Politics is a game of loyalty, dedication, and commitment that has some similarities to the military system in terms of being loyal to a particular person or your boss.
Loyalty is the quality of staying firm in your friendship or support for someone or something, which is all believed that it is should not be less than 100%.
The Politics of the First Republic in Nigeria especially in the Yorubaland told many stories of politics and loyalty, especially about trust between the leaders and political followers and the trend has extended to the present day of politics in the country.
It is believed in some quarters that politics is one of the power-struggling games in which a leader will form an opinion on any of his followers based on what someone says without asking questions even if the story is right or not.
The majority of political followers have suffered like a pawn in a game of chess without being aware of their mistakes or wrong-doing, they just schemed out relevance in no time.
A political school of thought believes that the journey of politics is full of banana peels, and many have fallen without knowing what went wrong.
In politics, you must be a good political skimmer to stay on the fairway in a political setting anywhere in the world especially in Nigeria where hearsay or carrying bad news about others is one the tools to attract political or Elder’s patronage.
History has taught us different stories about how misinformation and misrepresentation destroyed many political friendships across different political parties, this has affected and even disrupted the political careers of many politicians in the country.
I must not forget to put it on record that political leaders prefer to base their judgement on the sentiments of their praise singers than the real people who will say the truth whatever the situation and many of these real people are often political casualties.
The majority of leaders have been misled or failed due to wrong information or misrepresentation of their praise singers thus affecting their relevance after leaving the office and they hardly have real people around them.
It is time to play politics of maturity and always balance the information so as not to be misled by political jobbers, ask questions and be wary of people who always have bad news about others even outside the political environment.
Political leaders have a lot of work to do to reduce the menace of bad news carriers or back-bitters in the system by exposing them and always not relying on these sets of people for political information, Nigeria’s political system needs to be sanitized against fake people.
Otunba Yomi Ojo
Fiwajoye 1.
