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Citizen Shuaibu Bakari and Governor Danbaba Suntai’s Lies

March 1, 2009
Image removed.The authorities in Taraba state finally sentenced citizen Shuaibu Bakari to a few months behind bars for embarrassing Governor Danbaba Suntai at a public function. According to newspaper reports, on December 16, 2008, Governor Suntai was out commissioning one of those projects Nigeria’s rulers love to launch with fanfare. These are often products of Nigeria’s corrupt contractocracy that they present to the people as “ultra-modern” dividends of democracy. Everything our politicians launch is “ultra-modern”. A past chairman of my Local Government once launched an “ultra-modern” open drainage (popularly called gutter!) he constructed! As is well known, hyperbole is the best friend of Nigerian rulers when they are delivering “his Excellency’s address” at such launchings. But it would seem that even by Nigerian standards, Governor Suntai’s exaggeration of his achievements were so outrageous that poor citizen Bakari who, like most citizens of Nigeria, knows that the wonderful achievements of our rulers are always located on Mars, momentarily forgot himself and began to scream in Hausa: “Karya ne! Karya ne!” (It’s a lie! It’s a lie!). He just couldn’t take the lies anymore.

That was a bad idea. Heckling his Excellency? Calling him a liar in public? It’s a terrible offense to embarrass “constituted authority” in Nigeria. In fact, “protocol”, security, and aides are more offended by such insolence than their principal. Normally, they settle such matters swiftly and publicly with horse whips, rifle butts, and jack boots. Fortunately, the furious Governor was restrained on this occasion. He merely ordered the arrest of citizen Bakari. We will never know how long he spent in arbitrary detention until he was finally tried, found guilty, and convicted. And if I know Nigeria, the police must have “shown him pepper” as he awaited trial. The trial judge and the prosecution made some noise about sections of the penal code and the Constitution that the accused allegedly violated by heckling the Governor.


One’s first inclination is to be thankful for citizen Bakari that the incident happened in Taraba state. Had this happened in any of the neighbouring sharia states, a Judge could have found sufficient sharia grounds for chopping off citizen Bakari’s hands, like they did to citizen Jangedi for stealing a cow in a state governed at the time by one of the PDP’s most accomplished  thieves. Had this been the case, nothing would have happened, given the increasingly annoying propensity of Nigerians to accept, absorb, and rationalize the foibles of the sorry rulers they produce.

In their endless junketing to sane parts of the world, the rulers of Nigeria are constantly exposed to the fundamental tenets of democracy only to return home and demonstrate their congenital inability to learn anything. I have often wondered if Dr James Watson had our rulers in mind when he made his disparaging comments about the black man’s intelligence. Our rulers troop in and out of Euro-America weekly and are exposed to heckling as one of the most inviolable rights of citizens in a functional democracy. They see how the atmospherics of public performance by government officials are designed to accommodate the democratic rights of the citizen to heckle. Areas are designated for legitimate protest and heckling by dissenting citizens. Depending on the scale of the lies – politicians lie everywhere – the speaker could get a tomato or rotten eggs in the face.

Often, the politician stops mid-speech, listens to the heckler, and even engages him or her in a back and forth disputation. President Clinton engaged hecklers throughout his campaign for his wife in the last presidential primaries. So did Obama and McCain. Even Chelsea Clinton wasn’t spared! Where hecklers become truly unruly, they are allowed to have their say for a few minutes and then escorted out of the room. In certain cases, they are fined if it is determined that their heckling crossed the bounds of democratic expression to public disturbance. Even in such circumstances, the entire transaction respects the rights and dignity of the heckler. Can anyone imagine Senator John Kerry ordering the arrest, detention, and trial of the young man who heckled him last year in Florida in the famous “don’t tase me bro” incident? An ordinary Local Government Councillor could order an arrest if heckled in Nigeria. In fact when overzealous policemen took Kerry’s heckler into custody, the Senator quickly released a statement “condemning the arrest of the heckler”. He had to. It would have been politically disastrous for him to be perceived by the public as supporting the high handedness of the police on that occasion.

Nigeria’s rulers must understand that our right to heckle them in public comes with the territory of the sort of democracy they signed up for but have shown themselves too incompetent to operate. Next, they will proffer opportunistic claims that they practice home-grown democracy with emphasis on respect and African culture. We are never told if African culture legitimizes the scale of looting that comes with their yeye home-grown democracy. Our people encourage this nonsense by going to drum, dance, and ululate by the roadside every time the siren-blaring convoy of a thieving and under-performing public office holder passes by. The Governor of Taraba state  must be told that citizen Bakari is his employer and his instinctive scream of “karya ne!” as he listened to the Governor’s lies is one of the most significant expressions of a citizen’s democratic rights. And just who the heck is this Governor that he cannot be heckled by a citizen anyway? We will make no progress until we the people demystify the arrogance of power in Nigeria. We deceive ourselves if we wait for those making noise about servant-leadership in Abuja to demystify power for us. Rulers who cannot tell kettle from pot – except when stealing - cannot be expected to know the true meaning of servant-leadership.  Besides, is calling the Governor a liar a lie?  Wake me up when you find a politician who tells the truth.

*Courtesy: NEXT (www234next.com)

 

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