The politician and the priest: The illusion of marketing hope

The politician and the priest have something in common. I am intrigued by what they do. They are in the same business of marketing hope. The politician markets hope for a better tomorrow; the priest markets hope for the glorious afterlife in paradise.

And it comes down to this: the politician holds the key to a better tomorrow; the priest holds the key to paradise. Both men hold our future in their hands - the life here and the life hereafter. We are persuaded to buy the hope they market because hope is the reason for living in this world and for a better life in the hereafter.

Of the two, the priest is the luckier. His marketing strategy is cut out for him by the holy book. The Bible, for instance, tells him how to go about it - with the sledgehammer and the carrot. When he invokes the punitive measure of hellfire on you, you do not want to doubt that he could ignite the bonfire and you find yourself feeling what we did to rats as kids.

The politician has to work out his own marketing strategy. This strategy is usually encapsulated in the party manifesto or programme that provides the roadmap to a better tomorrow for the country and its people. You pay a small price for this never-tomorrow by giving him your vote. If all it takes for your luck to change, as in transport you from Maroko to Lekki, is a piece of paper called ballot paper, I could think of no man or woman who would hesitate to use his ballot paper to smoothen his or her way into that little paradise where the well-heeled luxuriate in the laps of luxury.

It all sounds so simple. We trust our life after our life to the priest; we trust the miracle of our instant transformation from living under the bridge and feeding on unhygienic crumbs to the politician. With such managers in the here and now as well as in the hereafter, life should make sense to us all.

Except that it is not that really so simple. The politician and the priest are salesmen. And the problem is that their salesmanship is firmly grounded on the doctrine of greed called me-first.

The priest says, trust me, I am leading you to paradise. The price you pay is to surrender all your property here on earth to him. Here he markets the greed principle which says that if the priest is ok, God is ok. He asks you to shun wealth while he garners wealth from the sweat of your brows. He markets poverty to you as your WAEC equivalent qualification to gain entry into paradise. But he refuses to live by example. He lives the good life here on earth in full view of the men and women he exploits without a modicum of shame.

He lives in a mansion. He did not come by it through a miracle. He did through his slick marketing of a promise and a hope he has problems believing himself. You live in a hovel or under the bridge but he convinces you that your lowly station in life is deliberately imposed on you so that your mansion in heaven would be bigger and more impressive. He flies in a private jet but you trudge around in a foot benz. Your widow’s mite, if that, helps him to build an expensive university your child cannot attend because its fees are beyond your reach.

Again, the priest is in better luck. We test the truth of his promise only when we die. And because the dead tell no tales, the living would never know.

The politician does the same roaring me-first business. He is the epitome of grand and beguiling promises. It is not for him to promise paradise; he is content with life on earth and so he promises Eldorado. After all, he is a secular man dealing with secular matters. Who, but he, could build that road, that school, that hospital or save us from the long trek to streams for water? With his pen, he does wonders for himself and the society. And with it, he truly does horrendous things to the society too. He markets himself as the servant of the people. In truth, he is their grandmaster. His wishes and comfort come first.

I think the politician deserves some commiseration. He is as much a victim of his marketing strategy as those he markets hope to. His unfulfilled promises can and do oft turn tragic and explode in his face. His political sun suddenly goes behind the clouds. And he picks his way along the pavement with his capless head down. He is both the master of his political power and the victim of his political power.

We cannot run from the politician to the priest because we would only run from one exploitative liar to another exploitative liar. Our newspapers are daily filled with the stories of what our politicians and priests are doing to us as a people and as a nation. These stories tend to make hope look patently hopeless.

I often wonder, and it is no small wonder, if honesty and exemplary character are not regarded as premiums in this business of shepherding men and women along the narrow path that leads to heaven or to Eldorado. I would have thought the man who waves the keys of the heavenly gate in my face would make me take him seriously, not by what he says but by who he is, what he is and what he does.

The more I look at their slick ways of marketing hope and sabotaging it through dishonest salesmanship, the more I wonder if we are not really pathetic victims of these slick men. I see them as smart men and women who exploit men and women who are trawling for hope in this vast jungle of carnivores that mutually feed on one another.

Sadly, the politician and the priest are necessary evils in every society. No society can do without politics and politicians; and none can do without the priest by whatever name he is called by the different religions. A world without priests and politicians? Nah.

I am not raising an out cry against the priest and the politician. I merely wish to suggest that it should be possible for us to be less gullible and interrogate the men who are marketing hope and squashing it at the same time. Perhaps, if we see the marketing of hope as a strategy for power, we would be, we would be choosier whose waggon offers us a better prospect for a more truth ride here and the hereafter.