Weekend Arena: Nigeria Is Full Of 'Packaging Scientists'

I once had a friend and colleague, late Ike Nwabuoku, whose oratory was so impeccable that he could persuade the hardest of souls. A walking library having grown under the tutelage of his dad, a university professor, my friend knew how to deploy this gift whenever his salary ran out.

 

He would, according to him, ‘wear his garb of hypocrisy’, walk into the MD’s office, sing his praises, and pronto, a salary advance would be approved for him. 

We were often amazed at how effortlessly he used to do it, but it always worked for him, so much that at a time he was five months ahead of others in terms of salaries. You would appreciate this when you work in a Nigerian company and persuade your way into earning your salaries five months ahead of the services you are supposed to render.

That was Ike, my friend. 

He was so vast and knowledgeable that there is no subject matter under the sun he could not contribute very meaningfully to. His father’s huge library, no be waste at all, if you ask me. 

 Each time I tried to remind him that what he was doing, praise-singing people for favours was hypocrisy, he would tell me it was called ‘Packaging Sciences’. 

Invariably, he was a ‘packaging scientist’, who would sing your praises, tell you what you wanted to hear and reap bountifully at the end. According to him, the ‘art’ of ‘Packaging Sciences’ involves getting into the mind of the target (leader) to know things that are dearest to him and pretend to show genuine concern about those. In other words, if your MD is in love with his daughter, you must show ‘fake’ genuine concern about her.

 If it his dog or flower, you must help him and attach equal importance or pretend to be doing so. Whenever the opportunity calls, ‘wax a record’ and sing praises of those things that appear important to him. You must make him glad always with your patronising words, because if you ever let him get angry, no show for you o. Ike’s antics was at the corporate level and still happens in a lot of organisations, but it is not as destructive as the ones in the political circles.


In case you do not know, these ‘packaging scientists’ at the corridors of power are the major reason the country has been stumbling and continues to because, they are wired to whitewash issues to the leaders, so long as, that would ‘butter their bread’. They have been around for a long time and have been wrecking this havoc administration after administration, regime after regime. 

Take for instance when General Sani Abacha was in power, some people were around him, deodorising some of his policies then, urging him on, so much that a certain southwest politician once declared that if there was any God he could see, it was Abacha. But one year after he died, these self-professed lovers all ran away. It is on record that on his birthday anniversary after his death, it was only Wada Nas, who remembered; the hordes of praise-singers and packaging scientists around then had all fled, looking for a new target to fleece.

 If the dead could feel the living, I am sure Abacha would be shaking his head about the comments coming from some of them today. This should serve as a lesson for anyone in a leadership position. Genuine leaders should surround themselves with people who tell them the truth.

Every discerning Nigerian knows how things are in the country on virtually all premises: insecurity, unemployment, education, agriculture, but for the packaging scientists, these facts are always distorted any time they get the opportunity to speak. You know them from their act of double speaking. Professor Sagay, who had all along believed that security today is far better than what it was some five years ago, surprised some of us recently, when he made a call for Nigerians to be allowed to carry guns to defend themselves…unto security wey don improve?


Some of them have shifted to Governor Yahaya Bello of Kogi State. They are telling him that his performances are so stellar, that he should consider stepping forward in 2023 to succeed President Buhari. I guess these spectacular performances they are referring to happened in Kogi State of all places that many of us are not blind to see. The governor’s camp has offered a ‘testing-the-microphone’ statement to say, he was still committed to completing the numerous developmental projects, he started in Kogi, before he would ‘consider coming to Abuja to salvage Nigeria’.

This same people are the ones fuelling resentment towards Bishop Kukah, calling for his arrest even when the man at the centre of the comment may very well know the Bishop spoke the truth. But this is what you get from a system where the formation of a political group is a pastime. Before you snap your fingers, one is set up. Many of them have only two members and exist only in the press releases they regularly issue; operating from wallets and at most, handbags.

In the spirit of the season, Nigerians should pray fervently (prayer is fast becoming an economic policy) that all these hypocrites, praise-singers, confusing the leaders should shift.

*With this your definition,it means even you are a packaging scientists cos you always praise sing on Facebook with your status....Oh boy eh,practice what you preach abeg....Happy New year Ngozi,may only good things be your portion this year ...AMEN!!!