Ambrose Bierce, an American Writer, Journalist and Editor, 1842-1914, once said that as the lean leech, its victim found, is pleased to fix itself upon a part diseased till, its black hide distended with bad blood, it drops to die of surfeit in the mud, so the base sycophant with joy descries his neighbor’s weak spot and his mouth applies, gorges and prospers like the leech, although, unlike that reptile, he will not let go. Gelasma, if it paid you to devote your talent to the service of a goat, showing by forceful logic that its beard is more than Aaron’s fit to be revered; if to the task of honoring its smell profit had prompted you, and love as well, the world would benefit at last by you and wealthy malefactors weep anew – your favour for a moment’s space denied and to the nobler object turned aside. Is it not enough that thrifty millionaires who loot in freight and spoliate in fares, or, cursed with consciences that bid them fly to safer villainies of darker dye, forswearing robbery and fain, instead, to steal (they call it “cornering”) our bread may see you groveling their boots to lick and begging for the favour of a kick? Still must you follow to the bitter end your sycophantic disposition’s trend, and in your eagerness to please the rich hunt hungry sinners to their final ditch? In Morgan’s praise you smite the sounding wire, and sing hosannas to great Havemeyher! What’s Satan done that him you should eschew? He too is wreaking rich – deducting you.
Without mincing words, sycophant is plural in and out of the Governor Chibuike Amaechi-led government of Rivers State. They use flattery to win favour from him, as an individual wielding influence; they are servile self-seekers who win favour from him by flattering him. Imagine or wonder how Amaechi thinks the sycophants are enhancing the process or progress of exchange of his ideas and opinions by such barbaric methodology of praising!
This essay was not ill informed; rather it was a product of observations, months before and after, Amaechi ‘won’ his re-election. Since then, sycophants are on the prowl; all praise singing Amaechi, without a twinge of conscience to advise him proper, on the right way to take, because after Government House, there is ‘community’ life there from.
Many of the shameless sycophants that surround him have directly or indirectly attacked my personality of being opposed to the Amaechi government, but I am here to tell them that it is better to ‘help’ Amaechi out of his ‘arrogant’ way of governing instead of helping him go deeper into political abyss, in the name of sycophancy. Because this is a man who informed the Rivers people during his ascension to power in 2007 that he would welcome constructive criticisms, but his sycophants now see the criticisms, when they started coming, as a way of letting Amaechi know that they are not fit and good enough to protect him and his government, but their job, and they started warning critics.
Bizarre! If the sycophants do not confess their ‘wicked’ advise known of sycophants to a certain fascination with anybody, they must surely confess to their conscience. What a heck! Some of the sycophants have been prominent figures in their own right, or solid Rivers indigenes or non-indigenes, while leaving Amaechi to be contented with the Brick House, and sit quietly backstage, without being popular. And when critics like me write that Amaechi should be popular, his sycophants fight us. Many of them, sycophants, have earned the colourful sobriquet, proving embarrassing features, when somebody writes to advise Amaechi to ‘open his eyes’.
But Amaechi seems to love blind eyes, by way of his exhibited habits, loving the rhythms of the sycophantic praises, forgetting the fact that no leader has ever lived in the Government House forever, not even in the United States. And this may not soon change. Although, Amaechi has neither made much of a splash here that he loves ‘life’ after the government, because in 2009 he made certain frivolous statements that after he may have caused ‘horrendous’ things as governor, he will run away. No matter what, Amaechi seems a less ambitious, but his bunch of sycophants is, to come back the second tenure, because he once said that after his first tenure and he calls ‘you’ to vote for him, no one should. But as the clock ticked for April 2011 governorship election in Rivers State, his sycophants sold the need he must contest. Many people saw this ‘advise’ as ‘endorsing an unwilling horse in Rivers State’ to contest the election.
Benjamin F. Wade warns in his quote that if a man carries his horse out of a slave State into a free one, he does not lose his property interest in him; but if he carries his slave into a free State, the law makes him free.
“I do not pretend to know precisely what is on foot there; but I think it pretty evident that there is a very free communication between that country and this body, and unless I am greatly mistaken, I see the dwarfish medium by which that communication is kept up,” Benjamin F. Wade.
Sycophants don’t want the governor’s communication with us they have given the name “traducers”, forgetting that it is very dangerous to interfere with anything in the Constitution of Mankind in the name of ‘protecting a job’. That must not be maintained, for it is not to safeguard Amaechi. Amaechi, like everyman, has his peculiar ambition, but some persons around him, are making the government look paper tiger.
“Tomorrow, I believe, is to be an eclipse of the sun, and I think it perfectly meet and proper that the sun in the heavens, and the glory of the Republic should both go into obscurity and darkness together,” Benjamin F. Wade.
The humiliation of Amaechi by his sycophants as discussed in the public parliament anywhere in Rivers State is complete and overwhelming. Sycophants around Amaechi want him to forget to know how easy it is for some minds to pace along with the current of popular opinion, because they have lost public influence, respectability, and all their motives tend to seduce the human heart are brought to bear.
Sir Richard Steele: “Whenever you commend, add your reasons for doing so; it is this which distinguishes the approbation of a man of sense from the flattery of sycophants and admiration of fools.”
Abraham Lincoln: “A friend is one who has the same enemies as you have….Allow the president to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such a purpose – and you allow him to make war at pleasure.”
I look up to the day when I could listen to political sycophants in Nigeria preaching Lincoln that ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors to bullets; and be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm.
Amaechi should choose who to serve! Is he going to serve sycophants or the masses of Rivers State? Amaechi should listen to the Lincoln’s character, which he said is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing. Littering the state with many uncompleted projects at the same time all in the name of development should stop being a disguise for job for his boys. Amaechi should always think about the more important matter: maintenance, equipment and motivating the people.
The oil revenue which the state gets major share when it is shared to the states in the country much has to be done with it. Amaechi should not even say that it would take him one hundred years for the new Port Harcourt City and the Ring Road to be built. Let him not forget that “Rivers State is the oil capital of Nigeria, so it has the ability to close the ga
p between it and Lagos in terms of infrastructure, non-oil related investments, commerce, etc, etc.” Did we not see the year most primary health centers in the state were manned by NYSC doctors? Amaechi should avoid his sycophants and make sure that his projects in the state are integrated, because sycophants would always want the projects scattered for ‘more money’ but this does not serve the purpose of democracy. Amaechi, please, step it up, and leave your sycophants.
