Minister of Internal Affairs, Mr. Dambazau, disgraces Nigeria by ordering an SSS officer to shine his shoes in public

Posted by admin Headlines Friday, January 22nd, 2016

COLUMN
By Enlola Bello
There’s been a video clip trending on the social media in the last two days in which Interior Minister Abdulrahman Bello Dambazau is the star actor. The video shows Dambazau, resplendent in babariga, sitting comfortably on a sofa at a public ceremony, his palms placed downwards on his thighs, a distant look in his eyes as one faceless fellow in dark suit, a pistol protruding from his side pocket, squats and cleans with what appears to be a white hanky, the shoe on the minister’s right foot. Without even a glimpse at the man labouring at his feet, but perhaps having been informed the dusty shoe on the right foot has had the glassy shine befitting of a minister’s status restored, Dambazau pushes his left foot forward so the second shoe in the pair could receive the cleaning and shining treatment. Many have concluded that Dambazau’s emergency shoe shiner, on the strength of his non-descript suit and protruding gun, is a DSS personnel. That may be true. The fellow could also be some personnel of any other security agency. Afterall as a former Chief of Army Staff and retired general, Dambazau is entitled to a couple of military aides. And as Interior Minister, he oversees the Nigeria Police Force and Nigeria Immigration Services and could invoke the power of his office for all manner of security details that he may desire. As an officer in the Army, Dambazau must have had a soldier detailed to shine his pair of boots every morning. But then that was in the exclusivity of military barracks.

However, to import that culture into public office and sit down like a 14th century monarch of an imperial kingdom as an aide shines his shoes at a public ceremony crosses the line in bad manners. To subject a citizen to such indignity is a new low in the serial indignities politicians and public officials have subjected their aides in the last 16 years of civil rule. Indeed, the widespread impunity, which has been the hallmark of this democratic dispensation since 1999, has resulted from citizen failure to collectively frown on series of indignities for which politicians subject their aides or the scorn with which they generally treat ordinary Nigerians. The civil society needs to take ownership of the change slogan on which wind President Muhammadu Buhari was voted into office. The change can only begin to make meaning when we, all, assist this government in redefining public office. I’ll take a look in into four areas.

1) Titles do not the office make: The 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic, even as amended, recognises the Office of the President or Office of the Governor (in case of a state). However, barely had the governments been inaugurated on May 29, 1999 that a simple identification of Mr. President or Mr. Governor in spoken or written form became Executive President and Executive Governor. How the word ‘Executive’ was smuggled in still remains a mystery but the impression was created that without that word, both offices were necessarily divested of their executive powers. Like every travesty in our clime, the distortion became the norm as every occupier of those offices has since basked in the warmth of borrowed robes.

The same constitution also recognises the Office of the Senate President and Office of the Speaker of the House of Representatives. Perhaps not to be outdone, the senators didn’t find ‘Distinguished’ good enough a title without the prefix, ‘His Excellency’. And when members of the House could not understand why they should simply be addressed as ‘Honourable’ when every state commissioner, MDA chiefs, local government councilors and even party executives are so addressed, somebody came up with the grand title, ‘The Right Honourable’. Had all these been done by we, the ordinary citizens, we would probably have been charged with impersonation or acting under false pretences. By not frowning on and rejecting these distortions, by celebrating titles not known to our laws, we encouraged the politicians to assume a larger than life image and treat us with scorn. We can begin the process of stopping this nonsense today.

2) Convoy in apartheid: Before he was elected, he was one of us, or at least pretended to be. The politician opened his compound to the people, met with his constituents, shook the hands of the ordinary folks, danced to their drumming and singing, and was a partaker in their mourning and celebrations. Elect the politician a governor and deputy and senator and honourable, then see him furiously drive past the ordinary people on the dirt roads or bumpy highways, blaring siren clearing the way for a convoy of SUVs with tinted windscreen, policemen and soldiers wielding their horsewhips and their guns, the passenger inside the vehicles unknown and unknowable. Suddenly, the convoy, in addition to other appurtenances of office, create a wedge between the politician and the people – some kind of they versus we divide. Rather for the people to frown on the politician’s dishonourable conduct, they wave from a distance in awe and admiration and anguish. A fellow who before his election had only one or two cars sees himself being ferried around in a convoy of 20 cars and assumes he’s the best specimen created by God. The more scorn he pours on the people in the management of state affairs or performance in office, the more he’s garlanded and honoured with meaningless chieftaincy titles and awards.

3) Aides, aides, aides: What is it with our politicians and their penchant for appointing and going about with scores and scores of aides. In addition to ministers and commissioners at the executive level, there are special advisers and senior special assistants and special assistants and personal assistants for all manner of duties, visible and invisible. The politician, on being elected, tends to equate the high number of aides to the importance attached to his office. These jobless aides crowd around him everywhere he goes, parroting every thing he says and making him to believe he’s God incarnate. In no time, the man overestimates his self-worth, as he is constantly drenched in praises and hero worship. Then he swings the whip of indignity on his aides, and when unchallenged the people.wp_posts