Sincerity: The Sidewalk to Success
By Bala Ibrahim
There is an English idiom that says: “woke up on the wrong side of the bed”. The mission of the idiom is to express that someone is in a bad mood, easily annoyed, or generally irritable from the beginning of the day. In Linguistics, which is the scientific study of language and its structure, including the study of grammar, syntax, phonetics and proverbs, it is said that the phrase originated from an ancient superstition, that getting out of bed on the left side would bring bad luck and a difficult day. I want to juxtapose that position with the position of morality, whose ambition is to prick our conscience always, with regards the place or principles, concerning the difference between right and wrong or good and bad behaviour.
At the risk of being mistaken for a preacher, I make haste to say that, today, the society, particularly my own society of Nigeria, sees sincerity as a sin that is ceaselessly circumvented. Being truthful or adhering to sincerity is misread as being unsmart. Is it that we always wake up on the wrong side of the bed, such that we are always allergic to the truth?
As a trained journalist, I am constantly confronted with questions regarding the distinction between PR, the acronym for Public Relations and the truth. Ironically, sometimes, the question comes even from colleagues, who must have had the same training with me, but find it difficult to draw a line between the professional maintenance of a favourable public image and the absence of deceit, by concealing the truth. When someone wants to to doubt you, even when he knows you are telling the truth, he simply says, you are playing PR. So, PR has the misfortune of being misconstrued as insincerity in Nigeria. Why? Is it that we always wake up on the wrong side of the bed, such that we are mostly allergic to the truth?
The doubt about sincerity cuts across every sector or segment of the society, but it seems more poignant with the politicians. Although the singer Tony Wilson, one of my favourite guitarists and vocalists, had described the polician of all countries, as a man of many words, which goes to support the argument of insincerity, or the attitude of sugar coating, by changing position or making something to look more pleasant than it really is, the African politician is largely branded as the biggest culprit of the vice of insincerity. There is an African proverb that goes thus: “You are free to trust anybody but if an African politician tells you good morning, please look out through the window before you answer back. It may still be night time”.
Now, could insincerity be the bane behind the failure of Africa, or our society at large, to attend success? In his documentary, the Africans, late Professor Ali Mazuri, para-phrased the saying of the late Tanzanian President, Muallim Julius Nyere, where he said, “While the great super powers are trying to get to the moon, in fact they have been to the moon and back, and even the stars are becoming closer because of improvements in space communications, we in Africa are still trying to get to the village”. Professor Mazrui went on to say that, even if we get to the village, we may not be able to get back, because of decayed infrastructure and impliedly, unkempt or unhonoured promises.
Until his death, Muallim the teacher, was adjudged as one of Africa’s most moralists, who became the first or second African leader to relinquish power on his own accord, for the simple reason that he thought, being a teacher was more dignifying than being a President. In fact he was reported to have said that, had he known that the prestige of a President was less than that of a teacher, he wouldn’t have left the classroom for the Presidency. For Muallim, morality overtakes legality. Doing the right thing takes precedence over doing the wrong thing, regardless of the expected gains. And to him, that should be the sidewalk to success, because, as a people, the time has arrived, for us to commence waking up on the right side of the bed.
