I DO not believe that a society can sustain its democratic claims if it allows its public office holders to run two lives: an open public life and another jealously sheathed private one. At work, he or she is immersed in files, open for scrutiny, even if their over-embroidered agbada or sky-touching gele wouldn’t permit a full and close watch. But at home, in their closet, they are liberated from any restraint. They are at liberty to trash the discipline of service and accountability.
That is equal to performing Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the eponymous protagonists of the book by Robert Louis Stevenson. It’s one person leading two different lives. Jekyll takes a drug that breaks him into two separate personalities, one good and the other evil. Dr. Jekyll is the amiable character, while Mr. Hyde exhibits the pernicious traits. Yet it’s one person at work.
Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari has raised this question of the replay of a two-in-one personality in the…
