Mama Taraba, President Buhari And Loyalty By Lasisi Olagunju

“YOUR best friend cheats in a test and your teacher asks whether she did it. The honest answer is yes. The loyal answer is no.” That was from Peter Beinart in a June 8, 2017 article in The Atlantic magazine as he smoothly draws a line between honesty and loyalty. He was commenting on the famous two-some dinner between FBI’s ex-Director, Comey and US President, Donald Trump: Near the dinner’s end, he wrote, Trump returns to the subject: “I need loyalty.” Comey says once again: “You will always get honesty from me.” There’s a pause. Finally, Trump says, “That’s what I want, honest loyalty.” It was Beinart’s position that there is nothing like ‘honest loyalty’ anywhere. And we all saw how the Trump-Comey affair ended.

It is the same in Abuja. There is a movement there that demands ‘honest loyalty’ from everyone. They won’t accept the truth that you can’t be “honest” and be “loyal” to this king at the same time. Jacob Weisberg describes loyalty as “the most overrated virtue in politics,” while presidential obsession with disloyalty “is a marker for executive failure.” In Abuja today, as with all who have been there before Buhari, the naked king is in his best babanriga. He must not be shown the nakedness of his frailty. The honest man will tell Buhari that things are not well with the system. The loyal man will ask him to ignore his “critics” – they are wailing wailers. University gates across the country are shut because teachers are on strike. Hospitals are shut because doctors are on strike. Road contractors are off construction sites because government hasn’t paid them.

Government offices run skeletal services because workers receive skeletal salaries… You cannot be a witness to all these and still shout that things are normal and okay and declare that you are honest. If you, however, say “carelessly,” that “this house has fallen” you have crossed the red line that dovetails into disloyalty. But what else can you do if you are in government and you want to remain in government? Power has ego. The sensible knows that the way to remain relevant with power is to continually massage that ego.

Massage is the food of ego in politics.

That was the cardinal rule which our Women Affairs minister, Aisha Alhassan, broke last week. She sensationally announced her preference for Atiku Abubakar over her present employer, Muhammadu Buhari. To her, the president was simply a “baba” and Atiku, her “leader.” Her respect she gave to “Baba” Buhari and her loyalty to the “leader” she could trust, her godfather. A nation addicted to ‘loyalty’ to power was shocked. What she did was akin to a paid pastor in a Pentecostal church paying his tithe to the ancestral shrine in the village. Buhari’s ardent tribe of worshippers have called for her ‘disloyal’ head. She has admirably stuck to her gun: She respects the president but her loyalty and support lie with Atiku who had been her mentor from the very beginning.

Buhari is a lucky man to have Alhassan in his cabinet. He will be very lucky if her likes are many in his team. What the president heard from that minister is usually heard by leaders after their tenure. Many are not blessed with the grace of the truth of who their true loyalists are from the horde of diners at the table of power. Kaduna State governor, Nasir el-Rufai, spoke like a courtier kowtowing to the paternalism of his king: “We are Buharists, we don’t have any personal ambition, we don’t have any personal aspiration and we are waiting for him to decide. And every political effort we are making, every structure we are creating.., and we know many people that have already started campaigning… But our political ideology is to support whatever President Buhari wants to support. That has not changed.” That was el-Rufai. How can el-Rufai declare that he has “no personal ambition…no personal aspiration”? Shakespeare said it: “lowliness is young ambition’s ladder…”! el Rufai probably must have laughed at himself for inventing that NFA (no future ambition) mantra. What his audience saw him do was acting a scene in an interesting drama that is just unfolding. And, really, in a circus, you can say anything provided it fits the script and advances the development of the plot. People who fawn and crawl before incumbency have a name in the English dictionary. They are called sycophants. That word has an interesting synonym – bootlickers.

Someone said he detests bootlickers because they are slippery, rotten souls. Another said sycophants shout that they smell cologne whenever every reigning king farts. Those eating with this king also ate with the last king. Whatever etutu or ebo (sacrificial offerings) they are placing before this king, they gave more to the last king and to the one before the last. Their politics survives on propitiation and on appeasement of the current champion.

But why is every president of Nigeria indispensable? Abacha was adopted by his five parties; Obasanjo’s two terms were not enough; Jonathan must finish what he started; – now, recuperating Baba Buhari must contest in 2019! Should it be a sin to tell truth to power when we know that all will wither in their time? “For every one of us, living in this world means waiting for our end,” so notes Beowulf, the Scandinavian hero who served his people confronting and killing monsters. As humanity waits for that sure end, Beowulf advises “whoever can” to struggle and “win glory…” The way to win glory is not by licking the spittle of kings and worshipping temporal powers. It is by being loyal to truth, by speaking truth to power.

The campaigns have started. General Buhari must be amused at the ease of doing business with bloody politicians.

Palaces are never short of men who revel in servile deference. Dionysius was a 4th BC king of Syracuse with an army of bootlickers in his court. Kris Hirst who re-told the story wrote that “Damocles was prone to compliment the king on his army, his resources, the majesty of his rule, the abundance of his storehouses, and the greatness of his royal palace.”

But Dionysius might be a wicked king, he was not stupid. He made Damocles realize that dangling on the throne and directly over the head of the occupier was “a glittering sword hung from the ceiling by a single horsehair.” Every president or governor should read the story of Shakespeare’s King Lear. (If the English of the original is too archaic for big men to comprehend, there are several summaries of the play online). It is the story of Britain’s aging king whose failing health warns of the impending end of his reign. The king is old and weak and wants to leave the stage and divide his empire among his three daughters. But, first, they must each tell him how much they love him. The king basks in the obsequious demonstration of love from his older daughters but banishes the youngest child for telling him the truth that she cannot describe in words how much she loves the dad. King Lear realizes too late that the girls with lips of flattery are the enemies within. He progressively loses his throne and crown, and even his mind. In the end, he has with him only that honest daughter, “an honest old friend and a truth-telling fool.” Ultimately, King Lear loses his all to the flattering machinations of power. Buhari will end well if he weans himself off persons who call themselves Buharists without knowing whether there is even something called Buharism.