Trust is your real crisis insurance, Lai Mohammed tells business leaders, govts

By Joseph Erunke

Former Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, on Thursday delivered a sweeping and hard-hitting lecture on crisis communication, warning business leaders, governments and institutions that failure to build public trust before crises erupt could prove fatal in today’s information-driven world.

Speaking at the Guest Lecture Series of the University of Abuja Business School, Mohammed said modern organisations now operate under the same intense scrutiny as governments and must therefore treat communication not as a public relations function, but as a core leadership responsibility.

In his lecture titled, “Crisis, Communication and Commerce: What Business Leaders Can Learn From Government,” the former minister drew lessons from some of the most difficult moments during his eight years in office, including the Boko Haram insurgency, COVID-19 pandemic, #EndSARS protests and the suspension of Twitter in Nigeria.

He argued that in the digital age, crises are no longer defined only by events themselves, but by how quickly narratives are shaped around them.

“Communication is not a department. It is not something you outsource to a press secretary or a PR agency. It is a leadership discipline,” Mohammed declared.

According to him, organisations that survive crises are not necessarily those with the biggest budgets or strongest structures, but those that had already built credibility and trust before trouble emerged.

“The leaders who communicate best in a crisis are those who communicated consistently before the crisis arrived. Trust is not a communication tool; it is the infrastructure upon which communication rests,” he said.

Mohammed recounted how he inherited a hostile and sceptical civil service environment when the Muhammadu Buhari administration took office in 2015 after defeating the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, which had ruled for 16 years.

Rather than launching aggressive media campaigns, he said he chose to first engage journalists, editors, media owners and indigenous language newspapers in order to build relationships and trust.

“A message sent without trust is noise. A message sent through established relationships is signal,” he noted.

The former minister stressed that communication must always be two-way, warning leaders against treating it merely as information broadcasting.

“Communication is conversation. We listened as much as we spoke. That helped us adjust policies and strategies in real time,” he said.

Mohammed devoted a significant portion of the lecture to discussing how governments and corporations can combat misinformation and reputational attacks.

Using the Boko Haram insurgency as a case study, he narrated how he secretly took 40 local and international journalists into liberated insurgent territories in Borno State to disprove claims that the Nigerian military had failed to reclaim occupied local governments.

The trip, he said, transformed sceptical journalists into eyewitnesses whose reports changed public perception.
“We knew statements alone would not work. Proof is more powerful than position,” he said.

“When your organisation is under attack, counter with evidence, not assertion. Open your books, show your processes, invite independent observers, “he advised.

On the COVID-19 pandemic, Mohammed described Nigeria’s communication strategy as one of the country’s greatest successes during the health emergency.

He said government relied heavily on trusted community figures, local languages and real-time public feedback to encourage compliance with safety protocols and combat dangerous misinformation.

“A grandmother in Katsina may not listen to a minister in Abuja, but she will listen to her imam or community leader. The messenger is as important as the message,” he explained.

He said Nigeria’s comparatively low fatality figures during the pandemic demonstrated the power of strategic communication and rapid response systems.

Mohammed also gave an emotional reflection on the #EndSARS protests, describing them as the most difficult communication challenge of his time in office.

He acknowledged that the protests began as genuine expressions of frustration over police brutality but later became vulnerable to what he termed “weaponised misinformation.”

According to him, fake news and unverified reports spread rapidly on social media, making it increasingly difficult for government narratives to gain traction.

“In the social media age, lies spread faster than corrections. The only durable defence against misinformation is the trust you have already built before the crisis,” he warned.

He cautioned business leaders to begin treating misinformation as a serious operational and reputational risk.

“Misinformation is no longer just a political problem. It is a business risk that belongs on your risk register alongside financial and regulatory risks,” he said.

The post Trust is your real crisis insurance, Lai Mohammed tells business leaders, govts appeared first on Vanguard News.