Omo-Agege and the problem of ‘respect’ – TheNigerialawyer

Abimbola Adelakun ([email protected]^[1])

Last week Tuesday, the Federal Government’s Twitter handle
shared photos of the new Deputy Senate President, Senator Ovie
Omo-Agege, kneeling to greet President Muhammadu Buhari during the
visit of the recently elected leaders of the ninth National
Assembly to Aso Rock. Given the spate of events that led to the
emergence of the ninth Assembly, Omo-Agege’s effusive display of
respect affirmed genuine concerns that this batch of lawmakers are
going to be mere seals of every executive whim. If he keeps up that
kind of gesture, he will go through his tenure awestruck by
political power and never be able to muster the necessary ethical
strength to fulfil his democratic duty of enforcing tenets of
checks and balances.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the photo generated some hoopla from
those who found it ludicrous that one grown man would kneel before
another, and in an official environment too. I am one of those who
have a visceral dislike to the exaggeratedly ostentatious ways we
genuflect before our leaders and politicians as a sign of
“respect.” Yes, I quite understand the arguments people make about
tradition and “culture,” and how curtsying or bowing before elders
or supposed superiors is an inextricable part of our culture. I
have had dialogues with political supporters who have no problems
with Omo-Agege and insist that as Africans, we should preserve
greeting customs and not yield them to modernity. This idea of
culture as a code of conduct to which we must adhere with an
idolatrous fervency merely stymies a meaningful critique of the
problem of “respect” in our political culture.

There was also the tribe of rationalisers who chalked down
Omo-Agege’s sinking knees to deserved acts of respect for the
President. They even ransacked the Internet archives and dug up
images of former British PM, Theresa May, kneeling before royalties
to teach us that such grandiose act of respect is, in fact,
universal. Their logic is, if an Oyinbo woman can kneel, why not
Africans who have an even stronger predilection to showing respect?
In putting up Ms. May as a relatable standard of respect for higher
powers, they also conveniently forgot that the woman was severely
ridiculed in the press for her effusive demonstration of respect to
royal figures.

While Omo-Agege’s manners are commendable, everything is wrong
with his kneeling before the President. The President is not a
king, and because he does not rule by monarchical authority, we
should not have to genuflect to show respect. Buhari’s mandate as
President is legitimated by the equalising principles of democratic
authority. Even though our leaders in any democracy get certain
privileges because of their position, we are all equal subjects
before the law. No, Nigeria has not yet attained this utopian ideal
of equality embedded into the practice of democracy, but that does
not change the principle. The striving towards equality is the more
reason we should do away with grovelling cultural practices that
necessitate bowing, kneeling, and prostrating before our leaders.
All those acts of respect are enforcers of asymmetric power
dynamics between government officials, and in leader-led
relationships.

Cultural acts, such as kneeling, are not value-neutral gestures.
They are deeply symbolic, and that is why they trigger a chain of
instinctual reactions that also have other political implications.
There are several photos circulating online that show politicians
and leaders in various kneeling poses before influential political
figures. There are also other images of high-profile politicians,
not kneeling, but making other gestures of submission and political
patronage before their political superiors. For instance, there are
a number of images of Kaduna State governor, Nasir el-Rufai,
kneeling before other politicians like a serf. Speaking of which,
look at how much political signification was invested in the
picture of the son of former Lagos State governor, Akinwunmi
Ambode, prostrating before Buhari when the latter visited Lagos.
Ordinarily, a child greeting an adult should be banal enough to
beneath everyone’s notice. However, that single moment was
abstracted from its context and remediated within the permanent
frame of digital images, thus turning it into a political
statement. Those that circulated that picture while cooing about
the well-brought-up Yoruba boy stretching out fully before
authority were not just admiring an act of innocence. They were
creating a narrative about Yoruba people, inter-generational
subservience, and political relevance.

Some time ago, a female minister gave an interview where she
stated that if she needed to resign from Buhari’s cabinet, she
would first kneel before him to tell him about her decision. I was
livid when I read that line in the media report. Why does this
woman have to be so deferent to make a simple point if not because
our “culture” is both debased and debasing? Whatever happened to
standing straight and making your point? There are even images of
Mrs. Dolapo Osinbajo kneeling before Buhari. Again, some of their
online warriors have tried to make Mrs. Osinbajo’s gestures about
good breeding and respect for Buhari’s authority and age. That all
sounds perfectly acceptable until you begin to wonder why there are
no corresponding images of Mrs. Buhari kneeling before Osinbajo in
deference to his age and authority. Beyond the gender factor is
also the ethnic coloration to these acts of respects. Most of the
time, it is the southern politicians that are found kneeling before
their northern counterparts and not the other way round.

Different anthropological researches have been carried out to
understand why cultural practices such as kneeling and bowing are
powerful, whether they are done during religious worship or in the
corridors of power. There are the plausible conclusions that when
we kneel before another being — physical or spiritual — we are
shrinking ourselves so that the other person can be magnified.
Kneeling is about humility, submissiveness, respect, and even
obsequiousness. In Nigeria, the lines of differences between all
these attributes of kneeling easily blur when it comes to
performing before those who wield power to control our ambitions
and fates.

Omo-Agege’s kneeling before Buhari was not reverence for the
President or the Presidency, but a worship of the unregulated power
embodied in the President to determine how Omo-Agege’s political
career will fare. That power dynamics necessarily impel extravagant
display of respect in our political culture, and that is why we —
both the leaders and the led — tend to over-invest in artefacts of
respect. From rhetoric to actions, everybody cultivates and demands
respect in a way that urges conformity with the status quo, and
even demands acquiescence from us even in the process of our
demise. Strikingly, there were at least three other people in that
room with Buhari, yet, none of them knelt as Omo-Agege did.
Why?

What is the way forward from here? Culture or not, our leaders
need to master body language that bespeaks respect and at the same
time is not too unctuous. We can agree that respect is crucial to
the efficient operations of our democratic processes and should not
be dispensed with in the name of asserting independence. We need a
universal language of respect to our leaders that does not require
contorting our bodies to the point that the respect we want to give
becomes overstated, sycophantic, and even appears as grovel. The
excessive smarminess and toadying to power impede democratic
functions, and they do not necessarily mean people are truly
respectful.

Of course, it is also disingenuous to pretend that what
Omo-Agege’s critics are advocating is wilful disrespect for the
President. No, theirs is outrage at how the lopsidedness and
dysfunctionality of our democratic process turn against itself such
that those who are invested with the power to regulate the
excessiveness of the executive of the leadership end up as moral
invertebrates. They will rather go down on their knees than stand
up for what is right.

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