By Martins Oloja
The age-long challenge of ‘information overload’ is beginning to affect us in this part of the world and our leaders at all levels are exploiting it to prevent people from deepening understanding of the multifarious challenges they daily ignore in the context of their primary responsibility – security and welfare of the people.

Yes, ‘information overload’, that blight, which can be seen as the excess information available to a person aiming to complete a task or make decision. This new challenge to mankind, which now impedes the decision-making process, daily results in poor (or even no) decision being made – on issues of urgent national importance. We in Nigeria need to be wary of this virus that Alvin Toffler, a futurist warned about since 1970.

If we would like to understand the blight called “information overload” here is the beginning: In the 1970 book, “Future Shock” by author and futurist Alvin Toffler, he said future shock is, “the dizzying disorientation brought on by the premature arrival of the future. It may well be the most important disease of tomorrow”.

BBC’s Matt Novak, a features correspondent, had earlier noted that there is no denying Toffler’s international influence on the way we think about the future. His words: “I have seen Future Shock in virtually every used bookstore I have visited from Portland, Oregon to Cartagena, Colombia. With over six million copies sold, it clearly struck a nerve in 1970 and beyond. Toffler explains in the book that, “just as the body cracks under the strain of environmental overstimulation, the “mind” and its decision processes behave erratically when overloaded.” In a radio interview shortly after the release of his book, Toffler warned that the exhaustion he saw throughout the world was tied to his new future shock theory. “I think there’s a tremendous undercurrent of dissatisfaction in America; people saying I want out, it’s moving too fast, it’s moving away from me; a sense of panic; a sense that things are slipping out of control and I don’t think that there’s much we can do in our personal lives to counteract that,” he said.

Toffler’s assumption was that the future is something that happens to us, rather than with us. It is something out of our control that will inevitably overwhelm us”.

The same BBC’s Novak had in the same 2012 warned that the ‘information overload’ he was deconstructing was getting “out of control”. He added then that “Whilst some will take comfort in Toffler’s words, some of the notions seem rather quaint forty years later. Just as people today throw around the number of tweets sent per second or the amount of video watched online, in the early 1970s Toffler followers and techno-reactionaries liked to scatter their own figures to show the magnitude of the problem…”

In the same Futurist essay that decried the rise of the number of TV channels, the author Ben Bagdikian went on to overwhelm readers with even more daunting numbers, explaining that computers would sooner than later be able to store information at a rate of 12 million words a minute, whilst printers would be able to pump out 180,000 words a minute; something that would collide violently with humanity’s ability to process information.

It was a warning that we still hear today in many contexts. For example, author Jonathan Franzen, an opponent of electronic books, argues that traditional paper tomes give humanity some much needed stability in a world rocked by change. He fears that this rapid pace is hurting us. His words: “Seriously, the world is changing so quickly that if you had any more than 80 years of change I don’t see how you could stand it psychologically”. These men who saw tomorrow then had advised that we should “accept change”. Yet history seems to suggest we ride these waves of change.

Toffler, Bagdikian and Franzen are not necessarily wrong or even alarmist in their concerns that we should seek to control our own technological destinies. But to Novak, futility should not win the argument. The argument here is that our consumption of media is largely within our control. We have a choice in the matter. We can change the channel, turn off the TV, or close the laptop lid. These are our choices, and it is hard to see how any of them are irrational or happening to us rather than with us. That seems to be the therapy we can’t apply to manage the change construct we now face in Nigeria.

Which is why I think the information overload is already affecting us and state actors in our milieu are exploiting this mind-boggler to underserve and confuse us with their distracting propaganda, misinformation and disinformation, so regularly. Some of the operatives deployed on various social media platforms by some state actors, dealers, sorry leaders use tragi-comic weapons of mass deceptions. Some other hatchet writers, whose god is their belly, employ some subterfuge approach to overload and feed our spirit with material that can prevent us from seeing available opportunities that Asians and even Middle Easterners are exploring and exploiting in Africa’s most populous nation. We need to deal with this overload that daily blurs our visions and diminishes our performance indices, our efficiency and effectiveness. Doubtless, we are being daily fed with frivolous pieces of negative pieces of information overload about our place in the world of knowledge development. What we can easily access now is the number of federal, state and private universities. We can’t access data on how these numerous universities have been affecting our knowledge development and indeed our intellectual capacity to solve our current enormous challenges.

At press time, even in the media, we didn’t know who and what to believe about Aliko Dangote’s $20 billion worth of modern Refinery where more than one hundred journalists spent about eleven hours on facility tours last Sunday. Dangote told the journalists that he actually paid a whopping $100 million to the Lagos State Government for the sprawling ‘Dangote’s Planet’ Plots of Land in Ibeju Lekki, Lagos told the aristocracy of the Nigerian media across platforms that from next month, he would have capacity to begin commercial distribution of PMS among others. Before journalists could ask Lagos State Government for confirmation about the use of the $100 million worth of Title Deeds (Certificate of Occupancy) Dangote confirmed the then Governor Babatunde Fashola handed him, another information load had filtered in from the petroleum industry regulators, which suggested that Dangote might not be able to operate the refinery he claimed was ready (to journalists).

At the weekend, we were told that the Refinery was only 45 % complete and that the licence to commence commercial production hadn’t been given him, even though he had begun partial distribution of diesel. Anyway, let us wait for more fireworks and more information load(ing) from some principalities and powers who had actually begun to spread some “well written” bad verses on the Dangore Refinery to the effect that, “the Dangote Refinery is a scam”, after all.

Anyway, what I actually wanted to write on is the information overload on the Livestock Sub-sector I began to comment upon last week as a companion/commemorative piece on iconic Wole Soyinka @ 80. I had then averred that the President who had just then proclaimed creation of Livestock Ministry from a February 2023 Report and Blueprint inspired by a former Governor of Kano State, had stoked another fire of controversy that instantly put the Funani on a line of fire. Recall also that I had then suggested that the president’s information and re-orientation managers should organise a strategic national re-orientation campaign to deal with the negative perception that the new Livestock Ministry must have triggered.

So today, I would like to begin a serial on the limitless opportunities that the Livestock Subsector offers all of us instead of the challenges that the mere mention of Livestock business offers via information overload. And here is the thing, we need to deepen our understanding that Livestock subsector is much more than cattle rearing by the Fulani. Behold, one of our leaders and specifically Governor Seyi Makinde of Oyo State had gone ahead of the President’s creation of the Livestock Ministry to show example through strategic revival of Fashola Farm and Ranch near Iseyin, Oyo State. This isn’t a campaign for Governor Makinde, who just revived a Ranch the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo actually established as Premier of Western Region. It is a verifiable testament to possibilities and opportunities in Agriculture Business of which Livestock is a subsector. It is just a way of drawing our attention to some challenges we harp on, which Indians, Chinese and Lebanese investors see as opportunities in our country. I mean we often feed our spirit with so much negativity through the obnoxious information overload so much that we can hardly recognise that sometimes we need to look at the ‘burning bush’ that isn’t ‘consuming the bush’ yet. The way I see this is that we may not be able to change the way the current President has been running the country. He doesn’t seem to be a leader that would study the implications of the proverbial “burning bush” that isn’t consuming the bush yet. He isn’t likely to change anytime soon no matter the number of open letters we write to him daily on the need to change strategy. But there is some solace in the words of Alan Paton in his classic, “Cry The Beloved Country”: “When the storm threatens, a man is afraid for his house. But when the house is destroyed, there is something to do. About the storm, he can do nothing, but he can rebuild a house…” That is where we are, no thanks to the presidential system that hands for years to any winner of our presidential election.

We can look for opportunities in the challenges the governance system creates for us. And one of such challenges is the Livestock Subsector. Even as we discuss why the President should not have created another Ministry out of the Agriculture and Food Security Ministry, let’s look at the seeds of time in the Livestock Subsector and detect the ones that can flourish in the land of our birth. That livestock Sub-sector is too important to be left to the President and Fulani alone. Let’s borrow some brilliance from Governor Makinde and his ‘Animal Farm’ in Fashola, near Iseyin. Let’s look at some architecture in the Livestock ruins.

***We will continue with the Livestock opportunities properly, if next week comes (by His grace).