A New Set of Values
Urges incoming president, Muhammadu Buhari, to lead the nation to recover its values
leader of any of the developed or truly emerging economies with an ADC? Second, Buhari should end the practice of the State House chief protocol officer, often a career diplomat, holding the chair at a meeting for the president to sit down. Has any of us seen in pictures this feudalistic practice associated with a modern leader? The next step is the abolition of the protocol of addressing each of our leaders as “His Excellency”. Maybe only the president and the vice-president can be addressed as such only in diplomatic circles like when they are addressing the
United Nations or in meetings with foreign diplomats. The new practice of addressing every senator officially as “Distinguished Senator” or even just “Distinguished” for short, is embarrassing. “Distinguished Senator” is no title anywhere in the world, but used informally by the American media to refer to eminently influential and knowledgeable people like John McCain who have been in the Senate for several years. Embarrassing also is the practice of referring to state governors and local government chairmen as “Executive Governors” and “Executive Chairmen”. Why do we address ministers as “Honourable Ministers” when they are not elected legislators as in Britain?
Buhari should also consider the kinds of vehicles which should serve as official cars. SUVs like Innosons and Nissan which are assembled in the country should do. From the later part of the 1970s to 1999, Peugeot was Nigeria’s official car because it was assembled here. The assembly plant provided thousands of jobs to Nigerian engineers, marketers, administrators, communication practitioners, etc. But the firm is now a ghost of itself because the government, its principal customer, ceased to patronise it. When oil revenues spiked dramatically under the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) administration, Peugeot was abandoned in favour of expensive Japanese SUVs imported mostly by a handful of Indian traders. The presidential fleet ballooned, and in no time state governments joined in the craze for executive jets. Even a poor state like Taraba is not left out; its governor almost lost his life when its own crashed. Needless to say, private citizens began to compete with one another over the number, size and make of jets they possess.
In his magnificent book, From The Third World To First: the Story of Singapore Since 1965, Singaporean founding prime minister Lee Kuan Yew expressed shock at the sight of presidents of African nations like Nigeria and Kenya arriving at the Commonwealth summit in Canada in 1980 with presidential jets which were parked at the airport where they were accumulating high fees. Meanwhile, the British prime minister came by British Caledonia commercial airline. Yet, the rulers of the poor countries were asking leaders of rich countries with no presidential planes for aid! To repeat the obvious, the British prime minister has no presidential jets to this day. Yet, the United kingdom manufactures the Fokker plane series and is deeply involved in the production of Airbus planes; its globally famous engineering firm, Rolls Royce, manufactures plane engines. Singapore has the most profitable airline in the world, still its premier has no presidential plane to this
day. Frankly, ostentatious lifestyle at the expense of the poor in our midst seems to be a cultural problem. The pope, for instance, who leads the world’s largest and wealthiest church, does not have even a helicopter, but Nigerian evangelical pastors whose congregations are composed of Frantz Fanon’s the wretched of the earth have private jets, with one of them having as many as four!
Nigerian state governors live large, to the extent that they make Hollywood stars green with envy. They move in long motorcades of state of the art SUVs, complete with sirens, ceremonial outriders and large batteries of police and state security officers as well as soldiers armed to the earth and looking like intimidating beings straight from the Mars. Interestingly, the few governors who are going down in history as leaders worthy of their office like Babatunde Fashola of Lagos State and Donald Duke of Cross River State are a breed apart, defined by the simplicity of their lifestyle, a style shorn of showbiz razzmatazz. The number of security officers assigned to each high public officer has to be curtailed, so that there will be enough to serve the public. The practice of assigning police orderlies to permanent secretaries and chief executives of agencies who open doors for the “big men and women” and carry their files is ridiculous. So also is the new practice of providing policemen and even soldiers to wealthy civilians ostensibly for protection but in reality for self-aggrandisement. It should be stopped. The only exception should be when there is a clear or likely threat to a person’s safety. Even so, officers attached to such a person should be in mufti. Also to be banned immediately is the use of sirens by unauthorised persons to intimidate citizens.