Most people here believe that public criticism of a public officer's work or the work of the organization he is leading is bad and believe it is better to offer advice privately than in the public

Most people here believe that public criticism of a public officer's work or the work of the organization he is leading is bad and believe it is better to offer advice privately than in the public. This kind of private advice is often required where the public officer or the person making the advice belongs to certain group of people like traditional rulers, Islamic scholars  etc. 

I believe public criticism of the conduct of staff of an organization is not synonymous with criticism of the work of the head of the organization. We know the police take bribes. If I say "Many police officers take bribe". Does that mean I am attacking the Inspector General of the Police? I don't think so. 

Because of our failure to separate public criticism of the conduct of officers of an organization with the conduct or ability of the leadership of the organization, we make many wrong judgements. When Sarki Sanusi accused NNPC of not remitting $20million to the federation account in a memo written to President Jonathan but came to public knowledge when Obasanjo mentioned it in a letter written to Jonathan, the NNPC should be the organization to offer explanation but Jonathan's government took the accusation as an attack on it. When Sarki Sanusi mentioned many economic policies he believed were wrong under Buhari's government, the government said as eminent Nigerian he should write to Buhari or seek private audience with the president to give advise. But there are many government agencies, ministries and the presidency itself that are pursuing those policies. It means one has to wrote privately to the presidency and several other organizations like CBN, NNPC, customs and Federal Inland Revenue privately which would have been cumbersome. 

There is nothing wrong with criticism of the work of public officials or public organizations. The onus is just on the organizations to offer explanations to the public on the criticism. But it is the way we are trained here to believe public criticism of the work of officers of organizations or the leadership are bad not because it is bad in itself. Often public criticism is even better than private advice since many leaders do things just to have good public image not necessarily pragmatism.