Essential Snobbery 101: On good manners and seats

Well brought up

I grew up in a different time, or rather, I was brought up differently, and I am constantly met with the shock of contemporary attitudes and behaviour that the worldview I inhabit finds quite grating.

The reason why the different time matters is almost irrelevant, because I see people of my age behave in ways that leave much to be desired, so it must be the different way that is more significant.

I do not believe that certain things should become old-fashioned, be consigned to conservativeness and passed off as traditional values. Self-awareness and consideration of others still matter a great deal; besides the fact that manners should never be negotiable, they must be acquired at all costs and deployed at every opportunity.

Give up your seat

Yet today, as I sat on the train, an elderly lady boarded the train at the next stop carrying some luggage; it did not appear she was helped on, and there was no place for her to sit.

Even though I use a cane, I could not watch her standing, holding on for dear life as the train began to move. The many able-bodied people around us remained decidedly oblivious of her out of ignorance, the absence of breeding or sheer selfishness.

I got up and gave her my seat, which is what any well-taught person is supposed to do, at least, in the different way I was brought up. It was another two stops, some 20 minutes later, before a seat became vacant for me to sit down.

Make all allowances

Meanwhile, further along the carriage, there was a heavily pregnant woman who, in another time, would have been ushered to take a seat somewhere in the carriage. Someone would have initiated the move and asked another to give up their seat. The person giving up their seat, seeing the condition of the woman, would have happily obliged.

However, this appears to belong to a bygone age, people rush for priority seats, literally tripping up less able people in their race to be comfortable at the expense of seemingly more deserving people, and they hardly ever care when reminded of the fact that the notices do state an incontrovertible fact.

On good manners

Ladies are surprised when I take off my hat to chat to them, some might even take offence if you open the door for them or if you ascribe to the chivalry of ‘Ladies first’. Other bad habits like coughing and yawning without covering your mouth, eating on the street, elbows on the table – the list is endless, make one think we have become a global village of the uncouth and uncultured with air, grace, comportment or finesse.

Rough on all edges that we rub people up the wrong way, quite an appalling reflection on society today. It is not like one wants to rewrite Debrett’s guide on manners, etiquette, protocol, address or dress, but some things are just so, so as to really separate us from the wildness and chaos of the animal kingdom.

As I disembarked at my station, the elderly lady acknowledged me and mouthed a thank you. I tipped my head and smiled. We both knew there was a world we once knew that was fast disappearing from our present-day experiences.

I am saddened writing this, but we have attained, with the absence of certain aspects of social schooling, a level of inconsiderate selfishness where manners are the exception rather than the rule. A shame indeed.

Nigeria: Roll Back These First Lady Red Carpets

A Brief History of First Ladies

The concept of First Lady and the aura of officialdom that it carries was invented in the United States of America where the spouse of the sitting President or a lady relative in the case of an unmarried or widowed President served as the hostess of the White House.

Whilst there is no constitutional provision for the First Lady, there are elements of protocol and dignities conferred on her by reason of the position her husband holds.

Lisa M. Burns in her book First Ladies and the Fourth Estate: Press Framing of Presidential Wives (2008) suggests the following themes in First Ladyship in the United States of America as public woman (1900–1929); as political celebrity (1932–1961); as political activist (1964–1977); and as political interloper (1980–2001).

A Vulgarity of First Ladies

The same idea seems to have taken hold around the world with cliques of regional First Ladies gathering for all sorts of projects spanning one, some or all of those themes and more.

Nowhere has this role become even more prominent to include another theme of political aggrandisement and abuse than in Nigeria.

Sadly, the more recent First Ladies in Nigeria have left the graces and comportment one would have expected of them to become vain as exemplified sadly in the death by misadventure of Mrs Stella Obasanjo after a botched cosmetic surgery procedure, greed as depicted in the Wikileaks exposés of Mrs Turai Yar’Adua and Mrs or rather Dame Patience Jonathan appears to combine vanity, greed and a lack of moderation that leaves one astounded beyond words.

A Truth Commission Bites

Whilst it is difficult not to catch a whiff of vendetta against the previous governor of Ogun State, the establishment of the Ogun State Truth Commission under the chairmanship of Hon. Justice Pius O. Aderemi JSC (Rtd.) has brought some focus that should hopefully start the discourse about the role of First Ladies in Nigeria, having recommended the prosecution of the wife of the erstwhile governor of Ogun State.

Justice Pius Aderemi as a former justice of the Supreme Court of Nigeria I will presume is of the legal mind to properly assess these roles and even offer recommendations on how these roles should be undertaken.

Take Notice

A number of key statements in his recommendations are important to note and develop.

“The proven excesses of Mrs. Olufunke Daniel arose from the widespread abuse of spouses of Governors and Presidents when there is no legal basis for the office of First Lady in Nigeria. The State and Federal Governments should evolve an administrative mechanism that ensures that wives of Governors and Presidents carry out what they perceive to be their duties unobtrusively.”

“It is the view of the Commission that the victim established a prima facie case of criminal offence against Mrs. Olufunke Daniel,” Justice Aderemi said. “Mrs. Olufunke Daniel undoubtedly held herself out as a Public Officer by moving to the Petitioner’s house with armed police escorts and ordering the policemen to beat Mr. Odunaya.”

These two paragraphs are without doubt very lucid in the arguments that form the basis for putting the so-called First Ladies of any sitting official or even First Gentlemen, First Spouses or First Partners in their places.

The inference drawn here is that certain wives of Governors and Presidents have been given to both excess and abuse while answerable to no one, even though the immunity from prosecution their spouses have does not apply to them.

As We Stand

However the key points I want to make from these two paragraphs are the following.

• There is no legal basis for the office of any First Lady in Nigeria.
• An administrative mechanism that ensures that wives of Governors and Presidents carry out what they perceive to be their duties unobtrusively is need, more like a Code of Conduct and Ethics.
• The wife of a Governor or President can be criminally liable and is not above the law if anyone might need to seek redress for their actions.
• The wife of a Governor or President is not a Public Office, whilst they might have protective detail by reason of their status they do not have authority to use such detail to exact the law or forment activities that should be delegated and commanded by law enforcement officers.
• Now for reasons of protocol, the First Lady with her spouse present should be accorded the status, respect and dignities commensurate with her spouse when accompanying him.

Diplomacy and Courtesies

There is however nothing in the Order of Precedence Act that identifies a Nigerian First Lady of any description in her own right, no wives of any public officials are accorded any relevance in the absence of their husbands.

The fact that the wife of a Public Official is NOT a Public Official just by reason of marriage means they are not covered by the Order of Precedence.

Husbands may however confer rights of representation to non-official functions on their wives to stand in their stead and officiate thereby but not in the substantive office of their spouses.

Any dignities, graces, courtesies and respect accorded the wife of a public official is by reason of the respect given to her husband, that respect does not automatically endow a right or status of superiority on the wife when her husband is absent.

Proscribe this anomaly

However, crude this may sound, the excesses and abuses of First Ladies in Nigeria now requires we roll back the red carpets, dispense with the nauseating obsequiousness and tone down on the unnecessary genuflection and fawning.

They should return to being hostesses of the Presidential villas and Governor’s houses to be sometimes invited to cut the tape at garden bazaars. The entourages and corteges of the sycophantic apparatchiks clogging up our streets to the inconvenience of the many should stop forthwith.

In fact, we should only see or hear of the those First ladies when their husbands are out and about, this whole charade has become nuisance that even the utterly uncultured can no more abide.

Away with the Marie Antoinettes of our age.

References

Flash: Truth Commission Recommends Gbenga Daniel’s Wife, Monarch, Others For Trial « News Bytes

Nigeria: The First Lady Syndrome | AllAfrica

Order of Precedence of Public Officers in Nigeria [PDF Download]

Nigeria: The "success" of the Jeddah delegation

The search party

The Human Rights Writers’ Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) risks a state of myopic closed-mindedness having first spearheaded the consideration that the President be declared missing on medical grounds and search party be instituted to ascertain his whereabouts.

The Federal House of Representatives instituted a “search party” of sorts to seek out the President comprised of members of the House rather than some special composition prescribed by HURIWA.

All but one of the selected members were able to make the journey to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, the one being an unmarried lady would have been disqualified for visa requirements to Saudi Arabia even if she had presented her diplomatic passport rather than her Nigerian passport, but that was beside the point.

The host of delegates and President

The team arrived in Jeddah and would have by reasons of protocol been guests of the most senior Nigerian official in Saudi Arabia, that being the Nigerian Ambassador to Saudi Arabia.

The Ambassador would also have been the recognised host of the Nigerian President by our standards of protocol just as the President would have been a guest of the Saudi Arabian government by reason of his visiting the country in his capacity as the Nigerian President with the purported aim of opening a university in Saudi Arabia when he made his journey in November 2009.

As representatives of the Nigerian legislature visiting Saudi Arabia, the Ambassador would have known the main purpose of that entourage, to have at most an audience with the President of Nigeria or at least an observation of the President.

Inability to facilitate

For the first three days of that visit, the Ambassador who politically, legally and technically was host to the Nigerian President and the delegation from the House of Representatives could not facilitate an audience, an observation, a conversation or contact by all seemingly possible means with the Nigerian President.

As the reports go, the Ambassador tried to distract the delegation from their tasks by offering better accommodation, religious perks and tourist attractions which the delegation ably declined so as not be to distracted from their purpose and be compromised on their mission – that might call for some commendation.

Juliet not Jezebel

In any case, they eventually met with the First Lady, Hajia Turai Yar’Adua who from all indications was forlorn but hopeful, distressed but prayerful and so very aware of the condition of her husband.

The condition we can safely say could not be observed by persons who were not close family, by deduction one might surmise and aver that the President was in no condition to be seen for an audience or basic observation and probably in intensive care of some sort.

It is even possible that the President might not even be in the condition to see his wife, recognise her and consequently converse coherently with her – the picture painted of the situation reveals a lady who is a Juliet rather than a Jezebel – this is no woman scheming to retain the trappings of power and influence, I would suggest this lady just wants her Romeo back, alive, strong, able and responsive.

Those opportunists

The unfortunate thing is the faceless mandarins pulling the levers of power were already aware of her preoccupation with the health of her husband but conveniently co-opted her name and supposed influence to mask their conspiratorial Machiavellian activities.

It cannot be safely said those people were rooting for President Yar’Adua by any stretch of the imagination, but as long as they could keep us all in limbo about the state of the President they could pretend to have the eyes, ears and blessing of the President and his wife to run roughshod over the Nigerian Constitution and the Nigerian people.

A useful visit

That delegation by not being able to see the President through lawfully constituted provisions of assignment, protocol and purpose proved that the President not being available to meet under every possible circumstance was probably too incapacitated for himself, talk less of the office he had so far held.

For that reason, I do not believe that meeting was a wasteful and fruitless journey as HURIWA clamours. Regardless of the developments that have since ensued, the deduction HURIWA should have made should have been closer to recognising these circumstances rather than raising an unnecessary ruse which in my view leaves them open to myopic closed-mindedness as I said in my introduction.

God bless Nigeria

Until President Yar’Adua can be presented for observation, conversation and audience in contemporary settings as I suggested in my blog of January the twelfth Nigeria: Put Yar’Adua on screen today! – he is just incapable of appearing in public, he is also incapable of his public and his inability to be a public figure for what other unstated reasons means he is currently unable to be President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

We still genuinely wish him a speedy and full recovery, but the ship of state cannot be permanently moored in foreign docks, there are stormy seas to traverse with essential cargo for the purpose of building the motherland – Nigeria needs to move on.

God save the President, but more so, God bless Nigeria with capable leaders.

General Sources

(1) SaharaReporters – HURIWA asks Speaker Dimeji Bankole to refund Saudi trip’s expenses

(2) SaharaReporters – House delegation returns empty-handed: Yar'Adua very sick, isolated and abandoned in Jeddah

(3) 234Next – Lawmakers to account for failed mission

(4) Akin.blog-city.com - Nigeria: Put Yar’Adua on screen today!

YouTube versus Islam - Between discernment and ignorance

Mosque smarts and technical dunces

When I wrote Temple smarts and street dunces as the subtitle to my write-up Earth-queers quaking in Israel on the 21^st of February, I was not anticipating writing Mosque smarts and technical dunces 5 days on.

On Sunday, the Pakistani government had ordered ISPs to block all access to YouTube because of content deemed offensive to Islam and they all complied.

The smarts at Pakistan Telecom hijacked the IP address of the YouTube web server and in conjunction with PCCW an ISP sent seekers of that site down a rabbit hole.

In fact, it sent the global user community of YouTube down the rabbit hole for two hours.

The jury is out as to whether this act was deliberate or just a case of ignorance about how Internet protocols work because Morocco, Thailand and Turkey have successfully implemented bans to YouTube without bringing the whole house down.

Accountability or ridicule

Did I not say, “The sooner adherents and followers call their leaders to account the less their beliefs and dogma are subjected to ridicule”, to leaders we now have to add technical people.

This also extends however tenuously to the use and abuse of knowledge, when Pakistan acquired knowledge of nuclear weaponry the smarts involved opened an illegal market of nuclear proliferation threatening global peace.

Fostering an intellectual environment

Sadly, the real problem is the fact that the Pakistani government has failed to foster an intellectual environment amongst its people.

In the weekend, a friend sent me a few links from YouTube to do with a grandmother doing some “commendably” shocking things like kicking a toddler out of the path of an oncoming train – I found the material utterly offensive and definitely not funny, I did not bother to view the other link but deleted the email and was ungentlemanly enough not send acknowledgements or thanks.

What I am saying here is I made the decision to view the content and once I found it was not to my liking, I refused to create more revulsion by viewing the rest of the material.

If the email had come with a clearer idea of the content, I would not have opened the links at all.

Give the people more credit of discernment

Surely, the people of Pakistan should be able to make informed decisions like that; as refusing to view YouTube videos with refer to the Mohammedan cartoons (Warning: Links to the cartoons, you exercise a personal prerogative in clicking on the link) or Geert Wilders’ Islamic ruse called Fitna to be released in March and still be about to seek out videos that glorify Islam or teach Internet protocols properly.

Censorship is a very blunt and unwieldy hammer to hit the nail where the government has lost the persuasion of ideas that they have to use the coercion of tyranny by resorting to blanket bans.

Very typical of ordering everyone to wall off the windows in their homes because the wind is blowing and it might carry bad odours when people should have the choice to open or close their windows at will to let air in or keep it out as they will.

In the process, technical ignorance on the one part and government policy failure on the other have combined to depict proud, independent and intelligent Pakistanis as ignorant, incapable of making informed decisions and brought Islam to unnecessary ridicule in the name of protecting the self-same religion.