In a nation often fueled by leadership disappointments, the rare moments of collective relief are deeply cherished. Few instances bring Nigerians together as much as the times when their leaders experience a wardrobe mishap or a physical blunder.
One such moment revealed itself last week when President Bola Ahmed Tinubu slipped and fell inside a decorated vehicle at the Eagle Square. The President was marking the National Democracy Day Parade.
President Tinubu took the first pot shot at himself, describing the fall as a dọbálẹ (prostration) for democracy and that he would not fall the hands of his citizens. If banter could smoothen the aches of failure; if jokes could lighten the burden of survival, these banters would reduce the unprecedented rise in the prices of tomatoes, pepper, and cooking oil.
It's important to acknowledge the small yet significant progress we've made towards tolerance and the expansion of democratic values. Reflecting on the past, there was a time when Ibrahim Coomassie, the police commissioner of Kwara State at the time, collapsed from exhaustion during a National Day parade. This incident led to a tense situation where my mentor and news editor, Mr. Ademola Adetula, was forced to leave his post as police encircled the Herald's headquarters in Ilorin, demanding answers for the publication of what they considered a 'state secret'.
President Tinubu's slip of tongue – a townhall meeting different from a balablu blu bulaba, immediately took excoriation traction among his political opponents and artistes of the song – Baba wey no well, e dey shout Emi Lokan!
From America to Cuba and Russia, presidents trip and fall. The oldest being the 1975 fall of President Gerald Ford at the Vienna meet with late Egyptian president, Anwar Sadat. Since that fall, many other American presidents – young and old – have tripped and fell.
We must commend President Tinubu for having the decency to laugh at himself. We all now know what to do for democracy – which is dọbálẹ for it so that it can serve us in this era of a townhall that is different from Balablu Blu Bulaba!
The big question is often asked whether it is professionally right to focus on these foibles instead of on the more important issues of core politics. In journalism, it is often said that it is not news when a fly feasts on an open sore; it becomes newsworthy when the person with the sore swats the insect and gobbles it. One good definition of news is anything out of the ordinary.
Looking at the way the government of Benyamin Netanyahu has prosecuted the so-called war on Hamas imbues one with a deja-vu on why slavery lasted over 300 years and the pogrom lasted as long as it did. All it takes for evil to persist is for traditionally good people to say and do nothing.
