Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu of Lagos State, sometime ago, took time off his job to announce with fanfare his rejection of ‘Excellency’, a portentous prefix largely used in Nigeria to address men and women of authority. That he did so is not what intrigues me (after all, he is not the first governor to have rejected the title), but the way he did it, as if commissioning a great project he has accomplished in the first six months of his tenure. Talk of humility with a tinge of haughtiness. Why waste precious governance time and lengthy paragraphs of dogo turenchi just to announce that you want to be addressed as “Mr. Governor”.
It might well be a great a project in the governor’s estimation as he didn’t have to wait for the end of the raining season to execute it. If adopting a title took the governor half a year to execute, who knows how much longer it will take him to get bitumen to broken roads across the state. And what difference does a title really make, anyway? “Rose by another name smells as well”, William Shakespeare told us in Romeo and Juliet. If a governor is clueless, he will continue to be clueless, and if he is corrupt, changing titles will not cut off his itching palms.
In 2007, it did not take Governor Babangida Aliyu of Niger State as many months as it has taken Sanwo-Olu to invent a new title for himself, although it took him for ever to reinvent himself in line with his chief servant status. Throughout his tenure, he remained his vintage self as a boss with all the gaiety it connotes, though not an excellent one. If he were, he wouldn’t be guest of the EFCC after his tenure.
What about the ‘comrade governor’ whose ‘go-and-die’ spat with a helpless widow so riled his citizens that he felt forced to recant or the Ogbeni Rauf who shamelessly scorned the scriptural admonition that the worker is deserving of his wages?
Excellency, or any other title for that matter, adopted by any governor does not hinder his ability to exercise restraints, make sacrifices and add value to the lives of the people. What impedes genuine citizen-leader relationship is the attitude which the leader brings into leadership and not the title by which he is addressed. So Sanwo-Olu’s ‘Mr. Governor’ title cannot in anyway change the narrative of governance in Lagos if he remains tardy in project delivery.
Therefore, what is needed across the political spectrum is change of attitude by both leaders and followers rather than of titles or prefixes. I say followers because the people are also complicit in investing the leader with such omnipotence that they practically worship him, adoring him with so many names. This is the crux of the matter. So how is Sanwo-Olu going to treat the overly subservient, obsequious and hypocritical state officials and others who feel ‘Mr. Governor’ is not respectful enough for ‘a whole’ governor?
In my view, those kinds of idolatrous titles are sustained by the people and not necessarily by the office holder. Only recently I met somebody I knew was a ‘chief’, and appropriately, I greeted him ‘good evening chief’. I did not know he had been ‘re-titled’ by some monarch and promptly, one of his hangers-on sitting by him told me most sternly, “He is a high chief”. And he had more than one of those diadems, it would also have been seen as ‘disrespectful’ if I did prefix the ‘chief’ with ‘double’ or ‘triple’ or ‘multiple’, as the case may be?
And what about ‘former’ which has become a title so much cherished by our incompetent politicians, for instance, ‘Distinguished Senator (Chief) Bamidele Johnson, former governor of Oyo State, former minister of aviation’ and so on?
Even as Sanwo-Olu has denounced the Excellency title, it will not stop the citizens or government officials from uttering phrases like: “I have discussed the matter with His Excellency”. Nigerians, someone suggested, are so stupidly worshipful of people in authority.
Ordinarily, when we address our governor or even our president we should be able to refer to him in second person and call him ‘Mr. Governor’, or ‘Mr. President’. For instance, “Mr. Governor, I had explained this to you the last time sir”. Or “Mr. President sir, what are your plans for lifting 10 million people out of poverty in the next two years”. It is tidy, it is dignifying and it is the sharp and straightforward language of business in the 21st century.
Beyond this, it is a grammatical error to refer to an official of government in the third person by his title. You cannot say, for instance, “His Excellency told me” or “Mr. Governor said so”, or “Mr. President called them to order”. That’s wrong. The correct expression is “The Governor said so” or “The President called them to order.” And why must you call a Senator ‘distinguished’. If you are addressing a senator, it is enough to simply say, “Senator Chukwuma, I think you are doing a great job”
This is the right way to put it. The press, the people, and not just the leader must help to inculcate and promote this culture of leader-citizen relationship by rejecting the vanities associated with the lengthy protocols of officialdom. We do not have to wait for each government official to decide how he wants to be addressed. If we want to build a productive society where government revolves around the people rather than the other way round, we must do away with the praise singing mentality and the stupidity and shameful indignities of worshipping our leaders and investing them with useless and meaningless titles.
As a friend rightly said, we need courage to do this, to adopt the sharp and straightforward language of business when dealing with government officials, even if it costs us a contract or something. It is called character. If we all do this, government officials wouldn’t go about with sickening arrogance demanding that we worship them. If they do, we, the people should refuse to offer it. if we fail to do this, then, it is really not the fault of the leaders alone. We, too, are complicit.
