A graduate school professor of mine, an encyclopedia of a man, patented a phrase of critique that was stinging or entertaining, depending on whether you were a spectator or a target. He would examine a piece of writing or presentation and conclude that the product had two, three, four, five, or six "levels of badness."
As we made our way through graduate school, and as I reflected on the "levels of badness" thesis, it occurred to me that the phrase encapsulated a mindset that does not brook mediocrity, however defined, a mindset that refuses to recognize how mediocrity is ultimately indispensable to excellence. Without mediocre leaders, like those we have had in Nigeria, we cannot recognize or appreciate leadership excellence. If all leadership is excellent, then "excellent" loses its function as an adjective of value.
It is in this spirit that we must be shrewdly thankful for the "gift" of the Yar'adua regime and its unfolding legacy of incompetence and mediocrity. The regime has the paradoxical capacity to underscore and reinforce the nature of good governance. It can, in fact, boost the yearning for purposeful leadership. This is the perverse blessing of Yar'adua's legendary political lethargy. Its many levels of badness and its corresponding layers of confusion point to the possibilities of progressive governance. They supply an instructive window into how things might work if we had a capable, alert leadership-and leader.
The Yar'adua regime bears an uncanny resemblance to Nollywood, Nigeria's evolving movie industry, which has made a commercial virtue of mediocrity. The similarity is, of course, limited, since Nollywood is a product of individual and group resourcefulness, effort, and creativity. Love it or hate it, Nollywood is a successful business model; it sells mediocrity successfully. That is no mean feat. Even being mediocre requires hard work; which is why the Yar'adua government is not even a good practitioner of mediocre governance. Often, the regime simply does not govern, frustrating those who despairingly prefer mediocre governance to none. Groping for direction has become a signature of the regime's identity. So, Nollywood is in several respects superior to the Yar'adua government on the mediocrity index.
This difference not withstanding, the two entities share a comfortable embrace of mediocrity and an unwillingness to rise above it. I was an unsparing critic of Nollywood, knocking its stories, plotlines, dialogues, acting, and the technical integrity of its films. Then I had a conversation about Nollywood with my friend, Farooq Kperogi. He shared my critique but cautioned me against dismissing the industry on account of its many levels of badness. He had talked to a film scholar who is sympathetic to Nollywood and celebrates its genius. The scholar had asked Farooq if he had given a thought to the possibility that the popularity of Nollywood was derived from its indisputable badness. His theory congealed to a single poignant question: what if the badness of Nollywood is its selling point?
Farooq proceeded to tell the story of a Westerner who, motivated by haughty notions of artistic messianism, set out to save Nollywood and to help the industry realize its potential and rise above its artistic stagnation. He made a movie using a Nollywood script, shot it on celluloid, edited it to Hollywood standard, and arranged for a premier modeled on Hollywood red carpet events.
Very few people showed up despite an aggressive publicity campaign. The movie was a commercial disaster. His theories of Nollywood deficiencies thoroughly confounded, our Western artistic savior packed up and sauntered away.
This story got me thinking. Excellence is not always compatible with compensatory success, and mediocrity sometimes outsells excellence. The same mediocrity that sustains Nollywood is what sustains the Yar'adua government. Mediocrity, whether in governance or movie-making, has its friends, its followers, and its profiteers. There are those who are attracted to the return on (little) effort (ROE) ratio of mediocre institutions, where little or no effort nets one vast rewards. Nollywood producers can reap huge profits from minimal artistic effort; Yar'adua and his legion of appointees can sponge off the commonweal, doing little or nothing to justify their enjoyment of the patrimonial trappings of power. The key is simple: do no harm to the status quo. Why derail or alter the course of the gravy-train when you can ride it effortlessly and joyously?
With both Yar'adua and Nollywood reaping good rewards from their mediocre commitments to governance and filmmaking, there is no incentive to change course, to improve, to transform their craft. On the contrary, both seem to have internalized a twisted version of the American axiom "if aint broke why fix it?"
Because Nollywood producers have no trouble marketing their mediocre movies, they have no incentive to spruce up their act. Because mediocre scripts, plots and technical output are integral to Nollywood's image and brand, sophistication may, far from improving its commercial reward, stunt its growth and attraction.
Yar'adua's government is in a similar conundrum. The regime is attractive to Nigeria's cohort of greedy and lazy politicians precisely because of its high reward ratio and its low premium on effort. Stripped of that through the adoption of a good governance ethos, it would lose its attraction to establishment politicians and become attractive to competent, patriotic bureaucrats. That would be injurious to Yar'adua's political brand. And to the pocketbooks of his appointees.
This is the paradox that the Yar'adua regime embodies, and to which the nation is captive.
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