Trust deficit has come to be a common refrain in the polity used to explain lack of trust in government pronouncements and programmes. Its foundation is rooted in political party soap box promises and manifestoes that are never kept. Sir Walter Scott (1808) wrote “Oh, what a tangled web we leave, when first we practice to deceive”.
Reflecting on this truism, it is clear that those who prevaricate in their speech or actions cannot be trusted. Their social capital budget will be fraught with deficit.
They are persons or institutions whose words or actions are of double standards.
They who betray the common trust, thrust upon them by Nigerians are many and varied.
Femi Adesina is President Muhammadu Buhari’s Special Adviser on Media and Publicity. Just about the time of his present appointment in 2015, the former Editor-in-Chief of The Sun Newspaper and then President of the Nigerian Guild of Editors had described his boss as the new sheriff in town.
I want to believe that Mr. Adesina used the word ‘sheriff’ in a broad American context of what the Cambridge International Dictionary of English defines as “an official, sometimes elected, whose job is to be in charge of performing the orders of the law courts and making certain that the laws are obeyed within a particular COUNTY…”
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