The art of Statecraft: Boss Mustapha, Fellow elites, set to learn the hard way -By A. S. Gashinbaki

Whether the Secretary to the Government of the Federation actually knew the rotten state of our health sector or not is now irrelevant. This is because, their negligence of the health system is not deliberate but rather stem from ignorance of the nature and essence of the inextricable thread that bind the state, the government and the masses. Now that they are set to learn it the hard way – practically. What they need from us is theoretical knowledge to help them understand why we all need the state, and why tempering with its well-being is never in their best interest.

Take a breath… Okay, let’s begin.

The relationship between the State, the Government, and the Citizens is so interesting that I may as well have no problem in considering it the most fascinating invention of human genius. It is interesting indeed, how the people (who are the sovereign) are oblige to obey their employee (the Government) as long as it carries out their “general will” and as far as it pleases them.

The people who are the state or sovereign, ranging from thousand to millions or billions, cannot forsake their endeavors seeking to self-redress violation of their rights each and every time it occurs. It is to this end that they employed the government and empowered it with all the necessary resources and authority it needs to carry out this function on their behalf.

The sovereign, owing to its large size, naturally becomes ineffective to carry out its single mandate of protecting the lives and property of its citizens all by itself, and it perfectly understood that. But ironically, its employee (the government) neglect this lesson and continue to seek to expand its power until it finally usurped the power of the state; thus, rendering itself ineffective and inefficient in all aspects.

The human species has the unique characteristic to hate and to love – odi et amo – both at once. It is this feature that enable man to be the sovereign, the government and the subject at the same time.

The government, being an establishment of the state, exists only to serves it. And its officials are no more than – public servants.

But at the heart of this assertion lies a very serious question. Does political office holders have any advantage accrued to them by obeying the sovereign and discharging their duties diligently and selflessly? Or are they merely a tool that the people use to achieve their aims and leaving them afterward with nothing but meaningless praises and honorary mentions?

Plato, in The Republic, has already established the advantage that is due to a just man, when he takes public office – which is averting the penalty which he is due to suffer if someone who is unjust took that office instead.

But what about the unjust man? What benefit did he stand to reap should he perform his duty selflessly? To answer this question effectively, we must first understand who the unjust man is.

An unjust man:- Is anyone who seeks to expand his dominion without regards to the rights and liberty of others. Thus, from this definition, it will be generally expected that given a public office, the unjust individual will always seek his gains at the expense of the state, thereby weakening the state and strengthening himself. But surprisingly, it is never in his best interest to do so. This is because, while it is possible to have a weak individual in a powerful state; it is however, impossible to have a powerful and influential individual in a weak state.

Just as a weak man with the help of a strong state can easily become strong and powerful; the strong and influential man within a weak state is bound to come down crashing. For a weak state, being like a wrecked ship hoping to be saved by the Manby mortar, cannot bear the burden of a strong and heavy vessel without sinking altogether.

Hence, it is to a great advantage to the ’unjust’ to supplant his interests, and seeks only to advance that of the state. For by so doing he is inevitable advancing his own ambition of extending his dominion and relevance.

Empirical evidence of this can be found scattered around the world. For instance, three to four decades ago know one care about who the president of China was, but today, due to the growing strength of the Chinese state, Xi Jinping influence can be significantly felt around every corner of the world not even United States is immune to his pervasive influence, the same thing can be said of the late Lee Kwan Yew of Singapore and Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum of United Arab Emirates. All these three personalities rose to relevance only, on the strength of their states, and make no mistake about it, their dominion and influence is bound to dwindle or expand relative to that of their states.

No one in his right senses will harm himself knowingly; for millennia, political theorists maintained that any assault on the state is an assault on its citizens’ wellbeing. It now seems no one knows this better than the chairman Presidential Task Force on the current Covid-19 pandemic and Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Mr. Boss Mustapha and his fellow elites.