Of chickens and touts Dan Agbese The late Alao Aka-Bashorun was a formidable opponent of military rule. He wanted the military back in the barracks and the civilians back in the political administration of the country. The generals did not like that, obviously. Aka-Bashorun used his position as the president of the Nigerian Bar Association to harangue the Babangida administration. He was a thorn in its flesh. Col (as he was then) Raji Rasaki, military governor of Lagos State, decided to take on the lawyer. He hauled what he regarded as the verbal equivalent of a 100-pound bomb of insult at Aka-Bashorun. The governor said the lawyer was behaving like a drunken chicken. (My emphasis). What sort of image of Aka-Bashorun did he want to convey to the public? To appreciate the insult, you have to a) know that chickens drink and get drunk and b) you must have seen a drunken chicken either swaying on its feet or if it is a cock, beating the hell out of an innocent hen. A few days after he was bombed with this well-aimed insult, I interviewed Aka-Bashorun for Newswatch magazine. I told him I did not hear his response to Rasaki. He gave this some thought and said to me: “You know, I grew up in a family that owned a poultry farm. As a young boy, I helped to look after the chickens – feeding them, giving them water, that sort of thing. In all those years, I never saw a drunken chicken. What do chicken drink to get drunk? Beer or palm wine or cognac? I know of no chicken farmer who has had the experience of a drunken chicken, let alone knowing how it behaves. The man was talking rubbish.” Seen a drunken chicken, anyone? I was reminded of this incident last week when President Goodluck Jonathan said some elder statesmen in the country were behaving like motor park touts. How do motor park touts behave? I am sure no one knows for sure but it is easy to latch onto the common image of motor park touts in our heads. Motor park touts are generally thought of as lousy, rough and uncouth. When someone says you behave like a motor park tout, he probably wants to you to know he thinks you have unwisely robbed yourself of your societal dignity. I have seen motor park touts engage in their very competitive business of ‘catching’ passengers. The nature of their work forces them to act rough, if the need arises, just as the nature of the politician’s calling makes it imperative for him to lie as a matter of professional imperative. Ask the man with a reputation for saying it as it is, Dr. Babangida Aliyu, the governor of Niger State, who prefers to be called the Chief Servant. Motor touts are fiercely protective of passengers. I cannot put my finger on what they do differently that invites public odium. But everyone finds it painful to be compared in any way to motor park touts, even as a joke. The good thing about insulting people using an invented metaphor is that the insulted is left to wonder, often in vain, about the meaning of the insult and how it applies to him. Perhaps the president meant that these elder statesmen are unguarded or impolite in their language. If so, I would humbly suggest he should take a careful look at his own statements and those issued in his name daily by his merry band of attack dogs. He would see that decent language does not come easily to him and his men. Jonathan has not been a shining example of restraint in his usually tetchy reactions to anyone who dares to suggest that he is fallible. No criticism goes unanswered, usually in shocking purple prose. I think he delights in it. I think this forced his media adviser, Dr. Reuben Abati, to redefine the job of a presidential media adviser as that of warring with all those who criticize the president. The job of the media adviser, formerly called chief press secretary, was to make friends for the president in the news media and burnish his image. Dr. Doyin Okupe, Obasanjo’s first chief press secretary, did the job even better than the professional journalists who came after him. Not once did he take on anyone who criticized Obasanjo. He chose to respect the tradition of the office once held by such illustrious men like Moses Ihonde, Igwe Alex Nwokedi, Duro Onabule, David Attah and Mohammed Haruna, among others. They did not go overboard because their principals respected the highest office in the land. Jonathan acts differently. He does not see his critics as Nigerians with the right to hold and express their opinion. Even if he and his men believe he is the best thing to happen to our country, it does not deny others the right not to agree with them. He has employed and surrounded himself with men whose notable qualification is their ‘courage’ to spare no one who attacks their principal. A president permanently at war with everyone is an intolerant leader. Intolerant leadership is a mark of weakness in a leader. I know it is the campaign season. Nothing unusual or strange about insults taking the centre stage in the contest for power. Insults have one primary purpose – to denigrate one’s political opponents. Many politicians here and in the more settled democracies, see nothing wrong with fighting dirty. It is all part of the winning strategy. Sadly, there is no empirical evidence that insults and fighting dirty have ever necessarily helped anyone to win an election at any level. This presidential campaign has gone overboard. It is insult-saturated. It is too dirty and it is too negative. No one seems willing to observe any boundaries as the supporters of General Muhammadu Buhari and President Goodluck Jonathan dig up the dirt that now forms the backbone of negative advertisements. To call General Muhammadu Buhari an illiterate shows how low the president’s men are prepared to go. I should like to remind them that the framers of our constitution did not place any premium on paper qualifications as critical to good leadership. According to Section 131 (d), a presidential candidate needs only to have “been educated to at least school certificate level or its equivalent.” No Ph.D. and stuff. Despite his strings of stellar academic and professional qualifications, Professor Jibril Aminu abided by the constitutional requirement by submitting only his school certificate to INEC when he ran for senate in 2003. I did not hear anyone call him an illiterate. You don’t need to have passed your school certificate examination to qualify. I am amused to see that some newspapers portraying Buhari as “the least qualified” presidential candidate because he presented his school certificate to INEC. In any case, given his pronounced verbal miscues and his total leadership deficit there must be few people who are jealous of Jonathan’s high academic qualifications. I think it is wrong for a serving president to insult his predecessors in office or elderly men who dare to criticize him. It lowers the bar of decency in the highest office in the land. That office demands its own rules of engagement and sets the boundary below which a president must not go, no matter how much his political opponents and critics irritate him. Jonathan’s greatest critic is perhaps former President Olusegun Obasanjo. He has been a critic of every government since he first left office on October 1, 1979. You may not like what Obasanjo says and how he says but I know no one who has proved that he is actuated by malice. He has always firmly held to his right to talk sans finesse. It is just his style, take it or leave it. I believe it is still possible to have a decent and civilized presidential campaign. I believe Jonathan holds the key to that. What he says, how he says it can determine the new direction of the presidential campaign.
Posted on: Mon, 19 Jan 2015 22:34:17 +0000
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