By
Tolu Ogunlesi
Sometimes
you want to just focus on the good, happy, cheering news, but the deluge of
bad, depressing news just doesn’t let you. Just last week we were caught up in
BMWgate; this week there’s the Journey to Jerusalem. You’ve probably seen all
the photos surfacing from the presidency, of the pilgrimage – or jamboree,
depending on whom you ask – to Jerusalem. From a satirist’s point of view the
photos are hilarious: Nigerian officials trying to act like the pious faces
they’ve got on are prerequisites for gaining admission into paradise.
One
American friend actually sent me a message: “Did you see the photo spread of
GEJ – pardon me, GEJ, J.P. – and his entourage gettin’ sacred all over the Holy
Land?”; and then went on to describe the photos as “absurd.”
And
indeed they are. There’s an especially hilarious photo of a line of Nigerians
(including Mr. President) looking all spiritual, and in the foreground a
sculpted sage, head turned towards the camera, hands thrown up in a mix of
puzzlement and resignation.
One
really puzzling thing is this: why is the Presidency suddenly obsessed with
pushing out photographs of what should ordinarily be a private spiritual
affair? I don’t think we’ve ever seen this many images from any presidential
trip in recent history. I recall hunting the Internet for information about the
president’s activities, during a state trip to China a few months
ago – and finding nothing. Now there’s a trip to Israel and the media
is flooded with images from the pilgrimage part of it; of pious-looking,
prayerful officials. Clearly the Presidency understands some really key things about
the psychology of the Nigerian people; and it seems to me this might be simply
an experiment in how the Nigerian love for grand demonstrations of piety
can be used to shape the public image of political leaders.
Nigeria
is of no doubt a paradise for parodists and satirists. It’s as if every morning
our government officials wake up and say: “Look, how can we rile these people?
What can we do to get all these yeye activists spraying saliva across the
newspaper columns and on social media? How can we keep them busy?”
Let’s
pursue that line of thought for a moment, and imagine that every morning, a
meeting is summoned in the Presidency. “That BMW matter is getting old. And the
appointment of Oga ‘Ali-Must-Go’ to head the National Universities
Commission board doesn’t seem to have raised any eyebrows. We need to raise
eyebrows, people! What do you suggest?” Ideas will pour out, until one genius
says, “I have the idea. Let’s go to Jerusalem.” Slowly but steadily light bulbs
will pop on in head after head, as the brilliance of the idea sinks in. “Let’s
not go to Jerusalem in any ordinary way – let’s go in style. Let Israel know
that the President of the giant of Africa is in town.”
And
that was it. Signed and sealed. And then as soon as the news leaked the enemies
of the state – rumour-mongers and presidential-memo-stealers and assorted
miscreants – wasted no time going to town to announce that the President was
travelling with 19 state Governors and 30,000 Nigerians, necessitating the
statement from spokesperson Reuben Abati that “reports in the media that he is
leading 19 state governors and about 30,000 Nigerians to Israel are a
misrepresentation of facts.”
That
mischievous fabrication of 30,000 presidential party pilgrims (a tired tactic
which the disgruntled elements of the opposition keep resorting to every time
the President is travelling) recalls the famous pilgrimage, in 1324,
of Malian Emperor Musa 1, to Mecca.
It is recorded that Musa (named last
year as the richest human that ever lived) travelled with an entourage of
thousands of persons (slaves, aides, hangers-on). He stopped over in Egypt for
three months, laden with and spending so much gold that the metal instantly
lost value; its prices plunging for many years afterwards.
If
reports from the October 2011 Commonwealth Heads of Governments Meeting in
Perth, Australia are to be believed, Nigeria found itself caught up in a bid to
trump the swagger of Emperor Musa. As one Australia-based Nigerian blogger –
who says he was an eyewitness – put it, “You could smell naira notes everywhere
you turn (sic) in the shopping mall. Everyone and anyone you can think of,
was in Perth for the CHOGM.
From Ministers to businessmen, state governors,
Special Advisers, Commissioners, Personal Assistants, Security Guards, houseboys,
housegirls, girlfriends, shopping buddies, political jobbers you name
it! […] Some of the Nigerian guys I came across on the streets of Perth
were no different from urchins that you see regularly on the streets of
Lagos. […] The shop owners in the city must have been praying that the
CHOGM shouldn’t come to an end. Everywhere you turned, there is (sic) a
Nigerian either shopping and changing money at the bureau de change.”
There
you have it. Mansa Musa would be proud. Thankfully, as far as we know, the presidential
entourage has not yet caused an upheaval in the currency markets of the Holy
Land.
Now
let’s take a step back, and place this Israel trip – a combination of
pilgrimage and state visit, we’ve been told – as well as a number of other
recent happenings side-by-side with something the President told the nation,
last year.
On
Saturday January 7, 2012, in the heat of the national rebellion that
accompanied the removal of petrol subsidies, he announced, and I quote:
“To
save Nigeria, we must all be prepared to make sacrifices. On the part of
Government, we are taking several measures aimed at cutting the size and cost
of governance, including on-going and continuous effort to reduce the size of
our recurrent expenditure and increase capital spending. In this regard, I have
directed that overseas travels by all political office holders, including the
President, should be reduced to the barest minimum. The size of delegations on
foreign trips will also be drastically reduced; only trips that are absolutely necessary
will be approved.”
I’m
not making that up; I did not steal a secret presidential document, and I’m not
guilty of leaking official secrets (like the enemies of the government did with
the BMW documents). Those were the President’s exact words, in a television
broadcast.
Now
look at everything happening – from this loud trip to Israel to the seemingly
casual responses to the ASUU strike and the BMW scandal – and it’s deeply
distressing to observe that the near-total absence of prudence or sobriety or commitment
to value-driven spending on the part of the Federal Government.
The
temptation as a citizen and onlooker is of course to shut up and adopt a
siddon-look, whats-the-point approach. There’s so much to complain about that
one imagines these noises we keep making eventually start cancelling one
another out.
And
perhaps, just perhaps, that is the intention of the government. When they
wake up every morning and ask the ‘Look, how can we rile these people?’
question, the intention is probably that amidst the deluge of scandals and
controversies Nigerians will wear themselves out screaming and ranting.
Years
ago I wrote about the establishment, by the Yar’Adua administration, of a
National Distraction Commission (NDC). I described it as being “charged
with (according to the bill that created it) ‘creating, regulating, reinforcing
and institutionalizing significant National Distractions with a view to
ensuring that citizens and the mass media are kept occupied to such an extent
that they are left with no time or energy to ask relevant questions about the
future of the country.’”
If
a fraction of the budget and energy that currently go into maintaining this
Commission went towards building the moral authority to move Nigeria forward,
perhaps we wouldn’t need to be making all these shows of empty religiosity
presumably in search of divine transformation.
How
long are we going to spend as a country going round in circles, making
ourselves the laughing stock of the world? As I write this, a scandal involving
expense claims (worth far less than what it cost us to buy two BMWs, by the
way) by four Canadian Senators is throwing up heated debate about the
legitimacy of the entire Canadian Senate, and triggering intense soul-searching
within the government.
Actually,
it’s not like we don’t sometimes have our own soul-searching moments in
Nigeria. The problem is that everything feels painfully cosmetic. These were
President Jonathan’s closing words in that sober January 7, 2012 speech,
qualifying his vow to cut unnecessary spending and focus instead on the
country’s most pressing issues:
“As
I ask for the full understanding of all Nigerians, I also promise that I will
keep my word. Thank you. May God bless you; and may God bless the Federal
Republic of Nigeria.”
Almost
two years later, you be the judge – has Mr. President kept his word?
Follow Tolu Ogunlesi on Twitter @toluogunlesi
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