Because a politician represents the public, constituents will be better represented if he or she practices the virtues of honesty and trustworthiness in both personal and private life. The reputation of local officials may have an important impact on the business climate of the city or public support for local initiatives, so the personal behavior of politicians may become a legitimate area of public concern.
So is the level of hypocrisy of the vice president of Nigeria and his penchant for lies that one begins to imagine if there is still space left for Nigerian version of saints in heaven above or below. For a Vice president and Babaloja general to have claimed to lose sleep over the level of poverty in Nigeria and chose a sumptuous inner dinner where a hundred thousand naira is paid for access calls for a review of the word empathy and sincerity.
One would have expected a genuine ‘man of god’ who had gradually become a ‘god of man’ to at least look into the faces of the poor when he makes such assertion and not a gathering of some over fed tummy rumbling Nigerians to say such thing that is most unfortunate. No doubt, poverty has become a second skin for a vast number of Nigerians but for a presidency who has done little or nothing to lift people out of it other than humongous pledges and projections, it is but a collective slap to call the poor out for pity in the presence of the rich.
Everyone, including public figures, is entitled to decorum at least such that helps the mouth to avoid vommitting. One would have expected a vice president who can’t sleep because of the level of poverty in the country to identify with that poor and enumerate steps been taken to lift them out of poverty but then, that will be like expecting a ship to berth at a stream.
With the cardinal virtues of prudence, temperance, courage, and justice-without possessing them all, Mr vice prsident would have done better for the poor than sharing what is less than an equivalent of what an average Family require to make a decent meal and call it money for trading in an aircraft that consumes more in servising and fuelling than the entire money he shares in a market per city.
Also, in the classic tradition, it has been argued that one of the central tasks of the public sphere is educational-helping shape the souls of the next generation to achieve knowledge and do the right thing. In that context, a public servant must serve as an example of good conduct.
Unfortunately in our time, our leaders has lost consciousness and can’t solve the least arithmetic. When during the elections of the governors forum some years back under former president Goodluck Jonathan, nine became greater than sixteen, we all thought it was part of the kleptomaniacs nature of the administration but now under the regime of change,nine members of the Edo state house of assembly suddenly formed a quorum to be sworn in and a speaker elected in a house with over 20 members at night and in Bauchi, 11 became greater than sixteen, we excuse it for nascent democracy and power tussle.
LaBarge has struggled with the question of whether a politician might be unethical in one area and still be a good leader. Ultimately, it has become obvious that no good sound comes from a gun and hence we only succeed in electing clowns and ignorant people as leaders who fails to realise that power belongs to God and no one can fully have it and enjoy it except it pleases God.
Political office is not what it was in the ancient world. We don’t have agreement about what sort of souls we should be shaping, so I don’t necessarily expect a public official to be a moral exemplar. More significantly, there’s been a substantial change in what sort of expertise we expect our leaders to have. For the ancients, the required expertise was moral expertise, and understanding of what sort of character we want to instill in others and how we go about doing that. But today, we expect our leaders to have entirely different sorts of expertise-economic, public policy. If you were to go out and ask people, many would place evenly even question the assumption that being moral could involve expertise in the first place.
Opinion is really the lowest form of human knowledge. It requires no accountability, no understanding. The highest form of knowledge… is empathy, for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another’s world. It requires profound purpose larger than the self kind of understanding according to Bill Bullard.
Let someone inform these politricians that night comes quickly.
AYODEJI OLOGUN is a political analyst, a public speaker and a broadcast Journalist. He can be reached via emmanologun@gmail.com