The door of life is binary; it opens either ways, inwards or outwards. So goes an age-long wisdom. When the Thisday newspaper, on January 1, 2025, announced President Bola Tinubu as its Man of the Year pick, emotions of Nigerians ran riot. Was that decision a product of editorial science or newspaper shamanism? Nigerians asked. To many, the newspaper’s editors must have meandered into some kind of trance, communed with some unseen spirits and emerged therefrom with their odd pick. To others, Thisday hit the bull’s eye.
For a journalism profession which thumps own chest as “the rough draft of history,” the idea of the newspaper media choosing persons as ‘Man of the Year’ began in 1928, five years after the founding of the Time magazine on March 3, 1923. The “Man of the Year” cover reflects individuals selected for their contributions for that particular calendar year. American aviator. Charles Lindberg, became the first person to grace the magazine’s “Man of the Year” cover that 1928. The choice of Lindberg, according to Time, which has coasted home with the coveted trophy of the world’s largest and first weekly news magazine, was based on his daring audacity of being the first solo aviator to fly across the Atlantic Ocean. He had flown from New York to Paris.
In 1938, as Thisday editors picked Tinubu as their Man of the Year, the editors of Time picked Adolph Hitler as their Man of the Year, too. Hitler was the dictator of Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1945 during which he was believed to have committed suicide. Based on Hitler’s ancient view that the Jews were the enemies of the German people, he was reported to have executed about six million of them. For a magazine which regaled the world with its rather self-adulating motto of “the faces of Time have been the faces of the world,” that same world was aghast and rankled by the Hitler pick. When the magazine’s cover page came out on its January 2, 1939 issue, it had the face of the German despot decorating its globally celebrated Man of the Year page. The world went berserk. Time was assumed to have faced similar bankruptcy of sympathetic emotions for Hitler as the Thisday faced. The world did not hide its consternation. Not dissimilar accusations of having gone on an emotive junket were pelted on Time.
But, what is the philosophy behind the Man of the Year of Time? Studies have been undertaken to de-couple the fact from fiction. One of the most remarkable of these studies which drilled into the rationale for selecting certain people for the magazine’s covers was done by William Christ and Sammye Johnson in 1985. Entitled Images Through Time: Man of the Year Covers, the authors submitted that Time’s picks are “a person or persons who for better or worse dominated events in the previous 12 months”.
The Man of the Year or Person of the Year concept was however teased out of Scottish philosopher, Thomas Carlyle’s theory of history. Carlyle had written that “the history of the world is but the biography of great men.” It was the philosopher’s belief that the few, powerful and the famous, in a very essential way, shape our collective destiny as humanity. As such, Time uses its pick as one who best represents the news of the year.
From Time, newspapers all over the world thereafter borrowed the concept of the “Person of the Year”. Today, it has become an annual newspaper ritual. Time uses it to recognize individual or group of individuals who it considers as having had the hugest impact on news headlines in the previous 12 months. When the choice of a person is proclaimed, it is that person who, “for good or ill” has negatively or positively, more than any other person, affected the course of the year. Emotions however rise when the choice is considered to be an honor or a reward.
However, the 1939 portraiture of Hitler as Man of the Year by Time marked a radical departure from the norm. But, as Wilde said in that same Picture of Dorian Gray, behind every exquisite thing that existed, there is something tragic that exists. Instead of the conventional portrait, the magazine had a cryptic illustration by Rudolph von Ripper. Hitler was drawn playing a ‘hymn of hate.’ On the drawing was affixed the title, ‘From the unholy organist, a hymn of hate”.
But, on January 1, 2025, Thisday had no such forewarning. Nor any hint that it was satirizing Aso Rock. It had a smiling Tinubu below its screaming Man of the Year headline. No reflection of the searing pains his people undergo. Nor that the year Thisday decided on the pick as Man of the Year represents, barring the civil war years, one of the most hopeless years Nigerians have ever lived on earth. Oh, I forgot, Time’s Hitler also looked resplendent. As Adolf sat comfortably on the front page of the magazine, Jews were being murdered in their thousands.
But Hitler was not the only despot to don Time’s front page as Man of the Year. A number of them made controversial appearances as the magazine’s pick. For instance, Joseph Stalin, Soviet despot and totalitarian, was the magazine’s choice in 1939 and 1942 respectively. Nikita Khrushchev, Stalin’s successor, was also adjudged its cover page choice in 1957. So also did Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomein, who led an Islamic revolution in Iran; who navigated the country from its political leader, the Shah and ran it as a theocracy from 1979 to 1989, become its Man of the Year in 1979. In 1935, Haile Selassie, otherwise known as Lij Tafari Makonnen, Emperor of Ethiopia, was a despot. He started the Second Italo-Abyssinian War. It was at a time when Italian forces invaded Ethiopia. In the same 1935, he became Time magazine’s pick as Man of the Year.
In the thick of searing emotions against its controversial choices, Time had always come out to defend its choices. It argued that its picks were misconstrued as honour, award or prizes. Literally swearing by its mother’s head, Time swore that the controversial persons’ choices were done “for their impact on events.” It also said that those selections were ultimately based on “who (it) believed had a stronger influence on history and who represented either the year or the century the most.”
Similar to Nigerians’ disgust at the Thisday pick, in a Letter to the Editor penned and signed by Hollywood luminaries and published in the magazine’s 1939 edition, the luminaries frowned at the unmerited space Time offered Hitler. They considered him a blood-sucking emperor and pleaded that “if his picture appears on your cover only as Time’s man of the year, the controlled fascist countries and uninformed of all nations will hail the selection as an award of merit”. Time’s response was that it had noted and observed the letter-writers’ concerns and subsequently referred them to the magazine’s cover.
When in 1994, Time announced Pope John Paul II as its pick for that year’s Man of the Year, the choice was adjudged laudatory. This was largely because no citizen of the world commanded the texture of admiration the Pope enjoyed. His globetrotting where he garnered over 1/2 million flying miles to talk to the vulnerable had far-reaching impacts on a fractious world.
The above historical recount of the concept of Man of the Year should make it clear that the Thisday newspaper’s pick of President Tinubu as its own Man of the Year is not exceptional. Global villains, despots and achievers in the world have hitherto been garlanded with same trophy. The challenge is that, like everything Nigerian, that Times magazine concept has been bastardized. And the Nigerian print media is the culprit. Spurious and shameless Man of the Year awards have been made by newspaper houses in Nigeria over the years which made charlatans primus inter pares in areas they did not deserve. Most of the choices are money-driven, aimed at inflating the egos of the picks for a fee.
The only challenge is that the Thisday editors, in arriving at their pick of Tinubu, did not elaborate on whether his choice was for good or ill. In this regard, the newspaper chose to sit on the fence. First, from the outset, the newspaper should have defined its parameters for the pick, rather than seeking a justification of its choice from the beginning of the essay. Its general statement, its justification, it stated thus: “It is hard to find anyone who could fairly challenge (Tinubu) to the …Man of the Year.” If the parameter was the most audacious Nigerian leader in the last one year, it may indeed be difficult to best the president to the pick. Tinubu peremptorily took the most consequential economic decision of subsidy removal of his own volition. The next decision was the floatation of the currency, a decision that could drown this country. The outcome has been grueling pain, deaths and distress. Even in seeking the parameters of audacity, an attempt should have been made to calibrate the word “audacity.” As it means ‘willingness to take bold steps,’ the word also connotes impudence. Some acts of audaciousness can morph into recklessness if the immediate positive outcome is invisible and inaccessible to the ordinary eye. For instance, if a president who willingly took his country to the unprecedentedly high inflation figure of 33.4% wants to bring it down to 15% in less than one year, should it be done like a Shaman, without explanation?
While Thisday says its choice of Tinubu, in part, was due to his “resolve to stick to his reforms” because he had forewarned that “you can’t be doing the same thing and expect different outcomes,” this could, in interpretative logic, mean arrogance of power. As good as it is for leaders to be determined and resolute, it is equally a downside for them to be unbendable. If they are, they are a mile away from Despot-ville. The appellation of a “daring” and “gritty” leader, which Thisday awarded Tinubu in the essay, the last time I remember, was also given to the Fuhrer when he began to nurture his Aryan race. In the same mould, a leader who, in the words of Thisday, dammed the consequences of floating the Naira and removal of subsidy can only be allowed to gloat if his paths are not filled with dead, socially dislocated victims of such policies. Leaders should de-risk their policies. One of the newspaper’s indices for awarding Tinubu the Man of the Year, according to its essay, was his proclamation in a recent media chat that, “there’s no going back on the tax reform bills.” No leader who sounds as God while underscoring the irrevocability of his action should be awarded a trophy for being good. A leader is assessed by his humanity and not the number of dead persons that line the path of his decisions. The newspaper’s claim of Tinubu’s “measures to cushion the effects” of his policies, which it named to be CNG buses and his “constantly assisting the states with palliatives” are in the mould of the famous Ali and the Angel fabulism.
In the final analysis, while I agree that President Tinubu was worthy of the Man of the Year trophy given him by the Thisday newspaper, I am of the opinion that the award should be for ill, and for worse, in the words of Christ and Johnson. More than any living Nigerian of the last 12 months, Tinubu has negatively affected lives.
My choice for the Nigerian Man of the Year will be you; yes, you! In the year that just ended, the Nigerian went through an excruciating time. The Nigerian is the president’s friend who tumbled down from owning five Rolls Royce and now rides a Honda Accord, while his friend, the president, rides a Cadillac Escalade and flies a presidential jet that costs about $150 million. My Man of the Year is the Nigerian who is still breathing under this suffocating economy; who can hardly pay his child’s school fees. My pick is the elderly Nigerian who can hardly afford the cost of his drugs but manages nevertheless. Step forward to receive your award, longsuffering Nigerian!
READ ALSO: VIDEO: Again, Tinubu defends petrol subsidy removal, says it’s necessary
