Optics is everything

Amidst the Brexit chaos in the United Kingdom, that country’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson often resorts to optics for political brace. His actions project him as a crusader for the preference of a majority of Britons – the electorate had voted 52 percent to leave the European Union against 48 percent ‘remain’ in a 2016 referendum – up against the parliamentary elite who are throwing in bricks at every turn to upend that preference. Yet, he would not be dissuaded easily. He postures as having a handle on the crisis, which otherwise seems to be spinning out of control and threatening to drown him. And he is soldering on.

Last week, Johnson was in New York for the United Nations General Assembly where he marketed his vision of post-Brexit ‘Global Britain’ to the world community. He had vowed to take his country out of the EU “do or die” by October 31^st, but legal roadblocks may effectively tie his hand. As the prime minister delivered his address to the UN assembly across the Atlantic on Tuesday, 11 justices of the U.K. supreme court ruled his suspension of parliament “unlawful, void and of no effect.”

But Johnson is positioning himself as not to blame in the event of failure of Brexit as scheduled. His messaging portrays him as being victimised for determining to deliver the people’s choice, as in saying: ‘I badly want to give you the Brexit you voted for, but I am being frustrated every inch of the way by parliament.’ The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in a report last week said if opinion polls are to be believed, his message resonates with the public. Although the prime minister had planned to use his New York trip to cement ties with United States President Donald Trump, he returned to London immediately after his General Assembly address to face off with his country’ lawmakers. Reports said it was a bizarre encounter, as he dared opposition leader Jeremy Corbin to call a no-confidence vote on him. He also tagged a parliament act forbidding him from exiting EU on October 31^st without a deal a “surrender bill.”

Africa has its own master of optics in President John Magufuli of Tanzania. Since coming to office in 2015, he has cut the image of a no-nonsense, waste-cutting, goal-getting and corruption-mauling populist leader who walks his talk. They call him ‘The Bulldozer,’ as he relentlessly takes down privileged impediments to developmental goals he sets for his country. And there are indications he’s made some headway for Tanzania. He is also regarded beyond his country as a Spartan role model on a continent plagued by corrupt and indulgent leadership. Only that he’s carried on at the cost of pushing back the frontiers of liberties that democracy ordinarily affords.

Talking about optics, Magufuli has stopped lavish celebrations of Tanzanian independence day since he took office. Rather than expend public funds on the December 9 yearly event, he has been ordering environmental cleanup on that day while redirecting money that would have been spent on celebrations into providing social services. I am not sure if he still does so four years after, but when he started out he personally joined in the environmental cleanup. Nothing beats visuals of a country president being zestfully hands on at digging out filthy debris from clogged drainages alongside the people he leads.

To further cut governance costs, the Tanzanian leader introduced other austerity measures. Among them, he banned overseas travel for officials, directing that diplomats in Tanzania’s embassies abroad should stand in for the country at any meeting requiring government representation. Reports said Magufuli himself has not travelled outside East Africa since becoming president; he has only visited neighbouring Uganda, Kenya and Rwanda, while his farthest journey has been to Ethiopia. He is on record saying he skips foreign travels to save money. A report by his country’s central bank early in 2017 showed the government saved $430million by limiting foreign travels between November 2015 and November 2016.

Magufuli’s optics have been so powerful that despite the relatively minimal stature of his country in global affairs, he is widely regarded as an African icon, such that #WhatWouldMagufuliDo? trends on Twitter as citizens of other countries measure the actions of their own leaders against potential responses of the Tanzanian president.

We can do with some optics in governance in Nigeria. And when Kaduna State Governor Nasir el-Rufai took his six-year-old son to be enrolled in a public school in the state capital early last week, it was good optics to a high degree. The governor said he was enrolling little Abubakar into primary one at a public school in fulfillment of a promise he made in 2017. “I made that commitment because I believe it is only when all political leaders have their children in public schools that we will pay due attention to the quality of public education…My intention is to ensure that all our public schools offer quality education, and so we are encouraging all our senior public servants to send their children to public schools. Once public schools are improved to a point that they are nearly as good or even better than private schools, no one will waste his money taking his child to private school,” he said.

“It is when (leaders) experience first hand what every other citizen experiences that we could hope for empathetic governance”

Objectors, many of them out of partisan bias, have however second-guessed the governor and accused him of propaganda. They said it was cheap that he took along news crews to an event that should be a routine parental engagement. Others discerned sheer opportunism, since other children of el-Rufai schooled abroad. And really, it isn’t that anyone could unarguably foreclose such motives as have been alleged. In a 2010 feature piece for the New York Times, Ben Zimmer wrote that: “When politicians fret about the public perception of a decision more than the substance of the decision itself, we’re living in a world of optics.”

But Zimmer also cited Canadian bi-linguist and then editor of The Suburban, Quebec’s largest English-language weekly, Beryl Wajsman, who wrote in a 2007 column for Canada Free Press that “the ‘optique’ (French term roughly equivalent to ‘optics’), as it is called in very politically savvy Quebec, is everything.” This is a principle that applies no less to the el-Rufai school enrolment act.

If el-Rufai had not sent his children to a public school until now, the whole message is that his government has been working on the system to now inspire sufficient confidence in every cadre of society. If every other government leader at the state and federal levels across the country does likewise, we would be making a major headway with the public education system nationwide. Thus, the symbolism of the Kaduna event was aptly captured by little Abubakar’s mother, Ummi el-Rufai, when she said inter alia: “By the time we start attending public hospitals and sending our children to public schools, the system will get better.” You could bet that the public school system in Kaduna State will get qualitative and quantitative boosts from the el-Rufai act that ordinary state residents will savour for some time to come.

It is optics of this kind that we need for all-round improvement in the quality of leadership in this country. Imagine the impact on the Nigerian healthcare system if our leaders would walk into public hospitals and submit to examination by local doctors, rather than scurry abroad for treatment of headaches and other slight ailments. Imagine if they travel long distances over land on the dilapidated road infrastructure, rather than hop about in aircraft to engagements even short stops away from their power cocoons. Imagine if their daily upkeep is from their take-home packages and not budgetary items in government overheads. Imagine if they’re connected solely to the national power grid with no generator backup.  Imagine if they snake through traffic gridlocks in urban centres without the routine traffic being diverted for their sake or sirens blaring off other road user to make way for their unimpeded passage. It is when they experience first hand what every other citizen experiences that we could hope for empathetic governance that would make things better.