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Political Campaigns And The Flight Of Oratory By Atayi Babs Opaluwah
In the talkative democracies of ancient Greece, oratory was naturally an important branch of education. Not only was it their most efficient method of communicating thoughts, it was, as Benjamin Disreali painted out, ‘a substitute for printing, and an essential to a political career.’ On the whole, they paid a great deal of attention to oratory as we perhaps tend to pay too little. Ancient oratory differed a good deal from the modern. In the absence of penalties for slander, personal abuse and virulent invectives were irregular. In default of good evidence, argument from probability and the personality of the speaker had excessive weight. Elaborate rules were compiled for the construction of sentences and for the arrangements of speeches, and very different styles were demanded in the law courts and electioneering campaign grounds.
Traces of the influence of oratory are observable in the speeches of Thucydides, especially in the extract from Cleon’s cynical defence of the savage decree against Mitylene. Socrates himself, because of ingenuity in argument and speeches, was regarded by many of his contemporaries as the worst kind of “Sophist,” though his life was one long search for truth. The political speeches of Demosthenes perhaps best fulfill the three conditions laid down by Auguste Charles Sainte-Beuve, the irrepressible French critic as necessities for eloquence – “an adequate theme, a sincere and impassioned mind and a power of sustainment.” Brilliant in style, noble in theme, sincere in patriotism, Demosthenes’ speeches justified his preeminent reputation in antiquity, leading to a remark by Prof. Bowra that “this man knew how to persuade.”
Even Cicero, writing and speaking in republican times, was well-mannered and patriotic to the cause of the state. Yet he had all the qualities of a great orator, and in his De Oratore, affirmed that the perfect speaker whose thoughts are never far from himself must have many admirable things to draw from his own immense experience. He made for instance, an interesting distinction between mere fluency and true eloquence by positing that ‘any demagogue can command facility of speech, the really eloquent man must have intelligence and a background of education.’
Coming to the already charged and frenzied political atmosphere in Nigeria, one can confidently submit that the imperatives of oratory in political speeches and electioneering campaigns as highlighted above seem to be lost on the country’s current political gladiators. Hence it won’t be termed as hasty to conclude that the finesse and the allure of persuasion immersed in breathless oratory at political campaigns has taken a sudden, but premeditated flight from the country’s shores,. This is evidenced in the way Politicians now strut around the country in sanctimonious arrogance, bestriding the political firmament with their sartorial taste in agbadas while at the same paying no attention to oratory, thereby defacing public consciousness in the process.
In the past few weeks, Nigerians have been converted to passive, sometimes willy-nilly witnesses to a flurry of breath-taking political activities orchestrated by Politicians caught in a vicious bid for power at all costs. These gladiators, whose claim to relevance is not in any way related to clean bills of health in past national assignments, have cultivated a proclivity for deception in a register of language that is marked heavily by flat-footedness, emptiness and lack of edification. Rhetoric such as “2007 election is a do-or-die affair,” “no corrupt politician will ever win elections again,” “we are not people deceiving people,” “I will declare national emergencies,” “we will capture 31 states,” e.t.c, have become daily digests in a country that is replete with refined intellectuals.
From Lagos to Port Harcourt, Kano to Akure, Gombe to Abeokuta, Benin to Maiduguri, the messages are the same: hollow political discourses, wedded to a language that reeks intolerance, arrogance, ignorance and brazen absence of an effective thought process. Aside incapacitating the public’s imagination with poor oratorical skills, which only help in evacuating meaning and aborting insight, these Gladiators, with their unflattering nicknames also regale us with stale manna such as “Putting Nigeria first,” “the People first”, “Hope 2007,” “Reality 2007,” “Power must change hands 2007,” “Continuity 2007,” “I want to move the nation forward,” e.t.c.
In all these, they seem to fixate on the metaphor of propulsion, mistaking the image of motion with the idea of progress. They do not actually tell us how or where the want to move us forward to. This has become necessary to ask as we have had recent experiences with leaders who have consistently moved us forward into avoidable air crashes, needless fuel scarcity, epileptic power supply, political thuggery, crises of stupendous proportions, and wanton destruction of cherished national ethos.
Our current gladiators should learn and improve on the experiences of our revered heroes past. Heroes such as the Golden Voice of Africa, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, Zik of Africa, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe and the immutable Philosopher-Politician of all times, Chief Obafemi Awolowo. Not forgetting the likes of Sir. Kashim Ibrahim, Waziri Ibrahim, Mallam Aminu Kano, Sir, Dennis Osadebey, Michael Okpara J.S. Tarka, and Bola Ige who by their joint political endeavours employed oratory as the science of persuasion to convey their noble thoughts and ideas on national development to their people who in turn supported them massively.
These men realized early in life that it is from the fusion of thought with passion, and by appealing both to emotion and to reason that the greatest of all speeches achieve immortality. These political icons, through the instrumentality of oratory, raised the intellectual tone of their society, cultivated the public mind, purified the national taste while supplying true principles to popular enthusiasm and fixed aims to popular aspirations as well as giving enlargement and sobriety to the ideas of the age, thus facilitating the exercise of political power and refining the intercourse of private life.
Our current ‘men of power’ who rate high on the noise quotient but bring little intelligence and littler moral mettle to the table should draw life lessons from the above and not be versed in vain babblings that manage the magic of appearing to say something while essentially obscuring issues. They should learn that only three things matter in a political speech and they are: who says it, how he says it and what he says, and of all these, the last matters the most! It is hoped that they will begin to explore the secret of oratory that lies not in saying new things but in saying things with a certain power, which moves the heavens.
Atayi Babs Opaluwah Radio France Internationale Broadcasting House Ikoyi – Lagos
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