Where’s Nigeria’s ‘Joe Kent’ In Our Public Service Life?

By Mobolaji Sanusi

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”——Martin Luther King

Nigeria’s public service life is a reflection of the society that we created and lived in. The rat race for unearned, unexplained wealth, avaricious pursuits, and subordination of national interests to personal greed, for survival’s sake, due to institutional weakness, reigns supreme. Dignity/character, unfortunately, is fast becoming more endemically a rarity in the country’s public service.

The foregoing personal reflection came about when yours sincerely, earlier this week, read the astonishing news from far away United States, that Joe Kent, an unrepentant supporter of President Donald Trump has forthwith resigned his appointment as director of his country’s National Counterterrorism Center. He posted a letter on his X account that was not about counterterrorism strategy against Iran or any other perceived or phantom enemies of his dear country-The United States. Neither was his X-Handle post about any hypocritical fairytales of Trump’s purported devastating exploits on Iranians or his America First agenda.

Rather, the forty-five-year old Kent’s post was about his voluntary conscience-driven resignation letter from Trump’s administration, citing the needlessness of the war that his country’s president, in cahoots with Israel, is waging against the people of Iran. He unapologetically squealed that Iran posed “no imminent threat” to the US, contrary to his bosom ally and president’s publicly proclaimed position. Kent also claimed that the Trump administration “started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.” He equally believes that his selfless military service to the United States and his wife’s death while on national assignment in Syria “cannot support sending the next generation off to fight and die in a war that serves no benefit to the American people nor justifies the cost of American lives.”

By this, he puts a lie to America’s routine inflictions of devastations on developmentally evolving and resource endowed but militarily weaker countries for coded self-serving reasons.

As an incumbent of that exalted position, Kent wields enormous powers in the administration of President Trump. He had the ears of his friend, the president, but for the protection of his personal principle, he strictly followed his conscience, opting for national interest over personal benefits.

Kent, with his action, gave his conscience high premium over privileges and perquisites of office. His president wanted war in Iran and had gone to war. But Kent’s conscience, described as an open wound of which only truth can heal – apologies to Uthman Dan Fodio – was telling him something different, which is the more realistically humane path to toe.

He ignored official sentiments/propaganda and adhered to the whistling of his heart. Today, Kent, the man of valour and honour, is no longer part of Trump/Israel’s needless killings in Iran, obviously for the right reasons. Kent does not want the lives and prestige of the United States to abruptly end due to Trump’s inordinate pursuits, like other fallen empires of yore, that embarked on frivolous wars and other detrimental exploits. His voluntary resignation corroborated Martin Luther King’s admonition that “our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”

Whatever balderdash the White House is spewing out means nothing to Kent. Not even Trump’s response that “It’s a good thing that he’s out” or the White House’s statement that it had what reasonable world patriots considered to be doubtful “compelling evidence” that Iran was going to attack the US first, could sway his decision or meant anything to him.

The courageous Kent, in his resignation letter addressed to Trump, further alleged that “high-ranking Israeli officials” and influential US journalists had sowed “misinformation” that led the president to undermine his “America First” platform. His clincher against Trump’s contentious decision against Iran was where he said: “This echo chamber was used to deceive you into believing that Iran posed an imminent threat to the United States…..This was a lie.”

Tulsi Gabbard, director of National Intelligence that Kent, before his voluntary resignation, officially reported directly to has also confirmed in writing during a midweek congressional committee appearance that Iran is of no threat to the United States because it has minimally degraded its nuclear arsenal. This confirms what Kent courageously spilt out as the person-in-charge of the analysis and detection of potential terrorist threats against America from around the globe. He should know by virtue of his freshly dumped position.

This is a big lesson for public office holders in my dear Nigeria who tend to put personal survival and loyalty to their appointor, far above allegiance to the country and Nigerians. The prevailing but condemnable disposition of political appointees in the country brings out the truism in Dwight D. Eisenhower’s observation that: “A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.” Nigerian public service appointees that are always in stealthy pursuits of privileges over principles don’t even care a hoot about losing both, sadly at the detriment of the overall wellbeing of the entire nation. This unabated situation is continuing, sadly with authorities looking the other way and with no dire consequences.

Yours sincerely believe that the test of good citizenship is loyalty to country, not unrestrained grovelling before today’s powerful individuals. Appointments are no longer a true test of appointees’ character but that of being close enough to or knowing someone close enough to the person in power. No wonder that we continue to get it wrong as a society. The question: Where are the Joe Kent of Nigeria under the current democratic dispensation who can speak truth to power or voluntarily resign their positions on principled policy disagreements with their principals? Is Nigeria jinxed for not having such men in our public service? Why’re our public officers ‘yes men’ to bad and worse governmental policies/practices that could not sincerely pass the test of conscience-scrutiny? It is however not impossible that we have a few exceptions amongst them that have been overwhelmed by institutional negativity.

These appointees are put in positions to add values to any country’s systems. Whenever it becomes obvious that their meaningful contributions are being undermined or ignored, the honourable thing to do is to voluntarily make a dignifying exit like Kent did. But this decent path is alien and ‘unacceptable’ to the materialistically-rotten contemporary society that we live in. Those in office are contending for retention of their positions with those hypocritical fellows/political jobbers that made hitherto scathing comments about our leader.

Sustaining above practice could mean that most appointees would serve through leadership bad policies/practices, only to shamelessly write chapters after the demise of their tenure on why they stayed-put with non-progressive governmental policies and practices. It is then that they could summon courage that eluded them in office by belatedly putting blames on retired leaders obscuring the publicly known fact that they odiously stayed behind to steal government money, enough to sustain their unborn generations, with no dire consequences even when caught.

Nigerians in public offices should be reminded that the ideals and values that make any country great can only be brought to fruition by good citizenship that prioritized the defence of democratic principles and the entrenchment of its institutions.

And until our political appointees and other Nigerians aspire to be the change we all desire for our country, we may be far from getting our own Joe Kent. What a sad realisation!

• Sanusi, former MD/CEO of Lagos State Signage & Advertisement Agency, is currently managing partner at AMS RELIABLE SOLICITORS. (sms/whatsapp-07011117777)