The Port Harcourt visit threw up a lot to cherish. A marvel of a flyover, a pageant of dancers and songs, a kaleidoscope of fashion, a bonhomie of national unity.
But the social media did what it often does best: invent a lie and run with it. President-elect Bola Tinubu turned it into another teachable moment. At the banquet, he responded with the quip: “Get educated.” The next day, he reminded the people that he was only a president-elect, not president. He explained that the request from Rivers State Governor Nyesom Wike was a policy request. He was not in a position to act on a policy. That would make him a subvert.
He was not like some people who wanted President Muhammadu Buhari to upturn the law and not swear him into office. In his own case, he did not want to act as though the justices had already sworn him in. He had no conscience for such impunity of impatience. His meal is coming to his dinner table. He does not need to crane and peer at the kitchen. The aroma signifies a promise and coming destiny.
President-elect is not an office. If an office, it is in the offing. It is a title of expectation enshrined in the people’s verdict. It is a promissory status. So, if Governor Wike said out of half-humour and half-gravity that his note was ready for him for May 29, Tinubu responded in the same temperament. When he said, “I owe you nothing,” Wike shook with laughter. His internet interpreters frowned with malice. They were having a headache on the governor’s behalf.
When Tinubu said Wike would have to lobby him, it was a statement of temporary impotence. He could do nothing now. Even when that time came, he would have to look at the state of the exchequer. He was wise. He was not going to concede right away. It was a testament to Tinubu’s presence of mind. Nothing testified to such prescience than what Ebonyi State Governor David Umahi revealed at the banquet. The governor, now senator-elect, revealed that when Wike made the request, Jigawa State Governor Mohammed Badaru was clutching a sheet of paper with his own list. And another governor had followed suit. But once Tinubu responded to Wike, the two governors tossed their sheets of demand. So, it was an elaborate joke. The internet parade was not in on the laugh.
Again, Governor Wike had at the banquet chided the internet worms to go beyond the surface and probe the spirit of the exchange. Tinubu had come in a spirit of reciprocity, what Wike had popularized as Iyendeba, Iyendeba. So, we saw two men banter, and the internet in a stutter. Tinubu remarked the next day, in his first response to internet worms, that they have called him different sorts of names. But what struck this essayist was that since the election period, the president-elect has been imparting knowledge to his traducers.
We cannot forget, for instance, the moment he promised to recharge Lake Chad. This was when he visited Borno State. In their ignorance, they revealed their narrow understanding of language, a lack of grasp of the power of metaphor. If you can charge a glass of whiskey with just a shot, when you release thousands of gallons into a lake, what would you call it? It was in Borno State, the state of now vice-president-elect Kashim Shettima, who as governor, pointed out the lake as a main source of the state’s unrest. The same crowd revealed their fashion ignorance when they saw suit over sneakers at the NBA conference. That was until a flurry of international pictures with models in the same outfits exposed their outdated eyes. Shettima won, the internet zero.
The other one was his comment about poisoned communion and church rat, and rather than understand the intricacies of his metaphor, they revived their so-called Muslim-Muslim prejudice. They, including Christian clerics, who saw nothing wrong in one other candidate who placed a Christian as a subordinate candidate but chuckled over a Christian candidate subordinating a Muslim, thought Tinubu’s metaphor was irreverent. Tinubu educated them on the value of environmental nationalism, and how we cannot run our economy on a Western clock. If they abused the environment to make wealth, we have a right to abuse it too, hence the poisoned communion. But if they want to retain the sanctity of the green earth, they have to pay us. The roughneck who becomes a priest has no right to condemn other rough necks in the street who would be priests later without giving them holy communion first.
Tinubu taught. Some understood. Most of the howlers did not understand it. They do not have the subtlety to grasp the interstices of the logic. They now fear his mind. Rather than acknowledge, they pelt abuse.
This shows that we need a conversation on how to save discourse in this country. Free speech is good. It is a tenet of democratic progress. But we can sometimes mistake stylized chaos of a fascistic liberty for free speech. Isaiah Berlin, the philosopher, worried that freedom means different things for good and bad people. Boko Haram, for instance, may see their butchery as freedom to entrench a theocracy. We are seeing those who desecrate liberty today. Freedom to push ethnic agenda. Freedom to turn church into a magisterial pulpit for Christ’s kingdom on earth. In between, we have the nasty, brutish voices who celebrate misery, skew facts, upturn order, flay the innocent, sacralise the deviant, defy logic.
The law must come to play in this area, where those who libel must pay in the court of law. And those who peddle cancerous untruths must suffer the consequences. Recently, a toxic television station Fox News was humbled for working with the Trump group to deny that President Joe Biden won the polls. They brayed that the company known as Dominion had twisted the figures. They were forced to settle out of court after paying close to a billion dollars. Another company, Smartmatic, is also in court. The main culprit, one anchor, has been fired. It was a humbling moment for a peacock station that thrived on lies. This is a cautionary tale. The best way to temper the rabble on television and the internet is to hit them at their raw spot: their pocketbooks.
Some of the internet worms have no money. If they know there is consequence for foul speech and lies, they will not poop in public if they know they will be pooh-poohed.
NB: Sam Omatseye is a respected columnist with The Nation Newspaper.
