On Conscientious and Insidious Hypocrisy, and a Few Kinds In-Between

You probably have some memories of long talks with your parents admonishing you on the dangers of keeping bad friends.

As a young(er) man I remember finding those talks a little amusing. Not that I didn’t agree with the general point, it’s just that I couldn’t help but wonder, “what makes you think I’m not the bad friend that other people’s kids should avoid?”

Now, I wasn’t a bad child. I just found it somewhat hypocritical to think of one’s own child as a perfectly innocent little angel, and everyone else’s, as the spawn of the devil.

Everyone is a little hypocritical though. At least, I know for a fact that I have been a hypocrite on very many occasions. And if we’re honest, you probably can think of a few times when your private behaviour hasn’t lived up to the standards that you set for other people.

Take, for example, one aspect of human behaviour that is so universally disliked and yet just as universally prevalent: Gossip. One leading study on the subject shows that as many as 97% of test subjects who were monitored over a few days, engaged in gossip at some point.

I’m certain no one likes to get gossiped about. But can you truly say that you don’t occasionally gossip about other people? Perhaps you’re a little more saintly than the rest of mankind, but I’d remind anyone who makes such a claim to keep the words of 1 John 1:8 in mind: “If any man says he has no sin, he lies, and the truth is not in him”.

As it turns out, there is a strong evolutionary suggestion for the prevalence of gossip in society. It is believed that gossip is one way that humans have bonded and shared information through the years, and that gossip, therefore, is an essential part of the human experience.

Nowadays, I try, as a matter of principle, to keep my worst feelings about people to myself, or to express only those thoughts I would feel confident in expressing if the other person were present. But hey, given the clear societal importance of gossip, who am I to let my moral principles get in the way of some good old bonding?

I’m such a hypocrite as it turns out. Or only human.

And this reminds me of something that happened early this week at a game of football. It was Easter Monday, and as is practically customary on holidays in Nigeria, men and boys across the nation got up early for a game of football.

Football, as you probably already know, is a contact sport, and things tend to get competitive from time to time. And so it happened, as we played that Monday, the game got a little rough and someone from the opponent team went down in some pain.

My teammate, who had the ball, sportingly stopped playing, much to my irritation. I let him know my thoughts immediately, insisting that he should have played on, especially since the referee had not blown his whistle to indicate a foul.

The injured player, who was within earshot, got up angrily and confronted me, questioning my temerity to utter what he called, “rubbish nonsense”. As if there is any other kind of nonsense.

I calmly pointed out to him that the rules of the game are that the side with the ball may play on until the ref blows the whistle. He wasn’t having any of it but I didn’t care too much, and we moved on. As fate would have it, we shuffled the teams a few moments later, and this time he was on mine.

Perhaps my mind was playing tricks on me but this guy refused to pass me the ball even once, depriving me of the chance to display my sublime skills. Such rubbish nonsense indeed!

This went on for the first twenty minutes at least, and then something interesting happened. A player from the other team went down injured in similar circumstances to those under which my foe-turned-colleague had in the previous game. Totally forgetful of his position just twenty or so minutes earlier, this teammate of mine yelled out “play on!”.

Amused, I brought it to his attention, whereupon he proceeded to contort himself through a most impressive routine of mental gymnastics in explaining why the two situations were different. The only difference, really, was that he was the victim the first time and on the side of the aggressor, the second.

He was a hypocrite.

So humans have a tendency to be hypocritical. That’s hardly groundbreaking news, but here’s the real point: hypocrisy isn’t always a bad thing. There exists, what I like to call conscientious hypocrisy — a behavioural conflict that occurs when one holds a strong moral belief and holds others to that standard while being unable to uphold it themselves.

Conscientious hypocrisy is the predicament of the preacher who, having railed against fornication, finds himself mired in adultery, or of the doctor who chides his patient for smoking but drinks with all the aggression of a multi-level marketer seeking their next customer.

Of course, it is not that hypocrisy could ever in itself be conscientious, but rather, that certain hypocritical behaviour may sometimes lead to positive outcomes.

Our adulterous preacher, for example, having successfully turned the heart of some lustful youth away from fornication, may have achieved some good (depending on your moral views on the subject of extra-marital sex), just as the alcoholic doctor does some good by saving his tobacco-addicted patient.

The reality is that it is probably easier to hold other people to high standards and easier too, to conform to peer pressure than to self-will. Thus, when we hypocritically hold others, though not necessarily ourselves, to these standards, there’s a greater chance of achieving the desired effect.

This is a potential eureka moment. Philosophers, professors of political science, students, and men and women of thought have long asked the question of our political order, “who will watch the watchers?” The answer, I propose, is conscientious hypocrites of course!

Hypocrisy isn’t always so benign though. Sometimes it is a truly terrible thing. Take, for example, Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari, whose campaign mantra was the fight against corruption.

In fact, Mr Buhari embodied this ideal so fervently, that when asked by CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, what his policies were for the economy in 2015 when he first became president-elect, all Mr Buhari could muster was another two-minute rant on fighting corruption, after having already spent much of the interview discussing that subject.

I did think to myself at that moment, watching that interview, and having supported Mr Buhari up until then, that the man had no clue about economics. That much now appears to be true, as Nigeria’s economy has tanked by pretty much every metric since he took office. But at least, I thought to myself, if he would indeed make significant progress in the fight against corruption, that could create a good platform for economic growth.

What does it then say about Mr Buhari, who is also ever quick to lampoon the opposition, Peoples’ Democratic Party, for “16 years of corruption”, that among his final acts in power, before he vacates Aso Rock as he is scheduled to do in 2023, he has granted presidential pardons to the two highest-ranking officials currently serving time for corruption?

In the past week, Mr Buhari pardoned ex-Plateau State governor Joshua Dariye and ex-Taraba State Governor Jolly Nyame, both of whom have been imprisoned following convictions of corruption. As an aside, there is a valid question to be asked, as to why there aren’t more Nigerian governors in prison. Governor Abdullahi Umar Ganduje of Kano, for example, has been caught on tape receiving a bribe in physical cash and yet continues in office, free as a bird.

In freeing governors Dariye and Nyame, was Mr Buhari a conscientious hypocrite like most of us? Not at all, I would say. His was of the far more insidious kind, couched as kindness — the President has claimed that both men are ill — but an obvious and cynical chess move to those who understand the workings of Nigerian politics. You see, it is election season in Nigeria, and both convicts are key players in their respective States. Their release may facilitate some electoral success for Buhari’s All Progressives Congress.

Critics of Mr Buhari have long decried his anti-corruption stance as a hollow facade for witch-hunting members of the opposition. In one move, he has granted them the coup de grace to his own legacy. Perhaps Mr Buhari never cared that much for the fight against corruption — but if he did, granting pardons to those who exemplify the very ills he proclaimed were his mission to fight, would have to be the most spectacular own goal.

In between conscientious hypocrisy and its far-removed insidious cousin, there’s arguably quite a range of hypocrisies that perhaps don’t really fit either label. There is what I will call hapless hypocrisy, which was the kind on display in the past two weeks when popular investigative journalist, David Hundeyin, published a story on one of Nigeria’s largest and most promising tech unicorns, Flutterwave and its founder Gbenga Agboola. According to Mr Hundeyin’s piece, quite a lot of corporate and other kinds of impropriety have been going on at Flutterwave for some time.

But that’s not the hypocritical bit just yet. This part lies in a separate but connected organization, Nigerian media giant, TechCabal. Just a couple of weeks ago, TechCabal set the Nigerian tech space ablaze with a detailed and damning report on the behaviour of the founder of another fintech giant, Ebun Okubanjo of Bento Africa. In the days following this expose, TechCabal spearheaded a Twitter conversation on toxic workplaces in the tech industry. They were seemingly drivers for change.

This time around, with accusations of the same character flying around, TechCabal was silent for a few days. Granted, the report was written by a journalist who does not work with TechCabal, to the best of my knowledge, and the organisation was not obliged to republish the story.

Still, having set the tone for an inquisition into Nigeria’s tech space, it seemed logical that some contribution on the Flutterwave story should follow, the absence of which was conspicuous and baffling. That is, until the confession came in by email newsletter. Apparently, Gbenga Agboola is also a shareholder of TechCabal’s parent company, BigCabal.

According to TechCabal:

There is a tension that has always existed in media businesses between the rigour and objectivity required for outstanding journalism and the business demands of keeping those media businesses properly funded.

In short, he who pays the piper calls the tune. The company, while reluctantly acknowledging the issues at Flutterwave, has since then been more or less an integral piece of Gbenga’s PR response, helping to cushion Flutterwave from the wave of public condemnation, by publishing selected bits of Mr Agboola’s rebuttal.

That, in my book, is hypocrisy, but of the helpless, hapless kind that calls us all to remember that while there is a place and time for throwing stones, there is also wisdom in not doing so if one lives in a glass house.

Hapless hypocrisy is conscientious enough though. At least, Nigerians are having important conversations over corporate governance and life in the tech space. That is a positive outcome.

Then there is yet another kind of hypocrisy that I don’t yet have a name for. This is the kind that we witness when President Joe Biden of the US of A, pontificates on war crimes and President Vladimir Putin of Russia.

Now, what I am about to say should by no means be mistaken for support for Russia in its outrageous act of aggression against Ukraine. Rather, it is merely to highlight the blatant, convenient hypocrisy of pointing fingers at Russia, when the US has done the exact same thing in previous conflicts.

The invasion of Iraq and the subsequent devastation of that country on the pretexts of its having been involved in the heinous crime of 9/11, which it wasn’t, and of its possession of weapons of mass destruction, of which it had none, is at a perfect parallel with the invasion of Ukraine by Russia on the pretext of a “special military operation to de-nazify Ukraine”.

The US is also not a signatory to the Rome Statute which is the de facto law that governs International Crime and punishment. Not that Mr Biden can be held responsible for the conduct of some of his predecessors, but there is a level of hypocrisy that lies in refusing to be governed by the laws of international crime and yet being so quick to point the accusing finger. Perhaps we’ll just call this convenient hypocrisy.

If at the end of the day, however, Joe Biden’s convenient hypocrisy is enough to stave off the destruction and pillaging of Ukraine, then perhaps it will have a conscientious impact after all. Hopefully, then, such outcomes can be sought for similarly troubled nations such as Palestine among others.

I fear that my writing is starting to take on a righteous tone that does not befit my sinful ways. I must, therefore, lay down my pen lest I find myself once again afflicted by hypocrisy.

I apologize to all about whom I have gossiped. Rest assured, it was all in the interest of societal bonding and the survival of mankind.