographic and health surveys."