By Nick Dazang
Leaders, like all mortals, experience fear. But most of them do not show it. In tempest and in turbulence, leaders must exude calm. They do so less their citizens find recourse in despair or paralysis. Which explains why at the height of the Great Depression, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt assured Americans, in his first inaugural address on March 4, 1933, that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself”.
“Perhaps, borrowing from this tendency, of leaders
to show outward calm in the face of grave difficulties, our President, Chief
Bola Ahmed Tinubu, on assumption of office, elected not to raise the alarm
about the economy. Even though the data and reality prevailing at the time
suggested that our economy had taken a dark turn, he preferred to be taciturn.
