Author: Noel Ihebuzor

Development and policy analyst with a strong interest in the arts and inclusive social change. Dabbles occasionally into poetry and literary criticism!
Posted in Politics, Prose

“Opposition” strategies to diminish GEJ’s achievements

Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor

By

Noel A. Ihebuzor

Several strategies are employed by the “opposition” in their reactions to any comment on social media that suggests that Jonathan has achieved anything! Each time you as much as suggest that GEJ has some impressive achievements to show in his four year presidency, what you get is panic, instant hostility & then a swarm attack from his die-hards opponents and “serial-opposers” in the APC – such facts and truths frighten them. The facts threaten to pierce the fabric of well told lies such persons have almost succeeded in imposing on major sections of the public as truths through a blend of strategies and tactics involving distortions, fabrications, cyber–aggression, bullying, threats and ridiculing of persons. A study of APC tactics in relation to Jonathan’s major achievements reveals the following as dominant techniques employed in trying to deny/downplay/diminish GEJ’s successes –

  1. One technique is the TOTAL DENIAL or OBLITERATION strategy. The man has achieved NOTHING. Point your interlocutor to some solid achievement and you get the retort – “but that is nothing”! Ask what then amounts as “something” and all you get is blabber and incoherence.
  2. A variant of this TOTAL DENIAL technique is the “WE ARE EVEN WORSE OFF TODAY THAN WHEN HE CAME IN” line of attack! Invite your interlocutor then to a “Before GEJ” and “Since GEJ” comparison in a number of key sectors using valid indicators and communication breaks down because your interlocutor now refuses to abide to comparisons based on valid “Tertium Comparationis”.
  3. Another technique is THE MINIMIZATION STRATEGY- Yes, the man has achieved but he has only achieved very little – not much at all! Ask your interlocutor what the cut-off point for “sizeable achievement” is and all you get is insult – “You people do not think”
  4. A variant of this minimization strategy is THE TRIVIALIZATION STRATEGY – what he has achieved is trivial and of minimal import.
  5. Another strategy is to recognize the achievements & then slam them as not been good or modern enough – this is NOT GOOD ENOUGH strategy
  6. Another variant is to recognize the achievement but then smear it with the label of MEDIOCRE – The MEDIOCRITY CONDEMNATION STRATEGY.
  7. Another approach is to recognize the achievement but then to counter immediately to say that its gains are not evenly distributed!
  8. Yet another strategy recognizes but derides the achievement by claiming it has minimal social impact potential and therefore not useful.
  9. Another strategy accepts the reality of the achievement but faults it by claiming it has possesses little beneficiary impact value. Ask your interlocutor to define beneficiary impact value and all you get is hot air.
  10. Another approach consists in accepting an obvious achievement but then to say that the choice of project focus shows poor prioritization.
  11. Yet another approach is to recognize the achievement but then claim that it costs too much to deliver.
  12. Yet another approach is to recognize the achievement but then rubbish it by saying that it took too long to deliver.

The opposition strategy to GEJ’s achievement can be described as one that MINIMIZES his SUCCESSES and then struggles to MAXIMIZE whatever SHORTCOMINGS he may have,  mostly imagined, out of proportion. A GEJ success that is dismissed as nothing is usually praised to the high heavens should they have occurred in an ACN led state. The name of the game as played by opposition handles and spokespersons is inconsistency and intellectual dishonesty.

One is therefore better off taking whatever the opposition says on Jonathan’s achievements with plenty of salt and criticality. Very little truth and objectivity are found in their evaluations of what has been a fresh and humane centered approach to quiet but effective presidency, a presidency that has delivered despite having to navigate several roadblocks and minefields put in its way by an unholy alliance of the ungodly!

Posted in Politics, Prose

The APC’s Joke of a Scarecrow President

Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor


by

Shehu Dikko

shehuspen+paper at gmail dot com,  December 2014

Buba Galadima has given a world record twelve years of his life full time to the ongoing Major General Muhammadu Buhari campaign for president. He has been loud and often bombastic as the most audible voice of the campaign, and you must question his effectiveness, but he has taken on its critics frontally, directly. He has provided loyal support to Buhari: first in the erect ANPP of nine elected Governors; then in the limping ANPP reduced to just four Governors; then in the crippled CPC of a lone Governor; and now in the APC on crutches that has already lost one of its Governors since Buhari showed up there. Scratch that. Galadima is not there alongside Buhari anymore.

In radio interviews in Hausa and in a letter sent to the editor of the Daily Trust and published on 10th November, Galadima has said that “no interlocutor ever stood between him and [Major] General Buhari.” He has revealed that after the 2011 election, Buhari personally informed him that after three failed attempts at the presidency, he was not going to contest again, only for him to hear on the radio that Buhari had gone back on his word. Here is Galadima in his own words:

“Whatever anybody may say, the fact still remains that I contributed my widow’s mite towards the projection and promotion of [Major] General Buhari as a politician at a time when those ‘yan kwanta kwanta [highway robbers who command their victims to lie face down while they rob them] who for personal reasons hover around him today felt that he was an aberration and poison that could not be touched. . . . There are people who worked with [Major] General Buhari when he was in the military, public service, politics and school. Where are they in his political project today?”

They are nowhere to be found. All the politicians that were its publicly visible backers at the commencement of the campaign a dozen years ago, and the many others who gave their all to it in the sincere belief that it held a promise of a better governed country have all abandoned it. Buhari has been unable to lead a political project team and to command and retain the loyalty of its executives. He was unable to do this even as a military dictator. This is why his military regime was short-lived and why his retired military colleagues have not been found near his political project. Now aged seventy plus, it has become too late to transform him into anything other than what he is: proven incompetent as a political leader.

Galadima tried harder than most to stay committed. But it was all in vain for no interlocutor ever stood between Buhari and his zero programme for his cult following.

No interlocutor ever stood between Buhari’s backers and a misplaced hope of leadership by example. Major General Buhari has provided no true inspiration to his frenzied crowd of followers. He has failed to make them disciplined. When they took to violent protest after the last election, he neither took to the vanguard of the protest nor did he call them to order. He fled. He claimed that he too was attacked. Leader? No.

No interlocutor ever stood between Buhari and his zero ideas on what to do about the problem of corruption in a democratic setting. In twelve years of campaigning, he offered nothing at all.

Alas, no interlocutor appears able to stand between those so determined to see to the triumph of proven incompetence sure to lead to disaster, likely to end in tragedy, and the fantasy that all you need to do to make corruption fly away is to erect a scarecrow in the presidential villa. Where has a scarecrow ever scared away dark nighttime creatures like the bat that lies in bed at noon?

All the creatures that belong to the day who have seen the scarecrow president project for the joke it is and abandoned it have been replaced by distressed-project managers and asset liquidators that were its critics and political enemies who have seen in Buhari’s leadership incapacity and in his fanatical following that has been used by many other opportunistic politicians before them opportunity to further their own calculated objectives which, going by their records, are far removed from the blind expectations of the fanatical poor.

As devious distressed-project managers well aware that they would have recouped their investments by the time there is any buyer’s remorse, they have spent so much on imported dangerous stage-managed promotion gimmicks, scrubs, deodorants and washing up liquids in an effort to conceal the fact of his leadership incapacity so as to make him marketable to necessary but hitherto wary buyers, most recently in a scrubbed speech broadcast to a national television audience to conceal a dismal performance in an un-shepherded television interview conducted a couple of days before.

Give them this article to read and they will see in it ways to come up with more stage-managed gimmicks and they will be sure to do so by lunchtime tomorrow, perhaps even show him sporting a tattoo and sagging his sokoto as he rebukes an errant area boy; they are that shameless.

As flagrant as any asset liquidators that we have seen they have also since proceeded to ridicule him and to disrobe him of any pretended garments of integrity. They have done so on the public highway, most recently in getting him face down to issue them a dud cheque and to “just keep a straight face” and ring up his bank manager to honour it after they had left the scene, and in getting him to give a written undertaking that he will employ the resources of persons alleged corrupt in furtherance of his campaign for the presidency.

What more do you need to be able to see that Buhari is a sad joke and that any expectation that he will make a positive and lasting impact as president is fantasy?

Buhari is not a simple man. He is a simpleton. He has spent years complaining that the PDP rigged him out of victory in previous elections. It’s on his bitter lips right now. Give him the office of the president and I can assure you that he will try to kick out at those who he believes did it. Yet the architect of the 2006 PDP plan to use the security forces to its electoral advantage is his replaced Galadima, Nasir el-Rufai, the man alongside whom he cried in 2011 and who made him renege on his verbal pledge not to run again. Yet one of his managers today, Audu Ogbeh, was the Manager of the PDP of President Olusegun Obasanjo and Vice President Atiku Abubakar men to whose homes he was led, supinely, spent, twelve years late, to beg for a piece of the action.

The desperate Major General has truly been reduced to taking commands from any and all comers. His current commanders are only the most venal of the lot: they are pitiless what’s the polite euphemism for bastards? He will try to kick out without any realisation that his long walk from failing to beat them to joining them has severely damaged his legs.

Waylay him on the private jet tarmac of his commanders and ask him to give you a written undertaking that he will kick out at el-Rufai, Ogbeh, Obasanjo and Atiku with the hard metal crutches you will supply if he wants your vote. Ask him to give you a written pledge that he will issue no cheque nor authorise any payment to any Alpha Beta or Alpha Beta disguised as Alpha Bravo or Charlie Delta if he wants you to echo a clear radio signal around the country that no Foxtrot will be issued a dud cheque either.

If he falls short of meeting these demands just laugh and dismiss the would-be scarecrow president as the joke that he is; but do help massage his legs and tuck him away in bed if, unlike his users, you are apt to pity the scarred and disfigured old man.

Posted in Politics, Prose

Shehu’s reply – On OBJ, GMB and GEJ – what does available evidence say?

Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor

Thanks for sharing Dan Agbese’s 2000 article about Haroun Adamu’s probe
of the Petroleum Trust Fund. It seems that people are digging but I can
tell you that left to himself alone Buhari cannot device ways of being
dishonest but in league with others, he has never had any problem
partaking in dishonesty. That, in fact, is his current situation.

Any expectation that a Buhari government will make an impact in dealing
with the problem of dishonesty in government is fantasy as I have
consistently maintained. Headline making stories are only a minor
reflection of the scale of the problem of dishonesty. Buhari knows
nothing about relevant policy formulation and it is not a priority for
his current leader, Asiwaju.

Buhari didn’t run the PTF. He left it to the late Salihidjo Ahmad who
came from his circle of friends and family, and went to sleep. It was
run just like any old corrupt Nigerian government venture. No difference
whatsoever. Its officials took bribes, awarded overinflated contracts
and the like. As a result of this, one of the men on the board of the
PTF, the late Group Captain Usman Jibrin who would have none of it
decided to resign. Buhari stayed put.

I also see you paying attention to Obasanjo’s self-serving talk.
Obasanjo has zero credibility. Not many are seeing this right now but it
is to the credit of Jonathan that he has actually grown the balls to
refuse to continue to take dictation from him.

If truth be told, it is easier to point to where Jonathan has spent
money in his four+ years than it is to show where Obasanjo did in his
first term. Let us be concrete. Obasanjo faced turbulence, Sharia riots,
Odi. Obasanjo failed to punish the perpetrators of the Sharia riots,
that served to embolden others including the Haramites; he was
high-handed in dealing with Odi, that served to further militarise.

Jonathan has had to deal with the consequences of Obasanjo’s failures,
in addition to the BH which is now a problem with a serious
destabilizing foreign dimension. This has provided a very tough
environment for the government. Worse, owing to the circumstances in
which he came into office and the sense of betrayal felt by the many
Northerners who consider their turn to rule as having been hijacked, as
well as his failure to properly reach out to the disgruntled, he has
been unable to win the confidence and support of influential sections of
the North. This failure is what I foresaw in 2011, and warned that it
could lead to division.

That North is also suffering from another problem which is a direct
consequence of the Babangida privatisation programme which was
accelerated and completed by Obasanjo. I have a problem with the
privatisation of vital social services but that is irrelevant here.
Recall the old days. There was a time when people looked forward to
Board appointments, First Bank, NITEL and the whole battery of other
huge government owned enterprises. Membership of those boards afforded

people the opportunity to use their influence to serve the interests of
their immediate communities, and because of the Federal Character
principle, this patronage was widely spread but always what were seen to
be the choicest positions were invariably occupied by Northerners.
Federal Character also ensured that there was a spread of offices of
those companies occupied by local employees thoughout the country.

That disappeared completely under Obasanjo. The persons who bought the
privatised companies were mainly persons from outside the North, ditto
those who stepped up to fill the vacuum created by the disappearance of
NITEL who have only been driven by market considerations which cannot
overlook employee competence. It’s not been noticed by many but the
handful of companies bought by Northerners, like Nigerian Ropes and
Steyr, have floundered or have been comatose since they acquired them.

For a North used to widescale patronage, it has been hard to deal with
new realities, which is why so many there are intent on doing whatever
they can to to ensure a return to the old comforts. One new reality from
which there is no escaping is that Jonathan has actually shown a
commitment to making and fulfilling promises which is why he has been
running for re-election on his record, something which Obasanjo did not
do in 2003.

Obasanjo could not have done so. He built a stadium in Abuja, and its
Games Village. That’s it. He channeled a lot of money towards power
generation. Liyel Imoke has yet to account for what became of that
expenditure. The rest of the time, Obasanjo was away from his desk on
extended visits abroad. He left Atiku to run the government. He provided
no account of the proceeds of privatisation. Obasanjo and Atiku were
later to build their own private schools and universities.

By contrast, Jonathan has built new government schools and universities;
built a major new railway line, Kaduna-Abuja, for the first time in a
hundred years; built a road between Abuja and Lokoja that is the finest
in the country; is building a metro line in Abuja; empowered Innoson
motors of Nnewi to manufacture transport buses that are visible on our
highways. All these are things he committed to doing in the aftermath of
the oil subsidy saga, and he has managed to do them despite the major
challenge of BH.

I have not dismissed the view that aspects of the complex BH problem are
the work of persons working to return to that which they had grown
accustomed. But what’s your general take on the election campaign so

far? I honestly fear it may all end up being of only “academic
interest.” The stakes are very very high. There are operators with ugly
records who will stop at nothing. There is trouble on the horizon. I
have sent out warnings. I hope they are heeded.


shehu
===

Posted in Uncategorized

Dangote attributes success to Jonathan’s ‘favourable’ policies

Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor

Achieving and delivering results!

TransformationWatch's avatarTransformationWatch

Business mogul, Aliko Dangote, on Thursday said his achievements as Africa’s richest man and 25th richest person on earth was due to the favourable policies of President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration.

Dangote spoke on Thursday night in Nairobi when President Jonathan met with the Nigerian community in the East African country.

The News Agency of Nigeria reports that the meeting was part of the activities lined-up for the three-day visit of President Jonathan to Kenya which began Thursday.

Dangote, who was on the President’s entourage told the gathering that Jonathan had done a lot to improve business climate in Nigeria.

He said, “I want to tell you what the President has been doing in Nigeria. He is very humble and may not want to sing about what he has been doing.

“I will tell you what he has been doing to Nigerians and to some of us who are in business…

View original post 180 more words

Posted in Prose

Osinbajo to the rescue

Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor

By

Noel A.Ihebuzor

I stayed up to watch the Osinbajo interview on @Channelstv last night 04/01/2015.

The professor was brilliant, articulate and fluent. At some point, it looked like he had taken over the interview from the interviewer. By most standards, that was a good outing for the APC. The Professor Pastor succeeded in rescuing the APC from the media disaster that was GMB’s (its flag bearer and presidential candidate) outing on the same channel a few weeks back when GMB conveyed the impression of a man who was lost and out of his depths even in the shallowest of waters. GMB had projected an image of a disturbing shallowness during much of that interview. It was a sad performance, painful to watch for both audiences at home and for the interviewer. At the end of the interview, most watchers concluded that the man who had demonstrated such ineptitude on such a simple interview was not fit to lead Nigeria. Some even wondered how such a person ever made it through the ranks in the army. Osinbajo has wiped that disgrace from the face of his boss and from the face of the APC. But his success also further accentuates the perception that his principal is starkly deficient.

The Osinbajo interview holds another interest for me though. And it is that Osinbajo, without wanting to, almost ended up endorsing Jonathan’s transformation agenda in the energy sector. Take out the deliberate evasiveness, acquired no doubt, over years of legal practice. Cut through the eloquence and oratory, polished no doubt, by years of preaching and teaching,  and ask yourself what Osinbajo said about power sector reform that is really new? I hope I am being fair but what I heard him saying amounts to this – “We will do the same as GEJ and team are doing but we will also privatize transmission”. What are we to make of such a plan when we know that TCN is already privatized via a management agreement. We must do well to remind ourselves at this point that privatization is a continuum that encompasses management agreement, concession and sale of assets, a fact that which Professor Osinbajo’s suggestion’s of an APC led privatization of transmission as an innovation fails to bring out. The planned innovation is already on-going! He also says that an APC administration would streamline gas supply to power the turbines and bring more  IPPs on stream. How different is this from what is going on currently? Is APC’s change not PDP transformation dressed up as a synonym? To be credible change must be real and not a convenient buzz word.

On dealing with insurgency, Osinbajo nearly allowed his eloquence to dribble him into trouble when he almost suggested that the  entire country was not behind the efforts  to defeat BH. Almost trapped, Osinbajo beat a hasty retreat and sought refuge in a sound byte “leading from the the front”  and in the platitude of preaching a “bipartisan approach”, conveniently forgetting that his  principal had earlier rebuffed efforts by GEJ in this same direction. Who does not remember that GMB refused to serve on a task team set up by Jonathan to address and resolve the insurgency?

Finally, that Osinbajo cleverly avoided answering the question of near identity of persons and characters in APC and PDP (given the dominant  recruitment and resourcing strategy of defection in the two parties) says a lot about him. It says something about an emergent personality trait that can only come from acquiring the third P of politician. Only a politician too can choose to gloss over severe human rights abuses in GMB’s first coming and seek to justify these by claims that the administration was hailed and welcomed by all on arrival. A pastor would have shown some remorse over the gross human rights abuses that were associated with Buhari/Idiagbon regime and apologized to Nigerians on behalf of his principal for these. But not this eloquent professor of law and pastor turned politician.

So, as we admire his impressive outing, let us welcome Osinbajo, Pastor, Professor and Politician and pray that the occupational hazards from his latest P do not drown out or crowd out the fine attributes from the first two Ps.

Posted in Prose

What Buhari and his image polishing team should know

Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor

The Mr Clean image sell is not working and will not work. There are too many pointers that suggest GMB’s complicity and or connivance in not too clean deals. Check out the NNPC deal. Check out the “APC” deal whilst He was with PTF. (APC means Afri-Project Consortium. Amazing coincidence in the two acronyms!)

The Mr Fair Guy image will not work either. There is damning evidence of nepotism and influence of region and religion in his decision making in the past.  Check the apportioning and location of PTF projects in the country. Check out disproportionate treatments meted to different civilians under his watch.

The Disciplinarian image is not working. There is a difference between a disciplinarian and an unfeeling and uncaring dictator! Remember decrees 2, 4, Irabor, Ogendengbe, Papa Tai Solarin, Pa Ajasin, Lateeef Jakande and some other respected politicians from the south-west!

The Corrective leader image is not working too. A corrective regime is not the same as one that tramples on human rights.

The Democrat image is not working either and will not work. Anyone who can promulgate decrees 2 and 4 can never and will never be a democrat.

The Honest Military leader image is not working. Anyone who can backdate a decree to “catch” someone is cruel, callous, dishonest and lacks humanity.

The Caring Civilian image is not working. Anyone who refused to speak up in the 2011 post elections violence is a cruel and driven person with a callused conscience.

A media strategy revision is required and urgently. The current spins are not convincing.

Posted in Prose

The General outsmarted us all!

Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor

By

Noel A. Ihebuzor

By now you must have watched and analyzed that TV interview performance. I sent you the link line to it. Did you experience any jaw drop on watching it? I did! Have you tried to explain that performance to yourself? I have tried myself and I keep coming back to this explanation – the general conned us. What we saw was a deliberate charade designed to throw Nigerians off guard and to encourage any tendency in the other party to under-rate him. The ensuing complacency in that party would then play to the general’s advantage.

How else can one explain the alarming incidence of very absurd answers to very clear questions that one witnessed? Some of the responses were “Bakin Zuwoesque”, whilst others were brilliantly and blatantly Kafkaesque. I am convinced that the display was deliberate. It could not be the reflection of incompetence and ineptitude. Generals are generally not that blank. And remember that to get to the rank of general, one necessarily has to go through some very rigorous training exercises and courses both at home and abroad. A subaltern would not even have responded the way he did.

And it cannot be an indication of a series of “senior moments” that kept reoccurring throughout that interview – such an explanation would immediately show him to be unsuitable for the post he so much craves for. And it cannot be the result of PDP juju as some others have claimed either.

Which then brings me back to the feigned incompetence explanation. This feigned incompetence theory assumes further credibility when one recalls that none of his usually boisterous social media supporters has come forward to respond or defend his performance. All have kept mum.

You will be surprised by my conclusion – a man who can convincingly feign such ignorance and project such blankness must have advanced skills in the art of concealment and politics, and should thus be able to outfox all the foxes and lions in his party. He has risen very highly in my estimation since pulling off this brilliant tour de force.

Posted in Prose

Reflections on credulity and credibility

Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor

By

Noel A. Ihebuzor

The incidence of celebrities, authority figures and eminent persons making commentaries on social affairs, the state of the economy and governance etc. is on the rise. We are now assailed from every corner by judgments of, and commentaries on people, places, periods and events by such celebrities and eminent persons. Not all of these judgments and commentaries are however backed by evidence. What should be our reactions before such claims, commentaries and judgements? Is there not a difference between an opinion and a fact? Are the opinions of a celebrity always right? Should we always believe them? Must we suspend criticality when processing the views of such persons?

The reflections below on credibility and credulity were prompted precisely by these questions. My hope is that by the time you have gone through these reflections, you would have come up with your own personal strategy and processes for sieving statements, claims and commentaries for facticity and accuracy, and are thus more able to separate facts from opinions, no matter their sources. Enjoy the reading. Let me also have the benefit of your comments on these reflections.

  1. The chances of a claim being believed as true are largely a function of two things – How credible the source is or judged to be & how credulous the receiver is!
  2. It is so easy for a credible source or a source that is judged credible to deceive a credulous audience.
  3. That deception will continue to happen until the “ahaa” moment.
  4. Wisdom is discovering that even your long trusted, infallible and credible source can sometimes be economical with the truth!
  5. Credulousness/credulity exposes us to massive manipulation and exploitation.
  6. Credulity comes with huge social, emotional & economic costs.
  7. Not all that that your credible source puts forward is true!
  8. Do not mistake capacity for linguistic elegance with capacity for telling the truth. Lies are often packaged in beautiful prose.
  9. Raise your credulity threshold. Be more critical! “Shine your eyes”!
  10. The more critical you are, the more you are likely to discover flaws in the “perfect” logic of that credible source.
  11. Once you begin to discover flaws, inaccuracies, distortions and lies in your credible source, his/her credibility starts to wane.
  12. Healthy skepticism is one useful remedy to problems of credulity.
  13. In our attitudes/receptivity to statements from others, we are constantly exposed to two types of errors called Type I and Type II errors.
  14. Remember your research methods course from tertiary education? Type I versus Type II errors? A bit similar but not the same!
  15. Type I error in belief is known as erroneous incredulity- refusing to believe something that is true because of quarrels with the source!
  16. Type II – erroneous credulity – believing something that is false to be true because of your infatuation with the source!
  17. The challenge in life is how to avoid type 1 belief errors – erroneous incredulity whilst still being critical & “sieving” all statements.
  18. For type II belief errors, we simply have to shine our eyes. There are powerful people who would not brook any challenge to their views. All they desire is to hold people captive to their views and go to every length to ensure that such mental captivity perdures.
  19. One of the most difficult things to do is to maintain the right level of critical distance enough to evaluate and to challenge, where necessary, the views of someone who has distinguished herself/himself.
  20. Healthy skepticism towards the views and opinions of such a person is usually considered as indicative of either jealousy or outright incivility or impetuosity.
  21. And yet such persons have been known to exploit their credibility and to stretch it beyond limits.
  22. They have been known to exploit their credibility to call people names, to smear people, to ridicule others and to march boldly on spaces where even angels tremble to tiptoe over.
  23. All this they can do because they have been successful in one field of human endeavour or the other.
  24. Someone who has distinguished herself/himself in any given field invariably builds up some credibility as a result of success in that specific field of pursuit.
  25. It is not unusual for such a person to make commentaries in other fields of pursuit.
  26. Danger starts to loom when such a person begins to feel that credibility built up in one area immediately confers omniscience on her/him and elevates her/him to a pansophist.
  27. Unless checked, such a person may begin to use credibility gained in one field to become the supreme arbiter on every social issue under the universe.
  28. I call this tendency to use credibility in one field to seek credibility in another the transfer of credibility. Humans engage frequently in such transfer of credibility.
  29. Let me try to illustrate. We may have a case where we find a geophysicist making comments in the area of rock music.
  30. Where such comments are made on the basis of solid evidence, our respect for the person making the comments should grow.
  31. Where, however, the person making the comments is simply appealing, either explicitly or implicitly, to his/her established credibility in one field and building his/her right to be believed on that alone, then we should be on our guards.
  32. For example, that V.S. Naipaul said something on “Azonto” dance steps does make it true or false. Check his sources. Check his logic. Distinguish opinions from facts. Become more critical. If Naipul is simply transferring his credibility as winner of a Nobel prize for literature and using this to get you to an uncritical acceptance of his opinion, then sack that opinion. The opinions of a Nobel prize are not beyond falsification.
  33. Also that Niels Bohr said something, say on race and intercultural dialogue, does not make it true or false. Check his sources. Check his facts. Check his logic. Recognize his contributions to atomic physics but also recognize that expertise in atomic physics does not immediately confer competence in race and culture. Raise your credulity threshold.
  34. Equally, that Einstein said something on politics does not make it true or false. Check the facts. Question his sources. Raise your own criticality
  35. These three examples are chosen to invite us all to be more critical.
  36. They are also intended to show that human beings can and do try to transfer their credibility from areas where they are authorities to others where they are not or may not be!
  37. In these areas where they are not authorities, such persons would still want to impose their views on others and present their opinions as if they were revealed truths.
  38. We are often victims of such people and suffer mind control by them for a number of reasons.
  39. One reason for our credulity before such people emerges from the interaction of herd feeling, laziness and inertia. Everybody believes them, so why should I not? And If I have believed them up till now, why should I start doubting them now?
  40. Another reason is that most of us have been socialized into uncritical acceptance of views by any authority figure. Such persons thus exercise a strong stranglehold on public opinion.
  41. The stranglehold these persons exercise on public opinion and thinking is aided by our culture of idolization of the successful.
  42. Such idolization soon morphs into “person idolatory” such that any attempt to examine this person’s views critically soon amounts to heresy!
  43. Anything this type/class of people says soon amounts to “cast in diamonds truths”.
  44. But such idolized persons soon over-reach themselves. Their formerly enraptured audiences soon begin to discover that they have feet of clay. People soon discover that not only are such people fallible, but they do tell lies and can be very petty and partisan.
  45. So, let me sum up –
  46. Credibility is a plus for the source; credulity is a negative for any audience.
  47. Credibility is a bit like virginity. Lose it and you have lost it!
  48. Credibility is an asset. Draw down recklessly on it without any replenishing and soon it runs out.
  49. Credibility is optimized in environments of high credulity.
  50. A celebrity uses her/his credibility to exploit the credulity of an uncritical public.
  51. Erroneous credulity is bad for any society.
  52. Losing one’s credulity is one key milestone in cognitive and emotional development.
  53. Celebrities are entitled to their personal opinions, but not all opinions are true!
  54. Name calling has a certain appeal but it still does not amount to a proof. Ask any lawyer!
  55. Concluding comment – let your speaker earn your confidence. Do not let him/her take advantage of or abuse your credulity.
Posted in Prose

Jottings on Credibility and credulity

Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor

By

Noel A. Ihebuzor

  1. Credibility is a positive for the source; credulity is a negative for any audience.
  2. Credibility is a bit like virginity. Lose it and you have lost it!
  3. Credibility is asset. Draw down recklessly on it without replenishing and soon it runs out.
  4. Credibility is optimized in environments of high credulity.
  5. A celebrity uses her/his credibility to exploit the credulity of an uncritical public.
  6. Erroneous credulity is bad for any society.
  7. Losing one’s credulity is one key milestone in cognitive and emotional development.
  8. Celebrities are entitled to their personal opinions, but not all opinions are true!
  9. Name calling has a certain appeal but it still does not amount to a proof. Ask any lawyer!