The almost irretrievable breakdown in the relationship between President Muhammadu Buhari and two of his former friends and staunchest allies, Buba Galadima and Father Mbaka, speaks volume about the Friendship Management Skills of the President and some of his close aides such as the Chief of Staff and members of his PR team. Yes, you need skills, plenty of them, to manage friends. If you are not a fool, it is far easier to manage enemies than to manage friends. If you are wise and you know that someone is your enemy, whether inherited or acquired, you simply avoid him. You do not do or say things that will provoke him or her to anger. It is that simple and you stay out of harm’s way until you people meet again either in heaven or hellfire.
But with friends, it is not that easy. Sometimes out of pure jealousy or envy, some friends can easily become frenemies and continue to live with or relate with you in masterful disguise and you will not know it and how to deal with that reality. They will become scorpions in your crutches. But to maintain friends, you need to know that some of them require that you visit them in their homes as often as possible; some require that you invite them to your home as often as you can; some want the oil of friendship constantly renewed with expensive or symbolic gifts as frequently as your means dictate or as their expectation of your means and status warrant.
If you are in authority and your friends are out there or down below, they expect you to invite them to important state functions, you give them contracts or you send them ‘’welfare’’ as frequently as their state of destitution endures while you are up there enjoying. And please spare them all that talk about integrity, due process, righteousness or the need for ‘change’ from the ways of past administrations. They can see all those who are enjoying when you went out of your way to help them change their status.
Some friends expect that if President Buhari, for instance, knows that his friend Idang Alibi is a farmer, he should take the initiative to call his minister of agriculture or the officer in-charge of Bank of Agriculture and all such interventionist organisations and say to them, ‘’ Please, I am sending to you my friend who I know is a very serious-minded farmer. Do all you can that is within your power and is absolutely LEGITIMATE to help him expand his farm so he can employ idler youth.” If Buhari does this kind of thing, I can swear that his Idang Alibi friend will remain his friend forever in the Order of David and Jonathan whether those government officials eventually help him out or not. The fact that you made efforts to remember and assist him will remain inerasable in his memory.
If you are a writer, poet or some artist and your president, governor or LGA chairman friend honours your premier, launch or exhibition with his esteemed presence and gives you recognition as a president’s friend, you will remain an abiding friend forever even if he does not do ‘launching’ at the event. That public advertisement of your friendship is more than enough. Remember, I mentioned here on this platform a few weeks ago how certain persons crave that recognition of their personhood more than anything else in the world. All my late Black brother the musician James Brown wanted in life was to be acknowledged or addressed as ‘’Mr.’’
As can be seen, a president, governor, LGA chairman and other political leaders and, as a matter of fact, all of us on the earth, must NECESSARILY give something to people be it phone calls, visits or invitations to visit, well-thought out gifts on important religious or social events, contracts, appointments, the honour of his mere presence, etc. That is why political scientists call persons in power ‘’authoritative allocators of values’’. In fact, all good human beings on the earth must show goodwill to others especially to your friends and others who are in need. So if governments and ordinary people must of necessity give gifts to people, would you rather start with your enemies or ‘unfriends’?
There is a book I read nearly 40 years ago entitled A Witness to Power written by John Erlichman, a former White House Counsel to the disgraced USA President Richard Nixon. That book is one of the best books I have ever read. Erlichman, who was jailed for his role in the Watergate Scandal that consumed him and his boss, gave account of the Nixon years. In it, he availed me great insight into the ways of power. What I gained from his book is that politics and politicians are the same everywhere in the world.
Nixon, I read, was a consummate political deal maker and even more expert PR practitioner who will not like to be seen courting enemies. If a friend or ally needs to be sacked or offended in any form, he will want it done nicely so that you do not become an enemy. ‘’Do not turn him loose so that he will not go about badmouthing us’’ was one of his favourite instructions to his aides.
Nixon was also someone who loved those who stick out their necks for him. A man boarded an aircraft for a flight somewhere in the country. While there in his first class cabin, he started campaigning and vigorously selling candidate Nixon. Words of this man’s great belief in Nixon got to him and when the man eventually won, he sent for this man and appointed him into his cabinet!
I personally think that if you are high up there like President Buhari is, one of the best ways to handle your former friends that you now hate or ‘unlike’ for whatever reasons, do not show visible anger. Just put the person in a state of suspended animation: unfriend him mentally and psychologically but do not make an enemy out of him and never, never ever turn him into an antagonist or a deadly or visceral foe. For hell hath no fury like a former friend who feels used and dumped.
President Buhari got to power with such a fund of goodwill that no Nigerian president in modern history did. It is sad that today, the 97 percent of Nigerians he said loved are fast turning into the 5 percent he said he is not sure of their love. If you ask me, this has to do with the handling of his friendship with people.
