Cheta Nwanze: Presidential liars

Presidential liars (Y! FrontPage)

Remember what things were like when we were kids? When a “bigman” is coming to visit, we would all be encouraged to wear our Sunday bests and smile for the man despite the fact that at home all was not well. That is the national lie we live.
“The First Lady, Mrs Patience Jonathan travelled abroad on vacation to rest.” – Dr Reuben Abati, Presidential Spokesman, September 2012.
“God Almighty knows I have never been to that hospital.” – Patience Jonathan, October 2012
“I died for seven days; friends sold my properties hoping I won’t return. I actually died. I passed out for more than a week. My intestine and tummy were opened … When God says yes, nobody can say no. People are always afraid of operation. But in my own case, while my travail lasted, I was begging for it after the third operation because I was going to the theatre every day. It was God who saw me through. I did eight or nine operations within one month.” – Patience Jonathan, February 2013
While the natural reaction on social media is for people to scream and call Dr. Abati and Mrs. Jonathan liars, I’d rather take a slightly modified view.
A few years ago, I was the Online Editor of 234NEXT, and I personally hit the “publish” button for the website when NEXT published the story about the brain damage of the current President’s predecessor. The first ten comments that I had to approve essentially called us liars, and while there were people who believed us, a lot of people still insisted that we lied. What made it worse was that the very next day, someone purporting to be Yar’Adua gave an interview to the BBC Hausa Service. The rest as the saying goes, is history. Yar’Adua never presided over Nigeria again.
This incident with the wife of the President all but confirming what media outfits such as Sahara Reporters had told us back in September that she was gravely ill, is not a Goodluck Jonathan Administration problem. Neither is it a Sullivan Chime or Liyel Imoke problem. It is a Nigerian problem.
Sadly, we live in a country where “bigmen” are supposed to remain that, “bigmen”. One of the attributes of a “bigman” is that he is superhuman. He can never be wrong in his reasoning, his jokes are always funny, he is the most intelligent being among all the senient beings breathing the same air, he is the richest among all of his peers, and he can never, ever fall ill.
But then again, the falling ill part is not just reserved to our “bigmen”, it is also one for all of us. We tend to “bind all forms of illness in Jesus name”, illness is never our portion. This despite the fact that our bodies, like it or not, are machines, and like any machine, suffer from reasonable wear and tear. Now let me ask you, how many times has a member of your family fallen ill, and you have helped cover it up? I will go out on a limb to say that EVERY Nigerian has been guilty of that, and this leads me to the main thrust of my piece.
Nigeria is a very closed society, one that pretends that all is well even when it is obvious that things are not well. As a people, we live in a sort of national bubble where truth really has no place. This is a country where everyone, or almost everyone, lives a lie, and lives beyond their means simply to impress others, and of course, one way to impress other people is to be in a constant state of good health.
Our attitudes towards covering up illnesses is what extends to our attitudes towards our leaders. We do not tell them the truth.
I can only imagine that yesterday in that church, when Mrs. Jonathan announced the donation of N500 millions to the church, not a person there informed her that the amount she had just “donated”, could not possibly have come from her husband’s personal account, and that if it did, then by all means natural, it would only mean that her husband had stolen such money. You see, when GEJ became President, he was ostensibly worth N250 millions. At a Presidential salary of circa N10 millions per year, and maybe a few allowances here and there, would Mrs. Jonathan have donated away her hubby’s entire fortune to one church? I sincerely doubt that.
Again, I can guarantee that no one told the Jonathans that the church they donated to runs on a diesel generator, which is probably far away from the main building. That is the reason why our President had the gall to go on CNN and tell the world that the power situation has improved tremendously. Truthfully, he doesn’t know better.
I had this moment of epiphany back in 2011 when the President came to Lagos to have a lunch meeting with some “influential Nigerian youths” at the Eko Hotel. At the time, I used to work for the Daily Times at their Victoria office, which was off of Olosa Street, the street leading to Eko Hotel. Truth is that prior to that May visit by the President, Olosa street was a mess, the usual Nigerian pot-hole laden road. Three days before the President was due to visit, the road was resurfaced. So how would the President know that there was a problem? The people in charge of that place, without opening their mouths, told the President a lie.
Remember what things were like when we were kids? When a “bigman” is coming to visit, we would all be encouraged to wear our Sunday bests and smile for the man despite the fact that at home all was not well. That is the national lie we live.
I remember when my own father came to office for a position of influence, just about a decade ago now. Suddenly, he was always right, suddenly, his jokes were all the funniest, suddenly, my mother became everybody’s “Mummy”, and my siblings, they became everyone’s “pets”. I had already left the environment, so I did not feel the daily impact of the “enjoyment”, but each time I visited, I was treated like royalty by people in the vicinity. Of course, my parents had to move to the residence reserved for that position, and surprise, surprise, that building has its own power supply, cut off from that of the institution. It has its own water supply, and what is worse, it has extensive grounds, from which there is no way you would know if there was a problem elsewhere.
That, dear reader, is what we put our leaders through. We cut them off so that they live on another planet, different from what the rest of us live on. We smile whenever they grace us with their presence, rather than letting them know that there is a problem. Then we expect them to be human when we ourselves make them superhuman?
Not gonna happen.