By Suyi Ayodele
I read Colonel Abubakar Dangiwa Umar’s advice to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu on Sunday and I remembered a passage in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet:
Hamlet: Do you see yonder cloud that’s almost in the shape of a camel?
Polonius: By th’mass, and ‘tis like a camel, indeed.
Hamlet: Methinks it is like a weasel.
Polonius: It is backt like a weasel.
Hamlet: Or like a whale?
Polonius: Very like a whale. (Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 2).
Polonius is a Yes Man. All yes men are sycophants; power pleasers! We have them in abundance in Nigeria.
Elizabethan Literature (1558-1603) remains the best one can read. My personal assessment though. One of the figures of that era, and easily the most popular, is William Shakespeare. The excerpt from one of his plays, Hamlet, produced above, speaks to one of the maladies confronting and confounding us as a nation
Read the exchange between King Hamlet and Polonius above. Can you also see it as a classic masterclass in stupid opportunism? Hamlet toys with Polonius. He points out a cloud and says it looks like a Camel. Polonius says Yes, it truly looks like a Camel. King Hamlet says it is no longer Camel but Weasel; Polonius says Yes, it is Weasel. The king changes the next minute and suggests to the fool that what he sees is no longer Weasel but a Whale, shameless Polonius agrees again that it is Whale.
The people ruling President Bola Tinubu today are Polonius. Because of what they will eat, they bend, twist, and reshape their convictions to please the king. All because of their belle. We call them Ìfunlòràn (stomach matters). They are the ones Colonel Abubakar Dangiwa Umar (Rtd), whom I choose to call Dangiwa in this piece, warned Tinubu to run away from in his statement issued Sunday night. There are enough people willing to agree with the president that Dog is Monkey if it will give them access to money and position. And he loves them.
Around the president, principles are as fluid as cloud shapes. As we see in Hamlet, the circus in Abuja tells us as much about the leader as it does about his chosen men and women.
A man’s name speaks for him. When he was born, his parents named him Dangiwa. Did his parents consult the oracles before his birth? Were there predictions of how the unborn child would fare in life?
I ask these questions given the ancient practice of my Yoruba background, which seeks to find out what the future holds for the unborn child or the one in his cradle. My cultural worldview attaches importance to names; a name is not just given for the sake of it.
So, when he was given the name, Dangiwa, what were the parents thinking? Dangiwa, a Hausa name means “One who is strong and brave.” That boy that was named Dangiwa at his birth on September 21, 1949, is now 75 years old. When it was time for him to choose a career, he went for the one only the brave could venture into. He joined the Nigerian Army in 1967 and was commissioned as Second Lieutenant in 1972. He rose to the rank of a Colonel and voluntarily retired in 1993.
In the Nigerian Army, Dangiwa was a brave soldier. He was equally a gentleman. When his mentor and boss, General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, IBB, (Rtd) annulled the June 12, 1993, presidential election, then presumably, but now confirmed, won by late Aare Ona Kankanfo, Moshood Kashimawo Olawale (MKO) Abiola, the presidential candidate of the defunct Social Democratic Party (SDP), Dangiwa, though a serving military officer, said no to the annulment. He defied the regimental sentiments of his profession and went for his personal convictions on what is just, fair, equitable and for the common good. Only the strong can do that; only the brave can take such a risk. Dangiwa did because he must answer his name!
For that audacity, Dangiwa was arrested on suspicion of conspiracy, detained and finally let off the hook. Upon his release, the soldier took another bold step. He voluntarily resigned his commission. He had seen all he wanted to see in the Army. He was convinced beyond any persuasion that the military erred in not keeping faith with its promises. Dangiwa would not be part of such an arrangement, so he opted out of the system.
That is the trait of strong men; that is what the brave do. If you cannot join them, quit the game! That is the definition of honour, that is the connotation of integrity. Those virtues are reserved for real men of character. But like the proverbial Okaka, the bird which curses with its mouth oozing blood, but insists that whichever it holds unto will come to pass (Òkàká únseé pè, enu è únsèè jè, ó ní èyí tí òhun wí, arò á rò mo), Dangiwa retired into the life of a social critic.
He never let go of his conviction about the June 12, 1993, political mishap. He insisted that MKO won the election and should be allowed to rule. Even when MKO died in suspicious circumstances while in the custody of the military, Dangiwa never stopped condemning the injustice. He was convinced that MKO, would one day, be accorded his rightful place in history. He was strong in his faith and brave in his outcry against the malady of June 12, 1993. In doing all that, Dangiwa never sought personal recognition. He is a study in self-conviction. And self-conviction, I dare say, is the hallmark of brave men.
Men of honour are not in short supply in Nigeria. I also say this with a deep sense of personal conviction: men of integrity are not totally in extinction here. I know one of them. His name is Abubakar Dangiwa Umar, a retired Colonel and now a farmer in Kaduna State. The problem we have in Nigeria, especially with the locusts in power at the moment from top to bottom, is that we have allowed the dregs of humanity to take over our affairs.
Dangiwa has lived up to his name. His parents (God repose their souls), wherever they are, should be proud of him. At 75 years old, his children and relatives alike should raise their heads high that they have a man like him as their Okaigbe (head of the family). Dangiwa answered his name again last Sunday as he penned that statement as his response on the National Honour President Tinubu conferred on him and other heroes and heroines of the June 12, 1993, struggle.
The retired soldier accepted the honour. But he would not do it like the other honourees are wont to. He knew that he was not alone in the struggle for the actualisation of June 12 in the military. He had subordinates who also joined him in the crusade. Though he happened to be the loudest voice in that regard, he knew that he shared the platforms with some other brave officers. If the risk was a shared risk, the honour, he reasoned, and rightly too, must also be shared.
Dangiwa’s decision to list all the officers and gentlemen who collaborated with him in the military to ask for the de-annulment of the June 12, 1993, election is something I can relate to. Anyone who has ever worked with a boss who takes credit for a team’s success will appreciate what Dangiwa did. I was once in that category for almost two decades of my working career. So, I can feel how it is for a boss to recognise one’s contribution to teamwork and appreciate the same. That is exactly what Dangiwa has done by naming those officers who also took the risk in supporting the de-annulment of the election.
What Dangiwa did in his piece entitled “MY CFR NATIONAL HONOURS AWARD” is what my Yoruba people will describe as enìkan kìí jé àwádé (no single individual answers ‘we-have-come’). Those officers mentioned might not have gotten their awards or may never get any award or recognition from the Nigerian State for the roles they played, posterity will, however, be kind to them.
Their names are forever engraved in our subconscious because a man of strong goodwill and brave disposition decided to share the honour with them. They therefore remain Commanders of the Federal Republic (CFR) in our minds like the amiable Dangiwa whom President Tinubu has chosen to recognise deservedly!
But the gist here is not that the retired Colonel named his fellow officers in the struggle. The main thrust of today’s piece is the boldness with which Dangiwa decided to point out to President Tinubu the ailment that is afflicting his government. Only the brave will choose the occasion of the conferment of a National Award to tell the ‘awarder’ of honours himself the basic truth of life!
In accepting the CFR, Dangiwa noted that the award would be “more meaningful if the democracy we all fought for delivers the real dividends. This can happen only if leaders at all levels govern with the fear of God and in accordance with the tenets of democracy….” That is a loaded message. President Tinubu must get it clearly: the masses are yet to enjoy any dividend of democracy! That is not a good one; the President must know. He did not stop there.
The retired officer advised that “to achieve the stability and progress of our democracy, leaders must prioritise good governance over politicking for self aggrandizement’ and canvassed for the de-strangulation of the “three co-equal branches of government”, which he said, “must operate independently while cooperating with each other.”
Then, he delivered the killer punch. President Tinubu, he submitted, “must lead in a war against sycophancy in all its forms.” He advanced reasons for that submission to wit: “This must allow for no exceptions, including the rapidly growing trend of naming and renaming public institutions, facilities and other infrastructure after a President or State Governor while in office.”
And in full confirmation of his name as “One who is strong and brave”, Dangiwa decided to name the chief-sycophant-in-power as Senator Godswill Akpabio, the Senate President, whom he said, “was reported to have predicted that President Bola Tinubu will win the 2027 election with 99.9% of the votes!” He capped the piece by saying that Akpabio’s penchant for “humorous incitement” notwithstanding, “Mr President will do well to shun such oracles.”
I read Dangiwa’s piece several times. On each occasion, I prayed that God would give President Tinubu ‘the listening ears’ and ‘the discerning mind’ to hear and heed what ‘the spirit is telling his Church’! All the noise about 2027 is because this administration, more than any before it, has promoted sycophancy to State art and act! Like Dangiwa said, “Men of straw are widely and falsely being elevated to the position of icons by self seeking sycophants” in this government. This is why all the President has done ‘successfully’ in the last two years is to weaken all the structures that could stand in his way in 2027.
What suffers in such a situation, I mean the real victims of that charade, is the welfare of the common man. Poverty, hunger, pain and anger walk on all fours today because the ‘men of straw’ that this administration has elevated to positions of authority, have formed the government’s clappers’ club to hail the President as the most ‘successful’ one when his failings and failures stare us boldly in the face. That is exactly what sycophancy does!
Sinan Ibagune in his “Political Philosophy of Sycophancy and Sycophantism” (Yeditepe University, Istanbul, Turkey), says sycophancy is “Insincere flattery given to gain an advantage from a superior. The philosophy of sycophancy, particularly in the context of politics, involves the practice of sociable and ingratiating oneself to those in power to gain favour, influence or advancement.”
Back home in Nigeria, Hyginus Banko Okibe of the Department of Political Science, Enugu State University of Technology, Enugu, while writing on “Sycophancy and Dearth of Integrity in Governance” (ESUT Journal of Social Science, 5 (2), November 3, 2020), says: “Sycophancy in governance occurs when performance of legitimate functions of government are erroneously exaggerated to invoke unwarranted stream of praises on a public officeholder or government in power. Critical observers describe it as deceitful, misleading and highly opinionated. It beguiles the masses to believe failed government actions, which a sycophant paints in different colours and thus makes governance wane significantly in integrity. It has become a predominant feature of democratic governance in Nigeria…”
These definitions above, among many others, speak to the malady Dangiwa counselled President Tinubu to avoid. If I were the President, I would look at the sincerity of the man who uttered those words. I would also consider his antecedents in and out of power. President Tinubu should study the identikit of Dangiwa, vis-a-vis the closeness of the retired military officer to General IBB, the man who annulled June 12. A man who could question the actions of his boss despite being in a regimented environment like the Nigerian Army, is one man whose advice a president who wants to do well in office should not take lightly.
Like Dangiwa pointed out in his acceptance article, “One enduring lesson from the conduct of the officers and men is their decision to operate above sycophancy but to hold their superior officers to account.” These, to me, are the type of men President Tinubu should have around him. He has had enough of yes-men, government clappers and the hosanna orchestra. This is the time to get serious with governance, and assemble around his table, men and women who have the capacity, the strong will and the bravery to look the President directly in the face and say, “Sir, the masses are suffering.”
Only the enemy will tell Tinubu that he has the majority in his support with the present situation in town. Only Polonius, a fake “oracle” will assure the President of “99.9%” of our votes come 2027. That is 99.9% sycophancy! The majority are silent today because they have limited options. It will be a different ballgame on election day when the options will be opened to the people.
Okibe is apt in his description of the negative effects of sycophancy. President Tinubu has been a victim of men who paint “failed government actions in different colours.” This is why his government has waned “significantly in integrity.” The president must rescue himself from the grips of the sycophants around him, if only for the sake of those who reposed their confidence in him, and the suffering masses of Nigeria.
The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine.
