Whoever came up with the idea of unveiling the portrait of President Bola Tinubu at the June 12, 2024, Democracy Day celebrations must be a sycophant of the highest order. He misadvised himself, presidential aides and the President on this very uncool action.
These mischief makers are about to create the monster of a personality cult around a President who may soon assume the status of the state, like French King Louis XIV, who claimed to be the state.
Not even military President Ibrahim Babangida and despot General Sani Abacha, with their military temperament, encouraged hero-worshipping to go this absurd distance. No civilian President should travel this route.
If you like to know, a personality cult is a group of fawning individuals, who usually claim to share the same ideology and beliefs with their leader, whom they deify and try to persuade, or compel others to worship.
Perhaps the closest to a personality cult in Nigeria was formed around Obafemi Awolowo, the first Premier of Western Nigeria. He led the Action Group and Unity Party of Nigeria. He was called a leader. Another one was formed around President Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana. These were relatively benign.
A more harmful personality cult, built around Fuhrer Adolf Hitler, was ‘Fuhrerprinzip’ or “Leader Principle,” whereby the word of the Fuhrer was above the law, government policies and decisions.
This practice, adopted to realise only the will of the Fuhrer, was the basis of Nazi fascism.
The cult of personality must not be encouraged; it is the easiest way to recreate the military dictatorship that Nigerians rejected, and the fastest route to compromising the democratic gains that even President Tinubu had joined many others to fight for.
This tendency of creating the image of a benevolent do-gooder leader started with this crisis-ridden Fourth Republic. Sycophants started by referring to whoever was the President as Baba. The latest variant is the unveiling on 2024 Democracy Day. Some are already wearing the Tinubu infinity emblem on their caps. Very soon, they’ll be wearing his image on their chests.
The portrait project was said to have been initiated by a consortium of the Artefact Gallery, Best Theatre Company and the National Council for Arts and Culture that assembled a team of 37 artists across the country, with one from each of the states of the federation.
It is both ironic and incongruous that the sycophants are unwittingly paving the way for a potential dictatorship on the day and at the venue where they are celebrating democracy, whose hallmarks promote the supremacy of the majority rule over dictatorship.
The action of these sycophants can cause average Nigerians to fall into suicidal depression as they are trying their best to come to terms with current economic doldrums that seem increasingly untamable.
Those demonstrators chanting ebi npa wa, or we are hungry, on that day at Allen Avenue, Ikeja, not too far from Lagos State Secretariat in Ikeja, wouldn’t have been too excited to see film footage of the portrait’s unveiling on TV– because it smacks of a high level of insensitivity. It “iiiis” insensitive!
“The cult of personality must not be encouraged; it is the easiest way to recreate the military dictatorship that Nigerians rejected, and the fastest route to compromising the democratic gains that even President Tinubu had joined many others to fight for.”
Of course, no Nigerian would think that Tinubu suggested this type of brazen sycophancy. So, no one is taking the blame to his doorstep. The President, who described Abiola as “the most significant symbol of our democratic struggles,” may not have known that it was his image that was going to be unveiled.
Civil servants are masters of the art of deceit. Even if they told the President that there was going to be an unveiling at Eagle Square, they may not have provided enough details that would allow him to know what they were up to, and perhaps halt the move.
Nothing is wrong in commissioning a portrait of the President. But when you add this wrongheaded unveiling to the Bola Tinubu Anthem, ‘On Your Mandate We Shall Stand’, reminiscent of the ‘Bash Ali You Are Very Great’ encomium by Fuji megastar, Ayinla Kollington, it reeks of a personality cult.
Everything must be done to discourage the same tendency that was exhibited by the pigs, led by Napoleon, in “Animal Farm,” the satirical allegory written by George Orwell. They created a narrative of a charismatic, idealised and heroic leader, who is infallible.
Mischievous people have stretched the meaning of the Tinubu anthem by equating it to the “Four Legs Good, Two Legs Better” refrain in “Animal Farm,” where pigs walked on their hind legs, like human beings, rather than all fours, like animals.
That the painting is the biggest on canvas does not make it acceptable; neither is the promise that proceeds from patrons, who will watch it in a “cultural museum,” will be donated to the welfare of 25,000 indigent children.
Its unveiling at the Democracy Day parade was inappropriate and in poor taste. It would have been okay if it was unveiled at the President’s birthday party. Everything must be done to avoid creating a messianic halo above the head of a man who is still on the cusp of achieving a successful tenure as President of Nigeria.
Dr Reuben Abati and Rufai Oseni, co-anchors of Arise News TV’s “The Morning Show,” preferred the image of MKO Abiola, symbol of Nigeria’s democracy; a collage of Abiola and other pro-democracy advocates who took on the military (or maybe a group of Nigerian commoners, for whom democracy is wrought).
But it certainly wasn’t going to be. And Reuben and Rufai were disappointed by the tribe of sycophants whose fawning and unnecessary adoration of the President proved to have no bounds or limit.
Now that the unthinkable has been done, it is probably appropriate to ask who paid for the portrait. Is it the people of Nigeria, the All Progressives Congress ruling party, family or friends of the President?
Interestingly, when the President fell as he was climbing onto the parade jeep to inspect the guard of honour, mounted by members of the Armed Forces and the police, the futility of presenting him as an infallible idol was underlined.
And some cheeky people have turned the unfortunate incident into an opportunity to throw jibes at the President. They said that all they were hoping to fall was the price of foodstuffs and not the President.
The President humorously took on those that Vice President Kashim Shettima would have described as “techno-anarchists” natives of the social media, with his banter that his fall was “a prostration for democracy,” thus turning their troll into much ado about nothing.
The presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi, thinks anyone could trip and fall. American President Joe Biden has fallen a few times, even inside the White House. Some Biden predecessors, who have had a great fall, like Humpty Dumpty, include generally surefooted Gerald Ford and athletic basketball player, Barack Obama.
Those aides of the President who thrive on creating issues unnecessarily should be mindful of whatever suggestions they make to him. They should neither mislead him nor do things that may cause the misgivings of the citizens against him. They shouldn’t buy him “the wrong market.”
Those who suggested the unveiling of the portrait during the Democracy Day celebrations should be taken far away from participating in planning events that may become situation-normal-all-fumbled-up.
To borrow the Russian word for “No,” it’s nyet to the personality cult.