Standing up to unreasonable show of power
Last week, the nation was captivated by the unseemly public row between the FCT Minister, Nyesom Wike, and the young naval officer, Lt. A M Yerima, over access to a piece of land in Abuja. The naval officer, leading a team of soldiers, was posted by his superiors to stand guard on the piece of […]
Last week, the nation was captivated by the unseemly public row between the FCT Minister, Nyesom Wike, and the young naval officer, Lt. A M Yerima, over access to a piece of land in Abuja. The naval officer, leading a team of soldiers, was posted by his superiors to stand guard on the piece of land, and as a result, refused access to the intimidating FCT Minister. From the standpoint of the minister and the government he represents, it was a public relations disaster. The public, however, viewed it as a classic case of the supposedly weak showing bravado in standing up to an unreasonable show of power. The event, which went viral, provided plenty of mirth throughout the week.
This episode is a manifestation of an ordinary human failing that often occurs in most societies. From my perspective, it is how those in power manage these kinds of situations that make positive outcomes possible. I have watched a similar scene unfold some years ago in the United Kingdom, which ultimately unravelled the career of a high-flying minister. It happened in 2012, when I was a regular visitor to the UK. The Minister, Andrew Mitchell MP, very high up in the pecking order as the Chief Whip of the government, had his office at No. 9 Downing Street. His office was next door to No. 10, the official residence and office of the Prime Minister.
That fateful day, he was riding out of the main gate of Downing Street, on his bicycle – yes, high government officials ride around on bikes in Europe – when the police guards stopped him because he could not ride out through the gate that motor vehicles were using. He was told to come down and push his bike through the pedestrians’ gate. The minister felt offended, and some verbal altercations occurred between them. Somehow, during the altercations, he was reported to have referred to the police as a pleb – meaning a plebian, ordinary person, talakan banza, in Hausa language.
Other policemen at the gate witnessed the minister’s rantings and heard him use the offensive word, “pleb.” There was also additional evidence from the CCTV footage that recorded the event. As you would expect, the media seized on the untoward happening and made a mincemeat of the minister. It caused quite a regular uproar and made it into history as ‘Plebgate’. The hullabaloo made the minister tender an apology in parliament to the aggrieved police officers. Yet the matter refused to die down, dominating discussions in the press for week after week. Ultimately, the minister was compelled to resign from the position of Chief Whip. Since then, Mitchell’s career in the House of Commons has been in doldrums for over a decade now.
Another incident that I witnessed occurred in the distant past. The event had a different outcome from both Wike’s and Mitchell’s examples. It demonstrated how self-control and composure by a public officer, in the face of extreme provocation and anger, can lead to the avoidance of a negative outcome. It was sometime in 1990 when the late Brigadier Musa Usman, a former Governor of the North-Eastern State (1967-1975), came to Government House, Maiduguri, for a scheduled evening appointment with the Military Governor, late Col. Muhammed Lawan Maina. The Governor had left the office and walked to the residence to await his guest.
At the appointed time, Musa Usman drove to the Government House but was stopped at the gate and turned back by the guards because his name was not on the list to be allowed in that day. I guess an oversight occurred on the part of the scheduling staff, resulting in the embarrassing situation. When he returned to his lodging, he called the Governor and reported that he had been turned back by the guards at the gate of the Government House. I was the Permanent Secretary, Government House, and was in the office when I received a call from the Governor to come up to the residence to see him. I found him in an agitated mood, but it was not a moment for fault-finding.
He directed me to drive to Brigadier Abba Kyari’s house, where Musa Usman had been hosted, to apologise and fetch him. Late Brigadier Abba Kyari, the Governor of the North Central State from 1967 to 1975, was a colleague and friend of Musa Usman. I drove the short distance to the house and found them laughing over the episode. I apologised and took Musa Usman into my car and drove back with his car in tow. Surprisingly, Musa Usman was quite affable and philosophical during the short journey, pointing out to me how fickle history is. He was the occupant of Maiduguri Government House for nine years, and now he was being turned back by guards.
The long and short of this narrative is that reactions to ugly episodes between the high and the weak are a matter of temperament. Nyesome Wike and Andrew Mitchell are the kind who cannot contain provocations. Their anger is on the surface and would always boil over. If President Bola Tinubu wants to keep him in the cabinet, he might have to tolerate the warts in Wike’s makeup.