Our Stinking Excellency -By Festus Adedayo

There are some obvious reasons why Nigeria is still locked up in the woods; some are tangible and some, intangible. One of the intangibles is our national hypocrisy, lack of rigour in national thinking and our collective amnesia. The latter is one of the cogent reasons why evil-doers escape from the barbs we erect against them whenever we discover their misdeeds. Give us a few weeks however, we forget – or choose to forget – all those.

That attitude is called the Roman mob syndrome. Ancient Rome was constituted by very powerful people who, as at that time, were over a million in number. They were a set of jobless, fickle-minded people who constituted the Roman electorate. They were the plebeians and held the political and governmental barometer of Rome which was the seat of world government. They ousted powerful emperors. Woe betided an emperor who elected not to keep the Roman mob happy. Once they are in a feat of riot, they were uncontrollable and could set alight the tinder of a hitherto peaceful community. They had, in this feat, murdered emperors and dethroned them ingloriously, only to append their riotous signatures on their preferred emperor. For instance, while they gathered after the assassination of Julius Caesar to listen to Brutus’ address, these mercurial plebeians were easily swayed when Brutus told them he slayed Caesar, their beloved emperor, because he (Brutus) loved Rome more than he did Caesar. To ram in the final nail on their fickle-minded coffin, Brutus said he killed Caesar so as to save Rome from his tyranny and set Rome free. After this manipulative statement, the Roman mob, rather than kill him for stabbing his friend, Caesar to death, suggested that a statute be erected for him while some others suggested that he be made Caesar in place of Julius Caesar – “let him be Caesar!” “Caesar’s better parts shall be crown’d in Brutus.”

Sorry, I digressed. Like the Roman plebeians, Nigerians too act at the spur of the moment almost every time. Not basically because they are bribed to silence but due to an inherited culture of depthless scrutiny, the Nigerian media is at the vanguard of this self-imposed amnesia. Look at the heat that is generated each time the media unearths a misdemeanor, most times among political barons. It is celebrated with fanfare like a scientist who just discovered another planet. Give it one, two or maximum three weeks, the media relapses into its sleeping mode. And cleverly, the evil-doer slips off the handle and mends his broken image covertly. Most times, such evil-doer merely waits for a short while and launches into limelight again, so soon thereafter. Our amnesia abets him as he climbs up the ladder again.

In the same vein is our very vague and compromising resolve not to speak ill of the dead. It is one of those un-dignifying bequeathals from traditional African society anyway. I daresay that we should begin to speak ill of the dead from now. Many people have continued on their ruinous path of committing atrocities while alive, hiding under the banner of this shibboleth and believing that once they die, they have escaped our judgment. Perhaps if they know that when they die, we will erect the crucifix for their remains and un-bowel their smelly body for the world to cover its noses in disgust, they will do good while here on earth.

I just remembered that one of the dusts raised in the 2019 general elections were claims and counter-claims of misdeeds against some aspirants for political offices. Some were alleged not to possess the certificates they paraded; some were accused of forgery; some with non-possession of NYSC discharge certificates and some with abhorrent past. Many of them, in spite of these allegations, are in offices now. One of them, at the heat of the election, who claimed he had a degree certificate from the then University of Ife and another from an American university but could not produce any of the certificates, is governor of a Nigerian state at the moment. Even the honoris causa doctorate award he prefixed to his name during the campaign has suddenly disappeared now in his official portraits. And we are supposed to live happily ever after?

The truth is, if we uncritically continue in this mould, we will be missing a critical component of democratic governance which is openness, accountability and public disclosure. It may be an intangible aspect of governance but it constitutes a spiritual hub which undergirds governance in all mature democracies. Let us keep the tempo of public scrutiny alive, until judgment is served. We will, by so doing, scare potential malefactors from evil and keep our society free from their fangs.