Saturday, September 11, 2021

“I have Been “Oba” of this Table for So Long Because I’ve Always Known What my Enemies Would Do – Even Before they Thought of It.” – Eniola Salami in King of Boys: The Return of the king

 

I’ve always had a fascination for different places and cultures. So, whilst I never really “made it” to a level where I got sent to all sorts of obscure places, I’ve been able to live my fantasies of being outside of the confines of small-town England or Singapore through watching movies shot in different parts of the world. I loved watching Kung-Fu movies because I got an idealized image of China and Hong Kong. You could say that I was most comfortable in “Chinatowns” because I always saw myself as the rickshaw puller in Chinatown who would somehow become a hero (my folks would shoot me for saying it, but I preferred to be seen as a “Collie” than an English gentleman inhabiting a Chinese body).

As I grew older and the community that I interacted with more was increasingly Indian national, my interest in Bollywood grew. I found certain meanings from Bollywood movies, tried to pick up Hindi (which is easier for me than picking up Hokkien) and every Indian girl on screen was a goddess. I also had a fantasy of ending up with an Indian girl, after lengthy battles with my parents (which would never have happened. Firstly, I was never in a place where I could meet a Bollywood lookalike and secondly my parents are exceedingly open-minded, thus ruining any teenage needs I might have had of trying to rebel).

I haven’t lost my fascination of with how people from all over the world might live. My greatest discovery during the various Covid imposed lock downs in the last year was “Nollywood” or Nigerian cinema. Whist Bollywood has become exceedingly “slick,” Nollywood is refreshingly crude. Many of the scenes look like they’ve been shot with a handheld video camera. The actors and actresses are not wonderfully attractive (they look like the rest of us) and that provides a wonderful sense of realism that you don’t get in either Hollywood or Bollywood.

One of the things that Nollywood does well is to cover the corruption that Nigeria has become so famous for. If you watch Nollywood, you get to see how people expect palms to be greased for the smallest of things and you get a glimpse of how the chase for power becomes particularly addictive.

I just finished a series called “King of Boys: The Return of the King,” which tells a story of a businesswoman who is also a gangster. She comes back from exile and proceeds to go into politics. The main character is violent (there’s a line which says that “peace of mind” is not for people like her), bribes and blackmails her way to power. In the end, she ends up as “Governor” of Lagos State (one of Nigeria’s wealthier ones), and rules from the top and she instills a successor for her underworld activities – hence he rules from below.

There is a crucial point in the series when her enemies think they finally have her and she then explains that she remained “Oba” (Yoruba for ruler) of the table for so long because she always knew what her enemies were going to do before they even planned it.”

This fictional character is providing the rest of us with much valuable advice – which is to know how the people we’re going to deal with, are going to react even before they know what they’re going to do. I believe the correct term is “empathy.”

Modern management theory works on the maxim that “Information of power.” As such, everyone is focused on how to “acquire” information. People in leadership positions have become particularly obsessed with “gathering intelligence.” The idea is simple – the more I know about a given situation, the more I can act correctly. The follow up idea is that if I can limit your sources of information, the more I can limit your ability to act.

Take CECA debates. Whatever one thinks of CECA, the government inevitably has the upper hand when it comes to quoting statistics. The reason is simple, they control the information flow.

However, what people forget is that while controlling the flow of information is important in dealing with situations, there’s got to be an element of knowing what people will do with the information. It’s like this – if you know exactly what the other guy is going to do, you’ve won most of the battle.

This, however, requires a certain characteristic. One needs empathy or at least some imagination. This is the ability to step into someone else’s shoes. Let’s go back to the recent events in Afghanistan as an example. We had a group of bearded men who managed to send the world’s most powerful military and information gathering machine packing. How did they do that?

Part of the explanation was provided by former General HR McMaster, who served as National Security Advisor to the Trump administration. He argued that “we also assume that people are like us.” General McMaster then went onto argue that US policy makers made mistakes because they assumed the Taliban would act in the way that Americans would act.

I will leave US military policy to better informed people. However, I do believe that the General has hit the nail on the head in as much as part of our failures in life come from the assumption that people are “exactly like us,” which in turn makes us unable to understand why people don’t do or react in the same way as us.

Look at the current PAP government and how it handles issues like CECA. They came out with great statistics to get their points across. Take a look at the Ministry of Trade and Industry’s website on CECA, which says that 97,000 locals were employed by Singapore-based companies that invested in India in 2019:

https://www.mti.gov.sg/Improving-Trade/Free-Trade-Agreements/CECA

I can’t dispute that statistic. However, what does that mean to a 40-year-old mid-career professional who has just been retrenched, can’t find a job and every time he steps in for an interview, the interviewer is inevitably from India? Has anyone in a policy making position ever thought of how you’d explain the benefits of CECA to someone in that position.

If the Prime Minister seriously wants to secure his legacy, he should watch this Nollywood flick. He and his team need to understand that having statistics to support their policies is only part of the battle. The other part is, as former President Bill Clinton said is getting people to “feel it.” The ruling party needs to know and understand the people that it is ruling – otherwise it could end up being the most successful ruling party in history to lose an election.   


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Maira Gall