It’s like there is no end to the drama that the ongoing electioneering in Nigeria is presenting to the world. It has been utterly weird and unbecoming with caution and decency thrown to the winds while democracy itself has been seriously undermined. How else can one rationalise the ongoing diplomatic acrobatics between the Kingdom of Morocco and the Presidency in which an imaginary telephone dialogue between the two leaders was concocted from the Nigerian end ostensibly with a view to boosting a nervy campaign?
With the day of reckoning finally now at hand after the infamous postponement, it would seem as if the realisation of lack of sufficient electoral traction has forced the government into an unprecedented panic mode and,as a result, everything, fair or foul,obscene or outrageous, that could stem the tide including the seeking of image-boosting chats with diplomatic enemies are considered helpful.
Otherwise, arising from Nigeria’s long-standing position on the Western Sahara (Polisario) dispute, it should have been obvious that we couldn’t mess with the Kingdom of Morocco like that and get away with it. I am therefore not surprised that Rabat reacted to the incident in the tellingly escalated way that it did, thereby putting the usual diplomatic doctrine of comity amongst nations in abeyance.
The resulting embarrassment to the Presidency is largely self-inflicted because it has been too busy lately trying to prove that it is not as impotent as many think it is even if that has to be done through unethical and unorthodox ways. It has become the modus operandi of handlers of the President’s re-election campaign to unduly associate him with great men of history as if just by juxtaposing his name with them he too could be transformed as such.
This is not to take anything away from Mr. President. He has achieved a lot in his own way. At least he holds the singular record of being the one whose entire public life has been defined by the rare element of luck.Good fortune belongs elsewhere and not to purposeful contexts and that is why there are no Olympic medals for being lucky. Hard work is it!
No doubt, being the president of Nigeria is a great achievement by itself,but that fact alone does not automatically catapult the occupant into the pantheon of demigods. As a matter of fact, it merely establishes his candidacy for possible consideration as such but how well he has performed in office would eventually determine whether he is adjudged a flop or a winner.
To assume that greatness comes by merely occupying an office is like thinking that the hood makes the monk and as Lord Acton once told us: “There is no greater heresy than the saying that the office sanctifies the holder …” In other words, the President certainly has his good qualities which must be adequately appreciated but he is certainly not yet in the same league with those names he so desires to be ranked with, namely, the Mandelas, the Lee Kwan Yews, the Martin Luther Kings and the Obamas of this world.He must earn his stripes. Has he or has he not? That is what this election is all about.
I am aware of the proverbial self-praising Lizard that jumped from the Iroko tree but it is always safer to avoid self-aggrandizement that will only bring humiliation to the pretender like what has just happened when the King of Morocco went public with his dissatisfaction with the fact that the Nigerian authorities have indecently used his name in vain.
So bad he felt about it that he had to dramatically recall his ambassador to Nigeria followed by a damning undiplomatic rebuke of President Jonathan who he berated as “unethical” and “acting contrary to the spirit of responsibility” for wanting to drag his royal name into Nigeria’s “internal electioneering.”
After the misbehaviour of the Moroccan monarchy during the last AFCON game that she was supposed to host which had to be relocated at the last minute to Equatorial Guinea following the Kingdom’s snobbish refusal to admit African footballers and their fans insupposedly because of Ebola, I didn’t expect any perceptive Nigerian official to still want to dial up Rabat for any chat, no matter the desperation. That singular act would have been enough in the good old days when Nigeria had a respectable and respected foreign policy to respond to diplomatically. I could just imagine the late Brig. Joe Garba telling the young Moroccan monarch to go to hell with his xenophobia while the self-assured Murtala Mohammed promptly assuming responsibility to host the continental soccer tournament in order to save Africa from an Arabic slight. Those days, unfortunately, are gone.
From being the giant of Africa Nigeria has degenerated into being the Sick Man of Africa because her leaders have devalued her sovereignty by their incompetent governance. From being the Big Brother that we were to Liberia, Sierra Leone and many other nations a few years ago, it is minnows like Chad, Niger, Cameroon and stateless mercenaries that are now propping up our fledging defence capabilities in the fight against Boko Haram. How are the mighty fallen?
The concocted telephone dialogue is quite consistent with the pattern that has since set within this government and which the President has knowingly been benefiting from. It is now the fad to inundate the nation with exaggerated reportage of his fleeting encounters with other world leaders even if the occasions were mundane and diplomatically inconsequential. As long as it puts the President in the spotlight, it’s game on. But like they say, every day for the thief, one day for the owner.
This time round, the president’s image-making crew recklessly turned a fictitious melodious dialogue into a truly humiliating monologue as he had to embarrassingly admit that there was never a telephone conversation between him and the Moroccan monarch as claimed by his officials. Using a lie to cover another lie, they then concocted the spurious claim that the Rabat phone call was intended to booster the AfdB candidacy of minister Adesina.
It is only safe to assume that it should now be bye-bye for Adesina as far as that ambition is concerned as his candidacy has already been unwittingly tainted publicly. Well, his would just be in line with Okonjo-Iweala’s aborted World Bank presidential bid, i.e., fall into a ditch constructed by undue self-aggrandizement.
There is a contagious disease that is plaguing the president’s key operatives and ministers which is ostensibly caused by the undeserved hype and inexplicable affluence that suddenly come their ways, especially within the extremely corrupt context of public service in Nigeria; they end up thinking of themselves as super stars in spite of their demonstrable mediocrity on the ethical front.
Needless to say that the Morocco stunt was an unmitigated fiasco. It is a lesson to all those who pontificate for the President that they can fool some people some of the time but cannot fool all the people all of the time.
It was a typical 419 operation that went awry. Most likely, the person who was“on the line” from Rabat was an impostor speaking froma GSM payphone in Gwarinpa while his accomplice in the Villa or wherever, would go into a deliberate shout: “Your Royal Majesty, how is Morocco? Ok, ok…Fine…Consider it done, Your Majesty!”Government money may already have changed hands for that “great” telephonic feat just like the fake cease-fire agreement with Boko Haram reportedly gulped a lot of dollars.Nigeria
