Set against the many ills plaguing the economy, the leading candidates for office of president in next year’s elections could not have served up more disturbing metaphors. Whether it was the spectacle of the All Progressives Congress (APC) party’s candidate furiously pedalling away on an exercise bike, or the People’s Democratic Party’s (PDP) candidate straining away at a multi-station gym equipment, the sense was of the usual Nigerian predisposition to “major on the minor”!
Even then, there was more to the videos put out by the campaign teams of both parties as argument for their qualification for office than our time-tested preference for religiously addressing isolated episodes of a ringworm infestation against the backdrop of a leprosy epidemic would recommend. Concerns have been expressed about the quality of the campaigns by all political parties, thus far. Untruths have pushed against intemperate language in an unsightly carousel that puts the lie to our preferred description of self: a people whose culture eschews the uncouth. In this sense, we seem simply to reflect the temper and tempo of politics in the social media era.
If truth still matters, though, which of the many versions of it trampled underfoot by the campaign committees matters the most? Arguably, the inability of these forums to describe their respective remedies for the economy’s woes – unemployment, inflation, the monetisation of the national deficit – may evidence varying levels of incompetence. But it is not, ipso facto, an untruth. Still, it matters. Politics may have economics for breakfast all the time, but isn’t that process at the root of our continued underdevelopment? If a sound economy speaks volumes about a country’s health, ought we to allow politics of misrepresentation and abuse push conversation about the economy out of the living room?
The answer to this question may be self-evident. But there was scant acknowledgement of this fact in the now-viral presidential candidates’ exercise videos. And truth to tell, neither video had anything to do with worries over the respective health of the candidates. Was “Umoru” ailing when then-president Obasanjo put his now infamous call through to him? When did “Umoru” actually die? History would suggest, given the nature of the pathology that President Umaru Yar-Adua eventually succumbed to, that the answers to both these questions are “Yes”, and “Long before his inner circle deigned to inform the country”.
As with pregnancy, the question over whether a candidate for public office is physically fit for purpose or not is a binary one. You cannot be half-pregnant. Despite the often vicious arguments about the health of our presidential candidates’, it looks like we will have to await the passage of time on this. As with the Yoruba saw to the effect that no two persons may collectively forsake the truth (it’s either the liar is aware of his/her dissembling, or the person being lied to is), time has a way of uncovering untruths.
Put this way, the videos have everything to do with what we have become. The way the Americans tell it, they trusted the U.S.’s institutions to come good in the teeth of President Donald Trump’s spirited effort at remaking the country in his image. And across the country – from the vice president, through the courts, to the electoral process in states – these institutions first wobbled, and then passed muster. Responding to the American example, Nigerians insist that the political and economic redemption of emerging economies such as ours will depend on our ability to strengthen similarly placed institutions.
Like forts, though, institutions are no stronger than the men who hold them. Men of character and courage (of their convictions more than anything else) are likelier to hold forts than those of a thieving, lying, and autocratic ilk. Those videos may not tell us how healthy our possible president is. But around these candidates are those who know the truth. Unfortunately, the videos do not speak to whether these courtiers persons of character and courage, or of the thieving, lying and autocratic kind.
We cannot, thankfully, put up videos to mask the fact that our economy is very ill. We can only hope that because parts of our political class find their vertebrae, we would next year be entrusting its husbandry to those who mean well and who have both the nous and courage to fix it.
Uddin Ifeanyi, journalist manqué and retired civil servant, can be reached @IfeanyiUddin.