I’ve never hidden my love for the Yoruba language. And the love has nothing to do with my Yoruba heritage or pride in my Yoruba identity. Rather, it is inspired by the flexibility of its lexicon and free license given to speakers to create new vocabularies and manipulate words. Anyway, I have no intention to eulogize the Yoruba language today, beyond the fact that the license it offers should be blamed for what I am about to do… copying and pasting.

I have just read David Owen’s 2009 book ‘Bush, Blair and the Intoxication of Power’. It is a penny book with more than a penny worth of wisdom. Since I have the tendency to mind the business of governance and leadership on behalf of so many, it pleases me to share snippets of what the book is about. The ‘Hubris Syndrome’. Are you familiar with this term? If you are not, please let me enrich your knowledge and if you are, kindly indulge my ‘busybodyness’.

So here we go!! .

‘Hubris Syndrome’ is a temporary personality disorder that affects people who are exposed to political power. manifested in impetuosity, a refusal to listen to or take advice and a particular form of incompetence when impulsivity, recklessness and frequent inattention to detail predominate. Owen observed from laboratory analysis of the brains of people exposed to power  that extreme hubristic behaviour is a syndrome, constituting a cluster of features (‘symptoms’) evoked by a specific trigger (power), and usually remitting when power fades. He added that Hubris syndrome is an acquired condition, and therefore different from most personality disorders

The key concept is that hubris syndrome is a disorder of the possession of power, particularly power which has been associated with overwhelming (personal and not necessarily quality leadership) success, held for a period of years and with minimal constraint on the leader. A common thread tying these elements together is hubris, or exaggerated pride, overwhelming self-confidence and contempt for others (Owen, 2006).

Hubris syndrome was formulated as a pattern of behaviour in a person who: (i) sees the world as a place for self-glorification through the use of power; (ii) has a tendency to take action primarily to enhance personal image; (iii) shows disproportionate concern for image and presentation; (iv) exhibits messianic zeal and exaltation in speech; (v) conflates self with nation or organization; (vi) uses the royal ‘we’ in conversation; (vii) shows excessive self-confidence; (viii) manifestly has contempt for others; (ix) shows accountability only to a higher court (history or God); (x) displays unshakeable belief that they will be vindicated in that court; (xi) loses contact with reality; (xii) resorts to restlessness, recklessness and impulsive actions; (xiii) allows moral rectitude to obviate consideration of practicality, cost or outcome; and (xiv) displays incompetence with disregard for nuts and bolts of policy making’.

What are my take home from David Owen’s book? Definitely not a realization that there is a clinical explanation for the behavior of our men of power. I have always known that one or two nuts get loosened from the brains of men of power with passage of time. I was also before now aware that the ailment confronting men of power is not confined to our clime. However, whereas  institutions were developed in other climes to check the excesses of deluded political leaders, our nation is yet to come to term with the reality that systems are needed to curtail the intoxicating power of power. Sadly, the citizens who are at the receiving end of abuse of power are in large part the ones who trigger the hubris in the brains of powerful people through excessive praise singing, denial of reality and deification of leaders.

So, shall we continue to blame powerful men ‘who bestride their environment like colossus’ for acting true to type when in actual fact we are the architect of their madness? Naw!! The fault is not theirs, it lies solely with us. What do you think would happen when you are unable to tell leaders the truth? What actions do you trigger when you tell political leaders that they are the ‘next calabash to the gods’? Common!  Why would a humble spouse of a man of power not feel like she is the new Moremi when aged women, old enough to be her grand mother sits in her court calling her ‘mummy’? That the heads of powerful men inflate like a balloon is not natural, the swelling only occurs because such heads were filled with air injected by pneumatic pumps. No head will swell without the inflation from your false praise words and aladura genuflections.