Politics of acrimony and the futility of smear campaigns, By ‘Lade Bandele

The hospital does not care about rumour. The child receiving an immunisation is untouched by speculation. The mother arriving at a clinic in labour has no interest in intrigue. Public life eventually returns to realities that exist independently of the narratives constructed around them… In the end, societies live not with the consequences of what was whispered, suspected or imagined, but with the consequences of whether institutions were built, strengthened or neglected.

There are seasons in politics when criticism performs its proper democratic function, and there are seasons when it becomes merely an instrument of anxiety. The difference is not always obvious at first. Both may co-exist clothed in the language of scrutiny. Both may claim to ask questions. Both may present themselves as public service. Yet one is interested in evidence, while the other is interested in reducing a person, a record or an institution to the size of a convenient narrative.

Every political culture develops habits of judgment. Some encourage inquiry. Others encourage suspicion. Over time, those habits become so deeply embedded that they begin to shape how societies interpret success itself. Achievement ceases to be understood as achievement. It becomes positioning. Service becomes strategy. Professional accomplishment becomes political preparation. The result is a subtle but consequential distortion of public life. A society that becomes incapable of distinguishing achievement from ambition eventually loses the ability to recognise institution-builders, while they are still engaged in the work of building institutions.

Bauchi politics has never lacked intensity. Like most political communities with a rich history of contestation, it has its own instincts, rivalries, memories and suspicions. It also has a recurring habit of reading visibility as ambition. A public figure need not declare interest in any office before a political theatre begins to form around him. Supporters may imagine possibilities, opponents may anticipate threats, and commentators may supply certainty where evidence remains thin. Before long, the person at the centre of the conversation is no longer being assessed by what he is doing, but by what others have decided he must be planning.

Periods of political transition often intensify this tendency. When established assumptions begin to weaken and future alignments remain uncertain, political imagination becomes unusually active. Public attention drifts from realities towards possibilities. Individuals who acquire visibility outside conventional political structures attract a degree of scrutiny that exceeds their actual conduct. They become symbols upon which hopes, anxieties and rival calculations are projected. In such circumstances, the conversation is rarely about the individual alone. It becomes a reflection of the political environment observing him.

That is how political projection works. Some people become candidates because they declare. Others become candidates because others need them to be candidates. The first is ambition. The second is anxiety dressed up as analysis. In such circumstances, public discourse tells us less about the individual being discussed than about the fears, expectations and calculations of the political environment doing the discussing.

Political communities frequently manufacture symbolic candidates long before actual candidates emerge. The symbolic candidate performs a useful function. Supporters rally around him. Rivals organise against him. Commentators construct narratives around him. His intentions become secondary to the role he performs within the wider political imagination. The individual gradually ceases to be discussed as a person and becomes discussed as a possibility. This is why certain names acquire a significance that far exceeds any formal political activity associated with them. The narrative survives not because it is especially persuasive, but because it satisfies needs that have very little to do with the individual at its centre.

A Career and the Narratives Around It

This is the deeper context within which recent attempts to reduce Muhammad Ali Pate to a convenient political caricature should be understood. The point is not that he is beyond criticism. No public official is. The point is that criticism worthy of the name must engage the record before interpreting the motive. Chinua Achebe understood this weakness in post-colonial public life with unusual clarity. His enduring concern was not only leadership itself, but the quality of public judgment surrounding leadership. Again and again, he returned to the danger of societies becoming consumed by personalities, while neglecting institutions. In such societies, intrigue attracts more attention than performance, and speculation travels faster than administration.

Yet citizens ultimately live with institutions rather than personalities. The hospital matters after the politician has departed. The school matters after the campaign has ended. The healthcare system matters long after the speech has been forgotten. When commentary appears more interested in constructing suspicion than examining evidence, it ceases to be scrutiny and becomes part of the familiar politics of diminishment.

A career that has moved through medicine, public administration, development finance, global health and national reform does not fit easily into the narrow vocabulary of local succession politics. This does not mean politics is irrelevant. In Bauchi, politics is never far from public interpretation. It does mean, however, that not every accomplished son of the state must be understood first as a future candidate and not every act of service must be forced into an electoral script.

The strange thing about smear campaigns is that they often reveal the weakness of the argument they seek to advance. If a public figure has no record, then insinuation may succeed because there is little else for the public to examine. But where there is a long, visible and verifiable record, the smear must work much harder. It must persuade citizens to ignore what can be seen in favour of what they are asked to suspect. That is a difficult undertaking, especially when the record in question stretches across local service, national reform and international leadership.

Pate’s career is not best understood through any single appointment, including the much-discussed Gavi episode. That was a significant marker of global recognition, but it was not the beginning of the story and it is not the centre of it. The more important point is continuity. Across the National Primary Health Care Development Agency, the Primary Health Care Under One Roof reform, the Midwives Service Scheme, Nigeria’s long struggle towards polio eradication, his tenure as Minister of State for Health, his work at the World Bank, the Global Financing Facility, academia, and his return to Nigeria’s health sector renewal efforts, the recurring themes are remarkably consistent: primary healthcare, health financing, institutional reform, service delivery, workforce development and systems strengthening.

The continuity is perhaps most visible in the present phase of his career. The Nigeria Health Sector Renewal Investment Initiative and the Sector-Wide Approach represent one of the most ambitious efforts since the return to democratic rule to align federal, state and partner investments around a common framework for governance, financing, workforce development, primary healthcare, service delivery and accountability. In many respects, they bring together themes that have appeared throughout his professional journey. At the very moment when a reform agenda of national scale is being pursued across the federation, a considerable amount of political commentary remains preoccupied with speculative futures. The contrast is revealing. It suggests that, for some observers, the more compelling story is not the difficult work of building institutions, but the easier drama of assigning motives to those engaged in building them.

Beyond the Vocabulary of Succession Politics

Seen this way, the narrative of sudden political calculation begins to look inadequate. What is striking is not that the narrative exists, but that it has attached itself to a career whose defining characteristic has been continuity, rather than political oscillation. The institutions changed. The responsibilities expanded. The geography shifted. Yet the underlying concerns remained strikingly consistent: systems, governance, financing, service delivery and institutional performance. Whatever conclusions one chooses to draw from that record, it is difficult to reconcile it with the simplistic logic upon which many speculative narratives depend.

A career that has moved through medicine, public administration, development finance, global health and national reform does not fit easily into the narrow vocabulary of local succession politics. This does not mean politics is irrelevant. In Bauchi, politics is never far from public interpretation. It does mean, however, that not every accomplished son of the state must be understood first as a future candidate and not every act of service must be forced into an electoral script.

The Returnee’s Dilemma

There is a broader irony here. Nigeria laments brain drain. It celebrates citizens who distinguish themselves abroad. It calls for expertise to return home and contribute to national development. Yet when someone with global standing does return, suspicion often follows closely behind. If he remains abroad, he has abandoned home. If he returns, he must be plotting. If he succeeds internationally, he is celebrated from a distance. If he serves locally, his motives become suspect. The allegation changes, but the habit of suspicion remains.

The contradiction is worth examining. A society cannot simultaneously lament the departure of talent, celebrate international accomplishment, encourage return and then greet return with automatic distrust. At some point the contradiction becomes self-defeating. The message inadvertently communicated is that excellence is admirable from a distance but unsettling up close. Yet nations do not build capacity merely by applauding achievement abroad. They build it when experience, expertise and leadership are allowed to contribute meaningfully at home.

This habit is not harmless. It narrows public conversation and distracts citizens from the critical questions. The relevant question is not whether political actors can invent motives for a public servant. Motives are easy to invent and difficult to disprove. The relevant question is whether institutions are being strengthened, whether systems are improving, whether public resources are producing public value, and whether citizens are better served by the work being done.

…the politics of acrimony ultimately defeats itself. It assumes that reputation is built mainly by narrative and can therefore be destroyed by counter-narrative. But durable reputations are built differently. They are built through work repeated over time, through institutions touched, through reforms attempted, through responsibilities carried, and through records that remain available for examination. Such reputations are not immune to criticism, but they are not easily erased by political mischief.

Bauchi and the Burden of Projection

That is why the Bauchi angle matters. The state’s politics, like the politics of many places, sometimes becomes too absorbed in imagined contests and insufficiently attentive to institutional consequence. Yet public life is not sustained by speculation. It is sustained by schools that work, hospitals that function, roads that connect, courts that command trust, and public institutions that outlast the personalities temporarily associated with them. The village woman seeking care for her child is not helped by rumours. The patient in need of treatment is not served by insinuation. The citizen encounters governance not as gossip, but as service delivered or denied.

This is where the politics of acrimony ultimately defeats itself. It assumes that reputation is built mainly by narrative and can therefore be destroyed by counter-narrative. But durable reputations are built differently. They are built through work repeated over time, through institutions touched, through reforms attempted, through responsibilities carried, and through records that remain available for examination. Such reputations are not immune to criticism, but they are not easily erased by political mischief.

The Difference Between Politics and History

History has always possessed a longer attention span than politics. Political gossip may dominate a season, but institutions endure in a different register. Few Nigerians now remember Obafemi Awolowo principally through the rumours, suspicions and tactical calculations that animated his contemporaries. What endured were the institutions, ideas and social investments associated with his public life. The same is true of Ahmadu Bello. The political arguments of their own day have largely receded into history; the administrative and institutional consequences of their work have not. Their contemporaries debated ambitions. History evaluated consequences. It proved less interested in intrigue than in what remained after intrigue had passed.

Every generation produces its intrigues, certainties and calculations. Entire political classes become consumed by stories that appear indispensable to understanding the present moment. For a season they dominate public debate. Then circumstances change, new controversies emerge and public attention moves on. Institutions travel differently through time. They remain after rivalries have faded, after calculations have been forgotten and after the urgency of contemporary disputes has passed.

History asks different questions from politics. Politics asks who is rising, who is falling and who may seek office next. History asks what was built, what endured, what improved and what remained after the noise subsided.

That is the measure to which serious societies eventually return. Not what was alleged, insinuated or conveniently circulated by rival factions, but what was built. The same standard applies to every public figure, including Pate. If institutions weaken under his watch, let the record say so. If reforms fail, let the evidence show it. But public judgment is impoverished when assessment gives way to insinuation and record yields to speculation.

The hospital does not care about rumour. The child receiving an immunisation is untouched by speculation. The mother arriving at a clinic in labour has no interest in intrigue. Public life eventually returns to realities that exist independently of the narratives constructed around them.

In the end, societies live not with the consequences of what was whispered, suspected or imagined, but with the consequences of whether institutions were built, strengthened or neglected.

That is where societies live.

And that is where history waits.

‘Lade Bandele is a public affairs analyst based in Lagos.