Which is one of the things I would like to gently explain to President Goodluck Jonathan as his presidential campaign blunders from scandal to snafu to general foul-up on a daily basis it seems.
The first time I really met Emmanuel Molokwu, he interrupted me in a rather abrupt fashion. I was perched in front of Okunuga Hall on LASU campus in company of an especially dear friend of mine, Victory, and I was in full flow, spouting off about the conduct of World War II from the German perspective and the series of strategic blunders Hitler made that ensured he lost it. The miracle of Dunkirk, his failure to reinforce Rommel in Africa, his idiotic orders to Von Paulus not to retreat an inch in the snow-swept steppes of Russia, I was in my element.
Then much to my irritation, this stranger butted in. 'You should say that the real reason for the failure of Germany is that tyrannical regimes contain within themselves the seeds of their own self-destruction.'
Huh? I'm talking history, this one is talking theory. But you can't stay irritated with Emman when he gets going. And boy, did he get going. Incredibly well-read, insightful and amusing, he's one friend I'm darned glad I made in LASU. His theory might have been a general one, but it's a powerful model for studying the rise and fall of tyrannies and bad governments in general. You can't fool all the people all the time, and if you found the basis of your regime ultimately on violence or fraud instead of on adding value to those you are in a leadership position to serve, eventually you'll be eaten up by the very same predatory values and practices you put in place to support you. Karma's a winsh like that.
Which is one of the things I would like to gently explain to President Goodluck Jonathan as his presidential campaign blunders from scandal to snafu to general foul-up on a daily basis it seems. I remember tartly observing around the time of his N21 billion presidential fundraiser, that with the number of thieves gathered in the president's campaign team, very little of that money would ever be applied for the purpose for which it was raised. And so it has proved. The complaints of his foot-soldiers on social media have reached comical lengths, bordering on how their Ogas are sitting on monies that should be going to the trenches where the propaganda missiles are being flung from. A certain Professor Nze of GEJ's campaign committee charged with engaging with civil society, is accused by his own disgruntled committee members of misapplying the kick-off funds of his committee to buy a bullet-proof Prado SUV for himself, among other luxury cars. And anybody seeing video footage of the scanty number of street urchins carrying anti-GMB placards outside Chatham House today would wonder what happened to the £20,000 reportedly earmarked for mobilising a credible protest against the people's General. The organisers couldn't even be bothered to coach the the protesters properly on what to say if they were interviewed by members of the press. They obviously hadn't a clue about the political process in general, let alone what is happening in faraway Nigeria. But that level of mediocrity is par for the course in GEJ's Nigeria where excellence seems to be a function of high-decibel noise-making.
Who's to blame? Who's to blame for the fact that when PDP buses in protesters or supporters for its rallies, scandalous fights regularly break out when the placard-carriers accuse the organisers of sitting on the money they were promised as wages for the lies they consented to carry? Who's to blame for the situation getting so bad, protesters are learning to demand their money up front these days, opening the organisers to the risk that they might not turn up at all after pocketing the money, or worse, might turn up and start shouting 'Sai Buhari'?
The song now is that the president has bad advisers. His media team in particular has come in for some hard knocks. They are accused of having mismanaged his campaign message, of having created needless enemies for the President. Nonsense, I say.
A leader is ultimately responsible for the calibre of people he attracts and selects to work in his leadership team. And GEJ's campaign team has run his campaign in precisely the same way as he runs the country - with no regard for standards of performance, feedback from the electorate, or objective universally accepted key performance indicators. In the same way that well-meant criticism of his administration has been met with stone-wall denials and cooked up figures, so are his mandarins now deceiving themselves and each other that they have the situation well in hand when a peep outside would tell them that they are sliding rapidly under a tide of democratic revolution.
For all his failings, we know what Buhari stands for. We know he won't tolerate corruption and incompetence in whatever administration he presides over. Those whose tendencies are corrupt are removing themselves from his vicinity or from his party, or subtly adjusting their rhetoric or behaviour to comply with his mien. His very presence at the apex of the APC conveys the impression, not so accurate in reality, that the APC is a party of non-corrupt competent people. It has a galvanising effect in convincing all those who still believe that standards matter that their thankless efforts might not be in vain after all. That is the the power of symbolism in leadership, the tacit message a personality can convey to millions just by being. The Alaafin of Oyo in ancient times had a choice of envoys he could send to represent him in diplomatic negotiations. If he sent the ilari named 'Oba ko se tan' (Oba is not ready), you might as well pack up your goatskin bag and go home without his opening his mouth, because the clear unspoken message was that the negotiation would be fruitless.
Goodluck Jonathan is himself the Oba ko se tan of PDP. His is a personality that convinces every corrupt political opportunist that for as long as he is in power, it is open season on the Nigerian economy with zero chance of getting caught if you are in with the right crowd. Why, you might even be up for a national award! When a man in his position spends as much time as he does rambling on the linguistic problems of separating stealing from corruption instead of physically demonstrating his unequivocal stand on the Seventh Commandment: 'Thou shalt not steal', when his wife is a serial money-launderer well-known to the international media and the EFCC, when his attitude to economic saboteurs and looters is to distribute presidential pardons and honours among them like so much candy, well it stands to reason that the people who feel most comfortable working for him won't mind stealing any yam placed in front of their noses, even if such yam was meant for the express purpose of furthering their Oga's presidential campaign. Hoist on his own corrupt petard, you might say.
Or as my mummy is fond of saying: "Who do good, e do am for himself. Who do bad, e do am for himself"