Something called LEGACY

“Legacy is not a matter of rank and power. It is about what you did at your life’s station. If you have no moral courage to be a propitious god over the little things you are assigned to care for, you cannot have any justification calling out or criticising people in higher echelons of power and authority for not diligently doing their duties.”

ALL religions, orthodox or run-of-the-mill, universal or regional, one way or another appear to acknowledge that only God can live forever. In whatever way they conceptualise or visualise God, they all attribute the quality of immortality to this omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent divinity. Unlike God, all of us wear the cloak of mortality, and should rightfully be mindful of how positively we live our lives; not the riches and wealth we shall leave behind or the chain of academic laurels and other mundane and spectacular achievements credited to us, but the quality of goodness in the life we live. That is how we will be remembered. That will be our legacy.

Christianity reminds us that we are dust, and on to dust we shall all return. Islam acknowledges the same truism and shows it in the way the dead are buried without the showmanship, fanfare of expensive coffins and other trappings of opulence. What matters is our glowing legacy, those glorious intangibles we bequeath onto humanity. Everything else is beside the point.

Philosophically expressed, a person’s legacy does not really have to be positive. You couldn’t really eulogize and glorify those who relished inflicting harm on fellow human beings, be it through slavery or embezzlement of funds meant to improve the lots of poor proletariats. In an interview, former Nigerian patriot, Tai Solarin, paraphrased a philosopher I cannot recall, and told me that you measure the quality of life not by the wine drunk, but by the wine poured forth; not about what you consumed and ostentatiously advertised and displayed but about what you did to improve people’s lives, even those you did not know.  That’s our real legacy.

But, you do not have to be a person of immense wealth, power and authority to care about your legacy. As a lowly paid civil servant, how did you perform the duties assigned to you? As a low-cadre policeman or woman, did you thrive on demanding and accepting bribes in order to help people you are paid to serve and assist? As a primary school teacher lowest in rank among your colleagues, how dedicated were you in carrying out your teaching duties? Legacy is not a matter of rank and power. It is about what you did at your life’s station. If you have no moral courage to be a propitious god over the little things you are assigned to care for, you cannot have any justification calling out or criticising people in higher echelons of power and authority for not diligently doing their duties. As Chief Obafemi Awolowo used to articulate and enunciate, only the deep can call to the deep.

The people who perhaps care least about their positive legacy are politicians. Their currency of trade is power and self-aggrandisement. Their ultimate objective is to amass more power. They care about being remembered more for the power they acquired and exhibited than the amount of wine they poured forth. The more they embezzle money and use their positions to enrich themselves and consolidate their power, who cares about legacy? Yet, they forget that one day, death will come knocking and all their power and might will not, and cannot save them. Even when we bury them in golden caskets and stage days of feasting and celebrations to honour their so-called illustrious lives, all of that will be no more than what the German-Dutch philosopher, Thomas à Kempis, described in his book, The Imitation of Christ, as vanity upon vanity resulting in vanity.

But, not all politicians revel in disdain and remain unconscionable about the type of legacy they leave behind. January 20^th 2021 and June 14^th 1999 are exemplary dates in history that show remarkable distinctions in attention to legacy by political leaders separated by geography, culture, humanity and thoughtfulness. The former date belongs to Donald John Trump of the United States and the latter, to Africa’s Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela. I readily admit that placing them on the same pedestal might be an exercise in intellectual dishonesty because of the ocean of differences between them. However, their examples suffice in this analysis.

Mandela came to power in 1994 in an uncontroversial election and five years later, voluntarily stepped down from office, in spite of the tremendous pressure on him to remain in the presidency. He believed he had played his role in South Africa and told his comrades that it was time for another person to take over the baton of leadership in his country. Turn around to a new century and to a man called Donald Trump in a country that boasts about being the citadel of democracy. Trump came to power in controversial circumstances, finished his first term, lost an election but remained convinced that his birthright to lead had been wrestled from him and decided to literally burn the house on his way out. He even put the life of his own lap-dog vice president, Mike Pence, in jeopardy on January 6, 2021 when the hooligans he commanded stormed the US capitol as Pence was inside performing his constitutionally assigned duty.  

Where Mandela preached peace, unity and reconciliation even with people who unjustifiably jailed him for twenty-seven years, Trump actively sowed division, fanned the ambers of racism, became the cheerleader of White supremacist groups and bigots, demonstrated no sign of empathy in his bones, exhibited unbelievable megalomania and ultimately incited a lethal insurrection against the government he led. While Mandela was bold enough to tell his people and the world some uncomfortable truths, Trump was most comfortable spewing blatant lies. And while Mandela cherished the legacy he was to leave behind, Trump was only concerned with his selfish grab for power, not caring that over 400,000 Americans had died on his watch due to his arrogance and mismanagement of the Covid-19 pandemic and over 20 million others had contracted the disease. To demonstrate his utter disdain for a peaceful transition of power, Trump skipped the swearing-in ceremony of his successor and used his power to grant last-minute amnesty to his brigade of cronies and political associates.

Today, we remember Mandela for being a stateman and for his humanity. On the other hand, history will record Trump as the man who nearly smashed his country into unrecognisable smithereens and plunged the US into an abyss simply because he was rejected in an election. He did not even have the decency to accord the in-coming president-elect the traditional courtesy of bringing him to Washington DC on the eve of the inauguration in a US military craft. Joe Biden arrived in a chartered, private jet. Trump’s conceptualisation of the US was about himself as the unquestioned emperor, the nation came further down the road. Till date, he prefers the title “45^th US President.” Anyone who describes him as the “former US president” risks his caustic rebuke. How sad that Trump was a US president.

We cannot wish away our legacy, good or bad. In his famous speech at Julius Caesar’s funeral, his friend, Marc Antony remarked that, “The evil that men do lives after them.” How true. Infamy does not magically disappear because the person associated with it is dead. Neither does a person’s laudable credentialsvanish from memory. It’s all about legacy. How we shall be remembered depends on the choices we make and the deeds we leave behind, whether they are praise-worthy or utterly condemnable.

• Prof. Onyebadi, Chair of Journalism Department, Texas Christian University, USA, is on the Editorial Advisory Board of Naija Times