To gaffe is human

Going by reports, our country comes under fresh global spotlight this Monday as United States President Donald Trump hosts Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari in Washington. Well, one watchword to advise for that outing, with all due respect, is that to gaffe is human, but to be decidedly guarded in utterance is crucial wisdom.

Presidential comments, no matter how casually meant, have juristic import. Little wonder that some comments by the Nigerian leader during his recent trip to London for the Commonwealth summit elicited lashbacks from segments of the citizenry that held those comments improper. And truth be told: this wasn’t because many Nigerians just have a penchant for mischief or twisting the president’s words out of their lexical zones. Of course, electioneering is upon us and some partisans, true to character, had a field day milking political capital from the controversial comments. But the comments were in themselves what they verily were – gaffes.

When the president during a meeting with Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, for instance, blamed the raging menace of killer herdsmen in Nigeria on militias that were armed by former Libyan despot Muammar Gaddafi, who purportedly found their way into our country after Gaddafi was killed, he seemed unmindful that if at all true, with Gaddafi having died since 2011, the present virulence of such militias seven years after being let loose is inevitably a damning indictment of the Nigerian government’s security competency. Besides, Nigeria shares no contiguity with Libya. Benue State where herdsmen killings have been persistent and frequent is more than 4,500 kilometres from Tripoli. Countries nearer to the Gulf nation like Algeria, Egypt, Sudan and Chad had not blamed their security challenges on Gaddafi’s militias, and so it was curious that Nigeria would by any stretch of imagination do.

Meanwhile, the killings in Benue and other hot spots like Nasarawa State are not letting up; actually, they are getting worse by the day. Scores were hacked down in their communities in just the past week, and security agencies are beginning to look truly helpless about the menace. The relevant issue to address, one would think, is how to halt these killings immediately, whoever may be to blame for them.

A more contentious comment by the president during his London trip was the statement at the Commonwealth Business Forum that a lot of Nigerian youths were not putting out, and yet were waiting for freebies. He was reported to have said at the forum, which was touted as ‘a truly unique and historic opportunity to promote and celebrate the very best of the Commonwealth to a global audience,’ that while more than 60 percent of Nigeria’s population of conservatively 180 million persons is below the age of 30, “a lot of them have not been to school and they are claiming that Nigeria has been an oil producing country, therefore they should sit and do nothing and get housing, healthcare and education free.”

Government spokespersons have been at pains since then to draw a hard line against criticisms that the president threw Nigerian youths under the bus before the world audience. Information and Culture Minister Lai Mohammed accused the critics of trying to incite the youths against a leader whose administration had made enormous investment in that population segment through job creation, school feeding and youth empowerment programmes, among others. “This is a government that is so concerned and passionate about youth development, and it is not right for people to begin to quote Mr. President out of context and thereby incite the youths against the government,” he said penultimate Friday.

(By the way, has anyone heard any intervention from Youths and Sports Minister Solomon Dalung on this matter, or is his job description limited to only the sporting aspects of his designated portfolio?)

Earlier, presidential spokesman Femi Adesina argued that the president never cited “all of” Nigerian youths, but “a lot of” them, and he linked the whole uproar to “manipulators and twisters of statements of Mr. President, who lie in wait to make mischief.”

Opportunists and mischief-makers are by all means to be condemned. But could the president have avoided giving them fodder for their fire? Obviously, he very well could have, because this particular comment not only begged the question but was also contestable. For one, it needs to be checked out if the greater number of Nigerian youths who have not been to school are as such owing to idle expectation of oil rents, or whether governments over the years have by omission or commission frustrated their educational ambitions and restricted their access to school.

Then, it really isn’t the case that “a lot of (youths)… are claiming that Nigeria has been an oil producing country, therefore they should sit and do nothing and get housing, healthcare and education free.” That is not by any contortion the present-day Nigeria. The idle goodies of this country’s oil riches were exhaustively commandeered and squandered by the ageing generation, and all that is left is the acidic residue of a rusty oil pot out of which many of the younger ones are now striving to make decent pies. Just think on it: where is the remote possibility of free housing, healthcare or education in today’s Nigeria that any youth could have idle expectations of even if they wanted to?

Most of all is that the London forum was primarily a platform intended for Commonwealth leaders to showcase their countries’ hidden strengths and advantages to attract potential investors. And it is difficult to see how the comment about Nigerian youths – be it most of them or, indeed, very few – serves that objective, never mind whether or not the claim is indeed true. Already, there are many negative stereotypes about Nigeria that those potential investors were likely looking out to be dissuaded about. But the president’s comment only served to reinforce the stereotypes.

It is common knowledge that the London talk-down on youths wasn’t the president’s first about Nigeria before foreign audiences. Could it be he slips into this mode because he feels compelled at international fora to show the world how hard his administration is working, and so he cites damning societal contexts out of which he makes the straws for his haystacks? If so, he is invariably the lead figure of the Nigerian spirit as of now. And as such, he must find strength to resist impulses to impress foreigners at the cost of tarring the personality that he epitomises.

As President Buhari hits Washington this Monday, therefore, it is expected that he’ll carry the Nigerian personality with gusto; if need be, with arrogance. His host, President Trump, is famed as it were for xenophobic hubris and once dubbed Nigeria along with other African nations and the southern American states of Haiti and El Salvador “shithole countries.” This is a golden opportunity to make him recant that tag, at least on Nigeria, and give this country some due respect.

When former British Prime Minister David Cameron, in a conversation with Queen Elizabeth just ahead of an anti-corruption summit in May 2016 described Nigeria as a fantastically corrupt country, the Nigerian leader, who attended the summit, was interviewed by Sky News and asked whether he wanted an apology from Cameron. “No, not all,” he responded. He was asked if he was embarrassed by what Cameron said. “No, I am not,” he answered. He was then asked if Nigeria is truly fantastically corrupt. “Yes,” he posited. That should by no means be the president’s disposition to negative presumptions about Nigeria famously being harboured by Mr. Trump.

But beyond seeking to change the existing stereotypes, the president should be guarded against unwittingly reinforcing them with fresh gaffes.

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