By Adagbo ONOJA
One would still have to comb the newspapers in particular, specifically March 28th, 29th and 30th, 2024 so as to be sure that potential advertisers abided by President Tinubu’s dicta against any “form of birthday event and placing of birthday goodwill advertorial messages in newspapers”. And against “any celebratory event on his behalf or in his name” by any set of well-wishers. One has to read the newspapers on those days because, in Nigeria, it could be one thing for the president to decree against advertisements on his birthday but another for potential practitioners of that track of accessing power to comply. A similar standpoint elsewhere was disregarded in a previous demonstration of desperation.
The observable desperation about birthday advertorials especially when it involves a sitting president gives the practice its ‘chuwa-chuwa’ character in Nigeria. This is the point in taking notice of Tinubu’s own categorical disapproval of it this time. The Heavens would not have fallen if the president didn’t stop birthday advertorials on him but, in stopping it, he has saved the rest of the country from another round of dry, superfluous articulation of the president and Presidency by elements who are into husbanding praise singing, sycophancy, showy loyalty and simplistic answers to diffuse ends. It thus becomes an example of a little thing that matter, particularly in critiquing that culture of mindlessness in Nigeria.
They may be praise singers, sycophants, showy loyalists and peddlers of speculative claims but, in so far as they use language, their advertorials partake in power. Those we are calling praise singers, sycophants, showy loyalists and providers of simplistic answers constitute a very effective category in ways of accessing power. They do because they agree with Nietzsche that “what things are called is comparably more important than what they are”. In consciously or unconsciously following that punchline, their language use reverses the we/they binary which provoke conflict. Their target, mostly consumers but the president in this case, come off as the great guy. Calling a sitting president a great guy at a time of severe social tension can turn popular sentiments against him just as it could swell popular sentiments in his favour in a very diffuse society like Nigeria. A risk reading of advertorials on his birthday might have informed the president’s distancing act but it is doubtful if fear of risks would have deterred the president.
Whichever reason(s) informed the president’s distancing act, his move is worth taking note of in critical circles. For, in that move, there is a hint of the possibility of Tinubu somehow standing up to the most active bearers of the windfall mindedness that drive rentier desperados to presenting themselves in terms of resolving complicated puzzles about which they may actually have read no literature in the last few decades. They come in seemingly purposeful, relevant platforms and garbs but, in most cases, it is more of smartness than substance. To the extent that a sinking Nigeria cannot afford impostors, the Tinubu Riot Act to potential celebrants of his birthday contain a positive hint on the possibility of a whiff of fresh air. Nothing is wrong of them wanting to make money but doing so without bringing anything new or qualitative to the table is where the problem is. The president of a country in Nigeria’s current mess loses nothing by telling all such impostors to give him a breathing space. There is a sense in which that is what Tinubu seems to have done by categorically asking potential celebrants of his birthday to hold it. Notwithstanding the discursive character of all human actions, what the president has done still carries a message beyond whatever motivated the president. In any case, the truth of his motivation can never be established since truth is not an empirical but articulatory outcome.
It would be great if it is also a hint that the regime is done with a critical synthesis of the apologia, false starts, kite flying, red lines and Riot Acts, threats, test of strength with critics and civil society, initial scandals, reversals and so on that usually marks the first year of most regimes and is now set to convert the synthesis into policy moves that will rupture the scandalous governmentality of yesteryears. A word should be enough for the wise because it can be torturous to be president of Nigeria and not make history. As difficult as it is to define history-making in a century in which everything is contested or contestable, there is still something called history-making. Sometimes, it costs nothing in financial terms to make that move!
