Banishing the ‘Kabiyesi’ syndrome

It has become part of our national character to deify temporary tenants of power. We isolate them from the people to ensure that the only way they can know what is going on is to ask those who have formed a cabal around them. At every level of governance you find elected officials who came […]

It has become part of our national character to deify temporary tenants of power. We isolate them from the people to ensure that the only way they can know what is going on is to ask those who have formed a cabal around them.

At every level of governance you find elected officials who came from among the people but suddenly no longer recognise the people and their pains, hopes and aspirations.

I call it the ‘Kabiyesi’ syndrome – the transmogrification of al elected person into a pseudo royalty as if his position was hereditary like that of the authentic royal father. The word ‘kabiyesi’ means “no one dares question you”, and it is respectfully used for royal fathers in Yorubaland.

That is the real thing, not this fake one where lizards insists on being called dragons. The real kabiyesis are close to the people, these fake ones merely use the people as ladder to ascend to power. But I digress.

So, the leader falls into a trap from which only Providence can extricate him. He starts having messianic complex. I have seen this play out over and over again at the local, state and federal levels that I wonder if those leaders were never prepared for the high position they occupied to the extent that they had to encounter empirically verifiable reality about the problems facing the people from sycophantic third parties.

Take the last two presidents we had, Olusegun Obasanjo and Goodluck Jonathan, for example. Both gentlemen would probably have performed better if they had made personal efforts to remain in touch with the people’s sensibilities. But they were caged in, isolated from the same people who voted them into power. They were virtually deified by the truth-benders who somehow managed to assume the role of puppeteer while playing political vassal.

In the case of Obasanjo, the messianic complex was so ingrained that he couldn’t imagine what would become of Nigeria after him; hence the ill-fated third term attempt. For a man whose presidency had started on a reform note and who tried in the first four years to make a difference in various sectors of national life, his second term was an exercise in self-demystification and unparalleled vindictiveness.

When he waxes lyrical about credible leadership today, one cannot but succumb to a wry guffaw wondering what might have been if some human beings had themselves taken the counsel they now freely ventilate. Jonathan may not have been a great reformer but he did concede defeat when he lost the elections and that is his major qualification for being accepted in decent society today.

But for the ‘kabiyesi’ syndrome, many things would have been done differently by the federal administration which came in waving a flag of change. We simply cannot continue doing things the same old way and expect to get a different set of results. And we must dispassionately evaluate the actions of our leaders so as to help them to succeed. I concede that the current government has mounted the most serious anti-corruption war in three decades. Whatever nay-sayers and prominent thieves say, we would have been worse off without the current anti-corruption effort.

But in terms of style, Buhari has to change gear as I have had cause to counsel in an earlier piece. The president is being turned into a national monument that is viewed only a couple of celebratory times a year. Why must he be hemmed in as if he’s being ‘protected’ from the people? We have had half a dozen tragic occurrences in the last one year at which the president ought to have made even a symbolic appearance to assure the people that he has their back. Any PR expert worthy of his hire would tell you that a million video clips of the leader may not have the effect of one single public appearance to reassure the people.

And what about touching base with the ordinary people outside the official canopy of poverty alleviation schemes at which the president makes his speech and takes a dignified exit? Whatever became of unannounced on-the-spot assessment of projects by the president to keep ministers on their toes? Why wouldn’t the president show up in Wuse market unannounced and simply touch base with the people?

And talking about doing things differently, why would we wait for the only runway of the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport to become a tyre-burster before making fire brigade arrangements for planes to divert to Kaduna from March 2017 so that the Abuja runway can be fixed? Even in these lean times, we could first have built a second runway within the last one year and then close down the faulty one for repairs. I wish the government well with the Kaduna arrangement, but I wish we had been more proactive in line with the Change mantra.

There are many federal parastatals without boards, 18 months after the new government came in. We are not saving money by not constituting boards; we are stunting the capacity of affected parastatals to deliver as per mandate. Lethargy should not be mistaken for sure-footedness.

President Buhari should not allow himself to be turned into a political ‘kabiyesi’.  No issue involving human lives should be too small for the president to wade into. A president should be holding the hands of survivors of natural or communal tragedies; he should be a presence in the consciousness of every appointed official because he can spring a surprise at any time.

This is 2017. We hope to see a more dynamic President Buhari going forward.

He must not fail. And if I seem to be presumptuously counselling you, O President, it is not that I hate you, but I don’t love my country less.

Congrats, Ghana

Congratulations on the inauguration of President Nana Akufo-Addo as President of Ghana, even if some of the paragraphs in his speech were pinched from former American presidents. A-f-r-i-c-a!