From day one, & even if the economy didn’t go south, ‘expectation management’; that inescapable challenge of modern governance, was always going to be a big challenge for this govt.

This is probably why you hear people say, a lot, that Gov’t doesn’t communicate well, or enough.

But that perhaps is a deliberate strategy. Available literature provide for 3 major expectation management strategies:

a. Laissez-faire:
Allow citizens think, say or publish whatever they wish.

Problem here is, most times, civil society then feeds inaccurate info to citizens.

b. Exaggeration:
Used largely by ‘populist’ politicians to mobilize support

c. Under-reporting:
Used in advanced democracies.

One can be excused choice of the admin using the laissez-faire strategy; as it clearly isn’t being populist, & we’re not an advanced democracy.

At the onset, the govt obviously had to hope oil revenues could sustain substantial social, economic & infrastructural improvements; while it works to diversify the economy so that we could attain a level of economic sovereignty.

But that was not to be. The price of oil crashed.

It also had to contend with effects of oil curse; a situation where the abundance of oil inexplicably led to economic stagnation, death of other exports, & conflicts over the allocation of resources.

An obvious consequence of this was our catastrophically low HDI level.

Faced with too much expectations, most of which were unrealistic, at least in the short term, from citizens too battered to be expected to be reasonable, I can’t fault Govt for seemingly adopting laissez-faire strategy.

Nothing said would do; there was only so much they could do

Aside the peripheral issues, there were also structural ones to contend with:
- A primary commodity economy
- Govt as key driver of growth
- Citizens with no regard for civic duties & obligations; eg payment of tax
- Corruption
- Unaccountable governance
- Environmental issues

These structural issues threatened the stability of cos of unbridled greed they bred from rent seeking they fostered. This, amongst others, is cause of all secessionist agitations we face.

Tbc, oil by itself isn’t cause of the curse; it’s economic & political mismanagement.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting requesting or demanding more communication from the govt was or is wrong, no; I’m only saying I also cannot (& have not) blamed the Gov’t for communication levels.

They have a ‘you do you’re damned, you don’t you’re damned’ situation.