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25 June 2012
By
Abdul-Warees
Shafruddin Hashim is an intellectual giant. An
associate professor while I was at UBD, Brunei, he was
a very engaging scholar. I admired his style, as he
gave no room for any back bencher in the core public
policy class. It was just impossible not to contribute
in his class. But he could be very stingy with marks.
In Dr. Shaf's class, everybody gets what he or she
deserves. In my respect and admiration for this
scholar of Malaysian descent, I picked on him to
supervise my case study. But he turned my request down
on the premise that he was about finishing his term at
UBD after so many years of teaching a number of core
undergraduate courses and managing executive
development and graduate studies programmes in UBD's
Department of Public Policy and Administration,
Faculty of Business, Economics and Policy Studies. It
was from him I understood the deep meaning of devil
advocacy.
Manifestly, a devil advocate is an agent provocateur,
but in the public sphere the devil advocate exists to
strengthen our convictions and properly channel our
courses of actions. But they are often hard and
bitter. So we misjudge them as our enemies. How did I
come about this understanding of devil advocacy? I had
gone to his office to share some thoughts on my
dissertation proposal on the dynamics of mass media
and the public policy process. Trying to gauge my
depth of understanding of the subject, Dr. Shaf as we
fondly call him threw me a barrage of questions which
I rose up to. And the final question, he began, ‘now,
let me play the devil advocate….' I've forgotten the
direction of that question now. But I did not chicken
out as I laboured to answer the question like someone
using a hot fine toothcomb to straighten the
convoluted dreadlock of a Dada. He saluted me. From
thence, I understand the stance of every devil
advocate.
What do they do for us? Or what is their role in the
polity? They criticize our actions to see the logic of
choices and decisions we make; they suspect our
motives to expose our sincerity or hypocrisy; they
question our intentions so that our real meaning can
come to the open; they condemn our moves for us to
retrace our steps; they deride our judgement for us to
have a rethink; they find fault with our decisions for
us to be benefitted by fresh insights; they taunt us
on our mistakes so that we won't go on misadventures
again; they oppose our choices so that we can have new
and better alternatives; they inspire fear and defeat
in us so that we can strengthen our resolve; they're
salesmen of pessimism for us to rise above the
mentality of short-sightedness; they label us on our
strategies so that we can become more creative and
pragmatic; they stereotype us on our convictions so
that we can show them our other softer side. We see
them taunting and tormenting us most of the time.
But they are also good for us and our polity. Even in
their blindness, harshness and indiscretions, they
deepen our reasoning; they keep us on our toes; they
beam for us new searchlights; they return us to the
drawing boards in our confusion; they sharpen our
instincts; they open for us new vista of choices and
alternatives and of opportunities; when we're
subjective, they force us to become objective; when we
are pedantic and simplistic, they fire us to be
rational; when we are myopic, they widen our lenses
and perception; when we have tunnel view, they open
for us new and multiple windows of ideas; when we are
lazy or complacent, they force rigour on us; when we
are flippant, they drive order in our thoughts and
words; when we forget to do our homework well, they
give us the hard knocks to awaken our senses; when we
become arrogant, they bring us down from the clouds to
the world of reality; when our preparations are
shoddy, they point out our shortcomings; when we are
superficial, they ignite in us the flame of
originality.
These agent provocateurs are everyone with power,
influence and capacity to engage the authorities and
the leaderships at various levels of government and
governance. They are in the labour movement and the
phone-in contributors, they are among the students and
the molue masses, or the man on the street,
they are on the mimbars and the pulpits
pontificating on godliness, they are among the
oppositions and the defeated; they are among the
neglected and the relegated; they are in the academia
and the press; they are in the parliament and on the
bench; they are among the specialists and technocrats,
retired bureaucrats and unlucky candidates for public
offices; they are among donor agents and international
civil servants. They are everyone with interests to
protect, vested or patriotic, or voices to be heard,
whether sane or lousy.
It is normal that as public officials, we will see
these devil's advocates as enemies and paid agents.
But it is smarter not to play into their hands. You
don't play the same game with the devil or its
surrogates otherwise he will outsmart you. He will
expose your stupidity and competence. You don't
respond to the devil fire for fire otherwise he will
trick you to exhaust your arsenal before he unleashes
on you the killer punch. What to do is to be prepared
for the imaginary devil at all times before he shows
face. Be open and transparent so he cannot hood wink
anybody. Be anticipatory of the public mood before any
statement or action so you don't always recant and
retract when the devils react. But most importantly,
carry all along, and be sensitive to their demands and
values so that when the devil advocates want to talk,
they won't have any substance and the world will
differentiate who is working, selflessly, and who are
noise makers, rabble rousers, hungry critics or who
are sincere advisers and informed, constructive
critics in all the devil's advocates that exist in all
polities.
Abdul-Warees Solanke, Head, Voice of Nigeria Training
Centre, Broadcasting House, Ikoyi Lagos studied Mass
Communication and Public Policy and writes via
korewarith@yahoo.com |
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