Idang Alibi
19 June 2008
opinion
Against the background of the one-year anniversary of President Umar Musa Yar'adua's administration, many Nigerians have in the past few weeks been heard grumbling, murmuring and complaining that the man is irritatingly too slow. Some say that he appears too indecisive and clueless. Some even allege that he is not very hardworking or rather lazy outright. It is also said that he appears too cautious or even afraid of taking steps. They say he says nothing and you cannot quite see what it is he is really doing.
On the positive side, some say he is a nice, genial, humble, honest and straightforward man who cannot hurt a fly. Some who know him intimately even say that he is capable of some humour. Both the negative and positive comments about Yar'adua above all point to one thing: he is a phlegmatic person. According to Tim Lahaye, here are the main negative character traits of the phlegmatic: unmotivated, procrastination, selfish, stingy, self-protective, indecisive, fearful, worrier.
He is a great postponer of actions. Note, Yar'adua promised to declare an emergency in the power sector, and one year later, the threat has not been carried out. He is given to making endless excuses. They have a thousand and one reasons why certain things cannot be done and if they must be done, why they cannot be done now but must have to wait for a more opportune time.
A phlegmatic is so careful that he wants to spend eternity crossing every one of his T's and dotting every one of his I's. He is never conscious of time. The clock was created for him. When people shout and talk about how time is not on our side, a phlegmatic will wonder where they are hurrying to. They are an unhurried people.
Another trait of the phlegmatic is that they can have a stubborn spirit. They find it hard to be persuaded to see things from others' point of view. They wonder why they should not be allowed to do things at their own unhurried pace. If you pressurise a phlegmatic too much, he will recoil into his shell and remain mum forever.
He behaves like some parasites which at certain temperature form a cyst that would protect them from the heat threatening their lives. They wonder why they should do things any differently from the way they are accustomed to or the way they have elected to do.
If a phlegmatic is president especially in a society like ours where crafty or wily politicians are reluctant to tell the leader the truth mainly to protect their self-interest, the president will not hear any unpalatable truth. Many of his aides will just study the man's body language. They will discover his likes and dislikes and know how to approach him. Things will stagnate. Society will witness a drift. The ship of state would appear rudderless.
Do not dare to tell a phlegmatic that he ought to behave better. He hates criticism. The best way to get something positive out of him is to praise him endlessly. He craves affirmation and hates approbation. He may not tell you or show that that he hates to be criticised, but he instead builds strong resentment against you and if you persist in your 'hostility' against him, he will simply withdraw and leave you wondering what you may have done to him.
Phlegmatic are diplomatic and even snaky. They are afraid to hurt you directly and often employ others to fight their dirty fights for them. They can be very manipulative if they want to. In one of the folktales of the Bekwarra people of Cross River State, the green grass snake uses his tail to sting you and uses his mouth to swear that he has not done you any harm!
The phlegmatic is like that. Some of them wear a veneer of innocence. They project the image of persons who are incapable of any wrongdoing, but when you look closely, you will see some stain on their well-made-up appearance or in the character of people close to them.
They are like the chichidodo bird. The chichidodo bird hates excreta with a certain amount of vehement repugnance, yet he feeds on maggots which grow best in lavatories. They may not be corrupt themselves but they often do not seem to have the moral strength to shun the company of evil men or to call wrongdoers close to them to order.
When you ask a phlegmatic why he appears so impotent in frontally confronting wrongs and wrongdoers, he will bore you with a lecture about 'society'. He will tell you about how hard it is to change human beings. He will tell you what great efforts he has been making to rebuke people and how they have refused to listen.
Everyone may talk well of them. Everyone may acknowledge their goodness, their gentility and their honesty. But nice people hardly make good president for the simple reason that some of the things they need to do to move society forward may require some nastiness. I said earlier that the phlegmatic seek perennially to please men. And this helps to account for why many of them are spectacular failures as leaders.
They cannot look a friend squarely in the face and tell him to go to hell. The late Robert Kennedy who would have been US president if he had not been cut down before the election once observed that, "Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change a world which yields most painfully to change". It looks like the man had the phlegmatic in mind.
In spite of the powerful instruments of coercion available to a phlegmatic president, you may sometimes hear him cry like a powerless orphan child about the intransigence or rebelliousness of some individuals in the polity. We need to recall Shehu Shagari.
In the Second Republic when the media was screaming about the grand stealing of the NPN gang, Shagari once said very lamely in a newspaper interview that he used to tell the people he appointed into his government not to steal but they would not listen! Can you beat that? An executive president and chief law enforcer of the federation lamenting that his appointees would not listen to him!
Phlegmatic leaders make leadership look like a painful duty that was imposed upon them very much against their will. They act as if they do not like the job of leading. They appear as if they are not excited about anything at all. They do not exhibit any passion whatsoever. Yet they love the glamour of office and fight behind the scenes very doggedly to maintain their power. Like coy women, they act as if they do not like something but they like it very much and enjoy every minute of it.
To make up for their lack of decisive actions, phlegmatic presidents tend to love slogans or catchy phrases. During Shagari's era, his reigning mantra was national unity, peace and stability. Under Yar'adua, we are daily reminded of the administration's love of rule of law and due process.
Phlegmatic leaders are men-pleasers and we can see this in Yar'adua and Shagari before him. They do not want to do what is wrong even when what is seen as not very right are the very steps that are needed to cure some other greater wrongs. They can be compared to cats which like to eat fish but hate to wet their claws.
Phlegmatic leaders are nice as human beings but they hardly make good leaders. Mark you, I have not said that they do not have the capacity to make good leaders. They can and do make good leaders. But this can only happen when they transcend their innermost traits to be nice and begin to do what is necessary or required to solve certain societal problems.
It is a fact of life that before you can really carry out some revolutionary moves that would change society, you must be prepared to hurt some people. The rule however is that your action must be geared towards making a few unhappy so that many can be happy. But the phlegmatic spend eternity trying to come out with a plan that will not bring pains on people. That is why they do not achieve much.
A phlegmatic would drive on our dilapidated roads everyday and one day when he is particularly pained about the state of the road would cry out: "Is there nobody who can do something about the state of this road?" He will not remember that he is in the position to do something but he strangely keeps expecting that it is someone else who should do something about a particular situation.
The well-talked-about taciturn American President Calvin Coolidge is an example of a phlegmatic leader. But he was not of the Shagari and Yar'adua variety. Coolidge was the architect of what the Americans described as the Roaring 20s, a complimentary reference to the phenomenal growth in the American economy witnessed under his tenure. We hope that even as a phlegmatic who is not given to action or decisiveness, Yar'adua may prove to be the messiah this country has been yearning for.
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