Kudos to Lagos State helmsman Babatunde Raji Fashola for getting over Manchester United’s torrid season. Relieved actually that the pathetic events at Fashola’s beloved old Trafford didn’t grind Lagos State to a halt.
Resigned to a season of Manchester United without European excursions, Fashola has very sensibly turned his thoughts to other matters. His thoughts shared with the public in The Nation newspaper last Monday were seminal.
A problem with Nigeria’s political establishment is the inability to do self-analysis. The political class here sadly simply does not have a sense of the ridiculous. This shows in the quality or perhaps the lack of it in governance.
Fashola impresses in his contribution precisely because he can at least think. He is obviously not the fountain of all knowledge, far from it, but he thinks. This is quite refreshing giving the absence of introspection from a political class wallowing in a psychotic condition often referred to as a delusion of grandeur.
It is precisely this condition that Fashola has debunked. In his article, he shared his thoughts on the World Economic Forum (WEF) conference which had just concluded in Abuja. The usual delusion was there alright. As in ‘Africa’s biggest economy hosts the world’. Fashola sensibly saw through all of this and looked beyond the ephemeral.
Although, he wasn’t there, he noticed valuable lessons to be learnt, presumably by our deluded political class. In the first place “I did not attend the forum, I followed closely as it was covered on Channels and TVC. One thing I noticed was that there were no opening and closing prayers in Christian and Moslem ways: or were they deliberately not broadcast? I doubt that this was the case. The more likely inference is that they were not part of the programme.”
How delightful. Someone is making some sense at last! In the first place, there is a need to separate religion from the corruptive influence of politics. This obviously does not agitate Fashola, but it should. What clearly agitates him is the amount of time we devote to the ceremonial aspect of governance instead of the real working part.
Fashola is absolutely bang on when he presciently points out that “think of how many minutes we have spent on prayers at economic and business meetings that are Nigerian. Now multiply them into hours and days and calculate how much productive time we have lost.
My conclusion is that prayers and religion are necessary to shape values; they do not run an economy. It is serious people who do. I hope the lesson will remain beyond WEF.”
Very sensibly put. And he points out the reason why the forum was so businesslike. “The reason is that this was not a Nigerian event; it was a global franchise hosting in Nigeria.” Notice the difference?
As Fashola perceptibly pointed out the obsession with self-importance and recognition is overbearing. Actually, he was too polite to point out the real McCoy. It is childlike. Infants, babies and children seek attention. Indeed they crave it! So do our deluded political class.
Showing that in spite of office, he is not totally cut off from reality, Fashola pointed out a key issue. “Unless the broadcast screened off all these parts, then I must have been the only one who did not see the introduction of our countless VIPs and their being ushered to the high table.”
Fashola is obviously (to my knowledge at least) not a psychologist. Nevertheless, you do not have to be one to know that this childish obsession with recognition is psychotic. As Fashola once again, very sensibly observed. “I did not see sessions being interrupted to announce the “late arrival” of a VIP who was being led to a front seat where somebody who is not a VIP, but who arrived on time, will have to yield his seat for a person who at best should have been kept out of the venue for tardiness or, at worst, being given a vacant seat at the back of the hall.”
Fashola’s intervention is very critical. It is pleasing that there are still members of Nigeria’s political establishment who have not totally lost their minds. It is this delusion of grandeur that has led to fleets of presidential jets, ludicrous convoys and burgeoning recurrent expenditure. Fashola’s article is a ray of hope it ought to be turned into the light at the end of the tunnel.