GOVERNOR Nasir El Rufai of Kaduna State, on Monday, enrolled his six-year-old son, Abubakar, into Primary One at the Capital School Malali, Kaduna, a public school, in fulfillment of a promise he made in 2017.
By enrolling his son in the public school, El Rufai seeks to reinvent his cantankerous repute on charitable footing. To succeed, he needs empathy and media mention; these he is getting in dubious overload.
For instance, the social media debates the imperative of his widely publicised visit to his son’s school and the suspicious photo ops; so doing, El Rufai scuds to acclaim on a slippery scallop shell, the heraldic shield of the random politician’s crafty origins.
In 2017, the Kaduna governor reportedly vowed in a state broadcast, to enroll his child in a public school when he clocks six.
He said: “As we make progress, we will require our senior officials to enroll their children in public schools. And I will by personal example ensure that my son that will be six years of age in 2019 will be enrolled in a public school in Kaduna State, by God’s grace.”
Shortly after he enrolled his child, El Rufai explained to newsmen: “I made that commitment because I believe that it is only when all political leaders have their children in public schools that we will pay due attention to quality of public education.”
Mother of the child, Ummi, described her husband’s action as “a strong message to our leaders and the elites, that we need to start making things work from within our homes.
“By the time we start attending public hospitals and send our children to public schools, the system will get better,” she said.
On his part, little Abubakar said: “I am sad that I will miss my old school, my friends and my teachers. But I have to help my father keep his promise.”
Vintage El Rufai. His statement resonates harmoniously with his wife and son’s thus fulfilling the purpose of his craftily scripted political high drama. Some of the circulated pictures of his latest manoeuvre show him in various poses with his son. There is one in which he spots a dreamy mien staring at six-year-old Abubakar, while the latter stares beyond the governor, pulling at his bag strap.
That shot, among others, was carefully chosen to portray the governor as a bleeding Goliath, eager to immerse in his people’s plight.
Whatever his critics’ argument against him, El Rufai has stolen some thunder. His action depicts classic artifice. But praiseworthy artifice, given the ignorance of his audience in the theatre of the blind.
El Rufai’s action no doubt intones the flurry of a jazzy altarpiece. In the garish epiphany, the governor invades our picture plane, seeking to dominate the public eye and mind. Does he?
Having attracted condemnation via his recent rants up north and in Lagos, El Rufai drifts like flotsam against the elements of Nigeria’s political deep; eventually, he hopes to bathe in propitious sunlight.
The Kaduna governor understands that the most essential skill in political theatre is artifice. Political leaders, who deploy artifice to create a sense of faux intimacy with citizens, hardly need to be sincere or competent. All they need is an inspiring personal narrative.
Honesty becomes tangential in their quest for empathy and appeal. The emotive quality of the narrative is, however, paramount.
Those incapable of artifice are deemed unworthy of the people’s votes. They are considered ‘unreal.’ Their unreality, however, is never solely a function of their inability to deploy artifice to political and personal advantage but a consequence of their self-deceit.
While El Rufai betrays studious mathematical calculation in quest of higher political office in 2023, the members of the idle Presidential Aspirants Coming Together (PACT), for instance, careen in self-deception or what some public commentator rightly identified as ‘elite naivete.’
The supposedly intelligent, vibrant youths, who vowed to make PACT a platform on which the best and most acceptable aspirants, are backed by all to fly the youth’s presidential flag in 2019 against the might of Nigeria’s behemoth parties, are disconcertingly quiet few months after they got outclassed and out-played in Nigeria’s general elections.
For all their presumed depth, the PACT collective crumbled as the ‘young’ aspirants bickered and whined like clueless youngsters over a kite. Selfishness, greed and immaturity hampered their bid to gift Nigeria with what could have been an inspiring team of bright, spirited candidates or a semblance of it.
Forget PACT, where are the likes of Kingsley Moghalu? Of course, their apologists would claim that they are quietly impacting lives, raising protégés. But of what use is their influence and mentorship, where their impact resonates like the tired drizzle atop an ocean of filth?
Moghalu and PACT may learn a manoeuvre or two from the likes of El Rufai. Agreed, artifice is hardly the way to go, but they need to get off their high horse and engage with people at the grassroots, purposefully.
The ones whose votes would determine their fates as aspirants and self-proclaimed Messiahs are never present at TEDtalk events. They are never part of the ‘elite’ and ‘sophisticated’ audience of ‘26, 000’ that crowd the seats at The Platform, their elite talk-shop.
There is no gainsaying that fora like The Platform are pivotal, partially, to the spread of progressive waves of consciousness and political awareness among the youth and supposedly literate voter divide, but at the end, the super-charged debates and inspiring deliberations peter out beyond the walls of their talk-shop, like the drone of dung beetles outside the latrine.
It’s 2019 and El Rufai presents with ‘lessons’ on political savvy. Let the “youthful disrupters” understand that their usual practice of dismissing the north and the incumbent ruling class as a coven of political illiterates depicts greater naivete and illiteracy on their part.
It’s about time they got involved with the people. Terrorism, flooding, internal displacement, grinding poverty, among others, present wonderful opportunities for them to sow seeds of hope and acclaim among Nigeria’s vulnerable, voter divide.
What if Moghalu and the PACT collective summon their savvy and socio-economic capital to renovate and equip Primary Healthcare Centres (PHCs), schools and roads across Nigeria’s neglected regions? Imagine the political currency that could afford them en route the 2023 elections?
Imagine Fela Durotoye on a one month sojourn, in the northeast, bolstering relief efforts with gifts of a honest smile, provisions and scholarships, far from the arena of artifice and applause.
Imagine Sowore exuding a different kind of spunk and spittle; one that sees him commencing his #RevolutionNow crusade down south by seeking justice and compensation for victims of Chevron Nigeria Ltd (CNL)’s 74-day fire disaster in the Ilaje Local Government area of Ondo State.
But these would require them to actually engage with disadvantaged folk and communities at the grassroots. It would require that they actually feel. They would rather wait to mount The Platform to speak easy or roll their sleeves on a task with the random labourer and market woman of the sidewalk, for the camera, at election time.
Yet theirs is a curious form of artifice. But it pales, distressingly, to El Rufai’s enrollment of his ward in a public school. That’s a tactical manoeuvre.