Sometimes
you want to just focus on the good, happy, cheery news, but the deluge
of bad, depressing news just doesn’t let you. Just last week, we were
caught up in the now famous Oduahgate; 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 as if the pious faces
they’ve got on are prerequisites for gaining admission into Paradise.
One American friend actually sent me a
message the other night: “Did you see the photo spread of GEJ – pardon
me, GEJ, J.P. – and his entourage getting 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.
Continue reading after the cut....
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 these many images from any presidential trip in recent
history. I recall hunting the Internet for information about the
President’s activities, during a state visit 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” as the chairman of the board of the National Universities
Commission 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 Presidential 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 the 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 malls. 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, house girls, 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 efforts 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
lingering by the Academic Staff Union of Universities 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. I described it as being “charged with (according to the
bill that created it) ‘creating, regulating, reinforcing and
institutionalising 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?
- Tolu Ogunlesi
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