Exclusive Viewpoint : The Limits of Sycophancy ,By Dan Agbese

So, President Goodluck Jonathan knows there is a limit to sycophancy? I am intrigued. Last week, he ordered that the billboards, #BringBackGoodluck 2015, in parts of Abuja be taken down because he found them embarrassing. The president acted because the Washington Post of September 8 told him the attempt by his campaigners to appropriate the hashtag, #BringBackOurGirls for campaign purposes was insensitive and embarrassing. #BringBackGoodluck2015 is a parody of the #BringBackOurGirls campaign for the rescue of the Chibok school girls kidnapped by Boko Haram 154 days ago as of this writing.
You can say Jonathan is a listening president. In July, he listened to the Pakistani teenager, Malala, and met with some of the parents of the kidnapped girls. Now he has listened to the Washington Post and told the Goodluck Initiative for Transformation that put up the billboards that it could do better than that.
It is fair to admit that Jonathan is perhaps the most celebrated president Nigeria ever had – bilboardswise. The Daily Trust of September 11 did a fantastic piece of investigative journalism on the pro-Jonathan billboards in Abuja alone. The paper established there were 161 billboards put up by various interest groups funded, obviously from a central source, in the FCT.
The president has an overwhelming presence everywhere in the nation’s capital city. These campaign billboards are a sad reminder of the bad old days when rulers in one party states intimidated their citizens by ensuring that billboards celebrated their persons and their achievements everywhere. It is not such a great thing that Abuja is virtually choking from these billboards and their sycophantic messages that seek to make the president a super human being, even when the truth is less glamorous. For those who are averse to seeing so much of the president leering at them from billboards all over town, I offer my commiseration.
It is important to admit that Jonathan and his army of enthusiastic supporters are doing nothing wrong. Political campaigns are neither honest nor truthful. The president wants to remain in office for another four-year term. His ambition has attracted the support of funny characters who may not necessarily agree with him but who are wise enough to know that when you support the president, the chances of your stomach rumbling for lack of food are nil. In a nation that measures leadership by the artifacts of leadership, the shadow is more real than the substance.
I had thought that the president was so much sold on sycophancy that he cherishes it as evidence of his popularity. Now that one group has gone overboard and brought a presidential chastisement down on its head, may I draw the president’s attention to the damage some (of) the activities of his campaign groups are doing to him. I do so, firm in my belief that he being a listening president, would listen to the words of an old codger.
One, the zonal campaign rallies organised by the Transformation Ambassadors of Nigeria, TAN, as a means of seeking endorsement for the president’s ambition have no place in our electoral system. Neither the constitution nor the electoral act has any provisions for endorsements. While it would be foolish for anyone to think the president would not take full advantage of incumbency, campaigns, in whatever shape, well ahead of time is pure act of lawlessness.
Two, these campaigns are being waged in the face of the serious security challenges facing the country. This makes them both embarrassing and insensitive. It points to one thing and one thing only: Jonathan is less interested in making the country secure and more interested in riding the crest waves generated popularity to remain in office. It takes no rocket science to see that a full and committed national attention to these challenges would do more to smoothen the path towards 2015 than these funny billboards and radio and television jingles. But of course, the man’s record in this area is as scrappy as in other areas. He has set up four committees at different times to tell him what to do about Boko Haram. He has not acted on a single one of these reports. And the insurgents get bolder and bolder, making our armed forces look the worse for wear.
Three, comparing Jonathan with some world leaders is clearly odious at this point in time. Leaders in all countries belong to different leagues in their understanding of their historical role in what they do and how they serve their people. Leaders stand out for positively transforming their countries and infusing a sense of pride and honesty in their people. Former prime minister of Singapore, the venerable Lee Kuan Yew, transformed, in his own words and with incontrovertible evidence to back it up, his country from a third world country to a first world country. His country has no oil or any other natural resource. Lee had only ideas, the stuff of dreams.
The late South African president, Dr. Nelson Mandela, was a leader of a different kind. He wielded moral authority and with it, he created the rainbow nation that the former apartheid enclave has become.
The late President J.F. Kennedy provided the kind of leadership that has made his country men and women live up to the ideals of their constitution: all men (and women) are created equal and endowed with inalienable rights, among which are the rights to life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Each of these men responded to different challenges in their countries. Each man’s success and his place in the golden book of history were not measured by sloganeering.
I know that Jonathan is doing what he can to earn his place in history. He is not there yet. It is embarrassing and sycophantic for his army of campaigners to put him in the same league with Lee, Mandela, Kennedy and other world leaders, living or dead, who earned their pips through uncommon courage. Each of them stood for something. What does Jonathan stand for other than his stand on the rickety platform called transformation agenda?
Two fundamental attributes make all the difference between a true leader and an also run. These attributes are passion and empathy. No leader can make a success of whatever he sets out to do without investing it with passion. It is the driving force in human management and development. Empathy underlines the human feeling of a leader. It refers to his capacity for compassion. We are yet to see passion and empathy infuse the actions and the decisions of the president now credited with superhuman and superlative performances by his campaign organisers.
It is the business of those who wish to see the president return to office next year to burnish his image and clothe him in superlative performance terms. It is part of the game of politics and of high stakes public relations. But it should be done with some care and circumspection. If he has become this much after only one term, I wonder what frontiers remain for him to conquer in another four-year term in office.
But to put him in the same league with Mandela, Obama, Kennedy, Yew and others is simply a sickening stretch. I do not think it is complimentary. It is, in fact, negative. The campaigners know only too well that Jonathan’s leadership is underwhelming and his performance so far as president is equally and embarrassingly underwhelming.
I fear that the campaigners, determined to portray Jonathan as the best thing to happen to our country, are invariably ridiculing him. Discerning persons do not take the television and radio ads and jingles that put him in the league of world leaders seriously. Some moderation would do the president more good than the superlative adjectives that have become the hallmark of his campaigns and campaigners. Leaders like Jonathan must always beware of the Teflon effect because of its tendency to wear off sooner or later and expose what is not altogether a pretty sight.