Truth Inc.

There is no denying the fact that the year we all know as 2019 will pass away in the next few days. In the inexorable order of things, the things we know now will become history. We, too, as we race towards the eventuality of transmuting to ancestors, shall expire someday. But one thing will […]

There is no denying the fact that the year we all know as 2019 will pass away in the next few days. In the inexorable order of things, the things we know now will become history. We, too, as we race towards the eventuality of transmuting to ancestors, shall expire someday.

But one thing will remain constant, in season and out of season, whether we humble ourselves enough to admit it or not. That thing is called truth.

But what is truth? Is there any such universally accepted concept as truth? Or, is it possible to have alternative truths?

Philosophers tell us to apply four criteria in determining whether something is true or not.

Correspondence test (Does it match what we observe with our five senses?)

Coherence test (Does it make sense rationally?)

Consensus test (Does it conform to what the majority believes?)

Pragmatic test (Is it useful in some way?)

The impeachment of President Donald Trump by the US Congress last week threw up these questions as his defenders spiritedly argued that the president had been unfairly nailed by a Democrat-dominated House who had never seen anything good in him and had always looked for opportunities to impeach him. None of the pro-Trump activists, to my knowledge, said anything about the main charges of abuse of presidential powers and obstruction of justice levelled against the president.

A person facing trial for killing his parents can invent all sorts of conceivable defences, but I don’t think he would cut any ice with the judge if the main plank of his defence and plea for mitigation is the fact that he is now an orphan: “I plead for mercy because as you can see, I am now an orphan.”

There is nothing more frustrating than an argument with a political partisan. And this holds true all over the world. In Nigeria, an anti-Buhari politician will amplify all the missteps of the Buhari administration and tell you that there is nothing good in the government while a Buharist will argue that his principal is so good — almost divine — that he belongs in the pantheon of the gods.

Theodore Roosevelt, the American statesman and politician, warns us of the big gulf between patriotism and sycophancy: “Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official, save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country. In either event, it is unpatriotic not to tell the truth, whether about the president or anyone else.”

What is the truth?

Philosophers tell us that neither side in an argument can have a monopoly of the truth for, “If it were possible for a person to have a monopoly over the truth, that person would also have a monopoly over the truth that anyone, including themselves, can be an undetectable liar!”

Most times, as Warren Wiersbe notes, the choice open to the people is between a brute and a hypocrite: “Truth without love is brutality, and love without truth is hypocrisy.”

What is true about the Nigerian political space, in my opinion, is that we have not enthroned equity and fairness in our national life. Instead of coming together to tap from each other’s warmth, we are manning tribal and nepotistic corners. However, nepotism is not an exclusively Nigerian disease. The problem is just that we don’t have strong institutions to tame the monster. And, like the ostrich, we bury our heads in the sand while the hind quarters of our nepotistic actions are exposed to the shock of humankind.

Perhaps we can learn a thing or two from Tom Basson’s Fable of the Porcupine:

“It was the coldest winter ever.  Many animals died because of the cold. The porcupines, realising the situation, decided to group together to keep warm.  This way they covered and protected themselves; but the quills of each one wounded their closest companions.  After a while, they decided to distance themselves one from the other and they began to die, alone and frozen.

“So they had to make a choice: either accept the quills of their companions or disappear from the Earth.  Wisely, they decided to go back to being together.  They learned to live with the little wounds caused by the close relationship with their companions in order to receive the warmth that came from the others.  This way they were able to survive.”

Moral of the story: The best relationship is not the one that brings together perfect people, but when each individual learns to live with the imperfections of others and can admire the other person’s good qualities.

So, whether in Donald Trump’s USA or Buhari’s Nigeria, only the truth can set the government free. We could twist, bend, pillory or even slice the truth whichever way we desire; the end result will always be fractiousness, strife and separation.

Or we could embrace the truth of mutual coexistence through accommodation, fairness, equity and justice and, like the porcupines in the story above, benefit from each other’s warmth and derive strength from togetherness as shareholders in a conglomerate called Truth Inc.

The choice is ours.