NICARAGUA WITH A WHOLE WORLD WATCHING : Blue Smoke in an African Sky: U.S. Advisers in Politics Abroad

The gravest danger facing U.S. political public-relations practitioners who take on campaigns in foreign lands is that they might not get paid if their candidates lose.

I have no idea which American PR firm handled the Sandinista account during the recent Nicaraguan campaign. But I trust it was prudent enough to be paid in advance. For the money will be of great solace when it next makes a pitch to a prospective client and must admit, “Yeah, we handled Danny Ortega.”

Watching from afar, I thought the Sandinistas put on a splendid campaign despite its surprising outcome. They removed Ortega’s hoot-owl spectacles and replaced them with contacts. They got him out of his tailored combat fatigues and into mock-Hawaiian print shirts and blue jeans. They handed out coffee mugs and T-shirts and, unless hindered by uncommon Christian forbearance, passed around a bit of money.

They were trying to sell a new, improved Daniel Ortega. So they put him up on a stage all alone, nicely back-lit with the music blaring and Ortega grinning merrily and waving the flag around and looking remarkably like a slightly hyper rock star on the comeback trail. If the goal was to replace dour with warm, they succeeded. If it was to win votes, they didn’t.

My sympathy for losing political PR practitioners began 30 years ago, when I was sent from London to Nigeria to inject “a little American razzmatazz” into a political campaign there.

My dispatcher was the late Patrick Dolan, who founded Patrick Dolan Associates of 10 Bruton St., Berkeley Square, London W.1. His was the first postwar American public-relations agency to prosper in England and it was from his tony London address that he somehow landed the account of a prominent Nigerian politician, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, who very much wanted to be the paramount leader of his country once it gained independence from the British.

Just before I flew down to Lagos, one of Dolan’s longtime associates drew me aside to say he hoped I’d do something he had never been able to do. That was to crawl inside the head of the average Nigerian and find out what he was thinking. With the arrogance of youth, I said I felt my job was to help the average Nigerian decide what to think.

Political razzmatazz, either the American kind or rival brands, depends on access to media. But there weren’t any media in Nigeria. True, there was radio, but it was government controlled. There was also a rash of newspapers, but they were mostly the semiofficial organs of the political parties.

Television in Nigeria didn’t quite exist yet, although Patrick Dolan Associates was helping bring the first commercial TV station to Africa. It was being built in Ibadan, Nigeria. When completed, it would offer such cultural fare as “My Little Margie,” “Father Knows Best” and the No. 1 Nigerian favorite, “Wagon Train.”

Without access to newspaper, radio or TV, razzmatazz was limited to giant rallies, posters, broadsides, torchlight parades and innumerable harangues by the candidate and his supporters. In essence, we were running an 1892 campaign in 1959. About a third of the way through this Gay ‘90s race someone suffered a stroke of genius for which, even now, I refuse to be blamed.

But once the great idea was broached, it had to be discussed with the candidate and his palace guard. We gathered, Awolowo and his counselors in their cool, flowing robes, the Patrick Dolan Associates in their tropical suits. I usually enjoyed these meetings because the chief and his cronies were shrewd politicians with few illusions other than the conviction that they would win. But all politicians suffer from this chronic malady.

Our brilliant proposal was: skywriting. We would write Awolowo’s nickname, AWO, against the azure sky all over Nigeria--from Sokoto in the north to Port Harcourt in the south. Beneath AWO would be emblazoned a three-stroke palm tree, official symbol of the chief’s political party, the Action Group.

The discussion started in English and soon switched to Yoruba. This was the usual pattern of such meetings and it left us Patrick Dolan Associates with nothing to do except inspect the ceiling fans or our hangnails. Often, from the voice tones, we could tell how the meetings were going and whether the participants were cutting deals or each other.

Although we never quite claimed skywriting would turn the campaign around, I’m afraid we hinted as much. When the discussion was over, Awolowo approved skywriting with a nod, a smile and a look of profound disbelief.

The day before the skywriting began, the chief of United Press International’s three-man bureau in Lagos was injured in a traffic accident. UPI asked me, with Dolan’s acquiescence, to fill in temporarily. I said if UPI put the fox in the henhouse, the usual results might occur. UPI didn’t seem to care. So I asked them what they wanted and they said 800 words a day. The first 800 words I filed were on Awolowo’s skywriting.

From the start it had been apparent that the election would be fought largely along tribal lines: the tribes with the most members would win. And these were the mostly Muslim Northern Nigerians, whose candidate was the Oxford-educated Alhaji Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa.

Despite our best efforts, Chief Awolowo lost to Sir Abubakar. Later, the military coups began and Abubakar was shot to death in 1966. Awolowo was jailed, released and again ran unsuccessfully in 1979 and 1983. He died in 1987.

I stayed on in Nigeria for a year after the election as the permanent resident of Patrick Dolan Associates. I spent my time reminding Awolowo’s Action Group of how much money they still owed us and providing hospitality for wayfaring journalists and U.S. promoters looking for fast-buck investments.

It is now 30 years since Nigeria gained its independence--30 years of oil boom and bust, elections, assassinations, coups, more elections and more coups. The only contribution I made to Nigeria was to help write Awolowo’s nickname in smoke against the African sky.

I never did crawl inside the head of the average Nigerian. But I did discover, no surprise, that the average Nigerian, like the average Nicaraguan and the average everybody else, will vote for whatever they perceive to be in their best interests. Most Nicaraguans a week ago ignored the PR blandishments from both sides and voted against 30,000% annual inflation, 30% unemployment and for a decidedly uncertain future that nobody, except the pundits, is foolish enough to predict.