One thing I don’t get with Nigerian public offices nowadays is how appointments into them plunged from being the highest tests of one’s character content and career accomplishments to now need no merit and any moral requirement.
Ordinarily, the appointment of unqualified people into public offices is, first of all, immoral, worse than even accepting it. This is not also foreclosing the fact that accepting an appointment you know you are not qualified for is also criminal and immoral.But these days, the case has reached a new record.
The appointments are not just really immorally done, they’re done for immoral reasons, or as a reward for some immoral conduct. That’s not all. There are people who are typically criminals and entirely immoral, with these being their only selling points.
Over time, they have managed to make a career out of it and many times use it as a passport to playing at the highest levels of our political playing field.Daniel Bwala is one of these people, and his recent appointment meets all this template.
By the standards this government is claiming to set, a man who stood up against a Muslim-Muslim ticket, a ticket which, if genuine, would ordinarily mean that we have attained some level in our journey towards national cohesion, is not one to slap back on the faces of those who believed and toiled to uphold it. Ordinarily, this government, for what it said it believes, is supposed to treat his case as an example of how to deal with a religious bigot.
But because they have already reduced governance to mere optics, it is thus understandable why the presidency would descend deep into the mud to shop for one who has long sacrificed shame at the altar of crumbs. The job of defending the indefensible cannot be done by one with any shred of honor.
Ajuri Ngalele was an exceptional publicist and he did tremendously well under Buhari because there were actually some good arguments for the things the government was doing, unlike he had found under this administration. He suddenly lost his charm and realized he could not hold anything strongly again.But this man never did anything honorably or even wisely. He was always petty, truant and shameless.
If he was not planted as a puppet, in which case he was being teleguided to behave in the way he did, his unintelligent arguments in the last election were the things that gave his principal away.
First of all, one has already removed himself from any decent national conversation the moment he reduces it to religious or regional terms.His immature rants against the Muslim – Muslim ticket of the APC, which was his only argument anyway, actually inspired a huge rejection of his own brand and an almost religious commitment to the (Muslim-Muslim) ticket.
As simplistic as such a job is, Bwala was very bad at it. Even if he was planted in there to do a hatchet job, it was not his initiative: he was just a tool, the only thing he can ever be well at.In the long run, it became clear that he had no any commitment to the cause of supporting a balanced ticket for an inclusive Nigera.
It was rather a branding opportunity for him to display his hypocrisy, sidebyside with his price tag. His antics isn’t new to us, there are a lot like him, who have gotten into many important public offices through political truancy and shameless pettiness.
Bwala only speaks, but he has never said anything meaningful, because he cannot even if he wants to. He is naturally programmed for barefaced lies, sensationalism, and tantrums–much sought-after qualities for a career in political puppeteering and bootlicking–to the extent that this is the only thing he can do well.
This makes him the best fit for this government; up until he brings the roof down on them all at once.We had a talk recently about whether the job of image-making can be done by a principled person. The thought is always that it can only be done by shameless people.
The assumption here is that governments are generally purveyors of lies and thus the unfortunate conclusion that only shameless people can do it.
However, governments only manage information and dissemination because they know a lot the public doesn’t know. Femi Adesina did it very responsibly and excellently. The problem now is that, when you appoint Bwala to do this job, given his antecedents, you have already ‘un-made’ your image because everyone knows what he is brought in to do. He is coming here to lie.
But ideal image making is supposed to be targeted towards building credibility around a person, institutions or governments. It has to, even if nothing, pretend to start with some credibility. But with this man, I am sorry.
