It has become traditional for every Nigerian president to assume messianic infallibility. And this is why they fail. There can be no alternative to what they do. They only have a monopoly of solutions to the problems. They become condescendingly intolerant of other views.
In those days of SAP, they proclaimed that there was no alternative to SAP. Even when Professor Adedayo Adedeji and his team at Economic Commission of Africa provided the Alternative to SAP, they still held on stubbornly to SAP. Even when Professor Sam Aluko argued that there’s no human decision that has no alternative, they decided him. That tenacious hold on the infallibility of SAP weakened our economic architecture.
In science, any new human innovation is seen as an hypothesis. After years of trials, it’s accepted as a theory. Even then, the theory is not cloaked in infallibility.
In politics, the dialectic theory states that for every thesis there is an antithesis. The conflict or integration of the thesis and antithesis that will produce a synthesis, which will be an embodiment of the best in the thesis and antithesis. This synthesis becomes the new thesis to which an antithesis will develop. It’s this succession that makes the society grow.
12 years ago, Malaysia adopted the CNG as a solution. In 2024, Malaysia made a law to ban the use of CNG. In that 2024 Nigeria adopted CNG as the solution to its fuel problem.
All decision making theorists accept that there’s no perfect human optimum decision. Herbert Simon, Amitai Etzioni, Charles Lindblom, Max Weber et all are all agreed on this.
That’s why our Nigerian leaders must not believe that there’s no alternative to what they’re doing. They ,after all, govern on our behalf. They are not our rulers. They must learn to listen to us and not think they are the Infallible Messiahs.
PBAT must not fall into this trap that he’s the best thing to happen to Nigeria. Those who say he’s the Lee Kuan Yew are court jesters. Only the sober judgement of history can say that. PBAT should know that there are many roads to the market. His choice of which road to take cannot but be affected by human subjective considerations. The court jesters around him must not blindfold him from seeing other options or deafen him from listening to the low grumbles or quiet ideas from even the downtrodden.
PBAT must not accept the toga of infallibility or even the best thing to ever happen to Nigeria. He must not accept the trophy of being the best politician or strategist in Nigeria. Only HISTORY CAN VINDICATE … remembering Fidel Castro’s allocotus in his trial.
PBAT must know the story of tortoise who thought he has assembled all human wisdom in a gourd that he wanted to hide on a palm tree. He was shocked to realize that it was wisdom of an innocent bystander that taught to climb the palm tree with the gourd on his back and not his chest.
All Nigerian leaders must know that they are not necessarily the best, the wisest nor the ablest. They must not think they’re Infallible. They represent today’s THESIS to which an ANTITHESIS must counter.
God bless Nigeria. The better days will surely come.
Yemi Farounbi