A PROMISE is a promise! The language train screeched to a halt the last time deferring the question: 'What can we say about the words in President Goodluck Jonathan's asseveration, qua its four portions, and reality''The four parts of the asseveration, which we said would be subjected to a REALITY check, were as follows:' 'God selected me to be the president of this country.'' 'We are not the best material.'' 'God knows why he chose us.'' 'We pray he should use us to change this country.'However, before we get down to the task, let us present a quick lowdown on what words do to reality. Trust me when I say that you and I, as lay or expert users of language, know what words ' our words ' do to reality. Just try to appreciate this simple illustration.A husband and his wife, whom he knows to be very sensitive or sentimental, are in the bedroom. She is all dressed up, with her face heavily made up. To the husband, what he sees standing before him looks like a masquerade more than any other thing.But then asks the wife: 'Honey, how do I look'' Because he knows what has happened several times when he told her how she actually looked, and he does not want to hurt her feelings this time around, the husband replies: 'Honey, you look perfect to me.'Question: 'What has the husband, or to be more precise, what has the words of the husband, done to reality'' But before you answer that question, assume the husband had responded, severally, with these words:' 'Honey, to me, you couldn't look better.'' 'Darling, to me, you look rather awkward.'' 'Honey, you could look better than this, you know!'As you can readily appreciate, the husband's four sets of words or statements do different things to reality, 'reality' here being the sight of the wife that the husband is beholding.The following is a checklist of what words ' our words, at any given time ' may do to reality. And given any particular true situation, which we have actually experienced, any event, which we have observed, or any object, which we know exists; we can tell what words have done to reality.The gamut of the sundry things, which words ' our words ' may do to reality runs from A to Z, but, for our purposes, this selected few may suffice.Words may abrade, affront, annul, approximate, bend, breach, caress, collide with, confront, conjure, contradict, crush, damn, detract from, distort' foreshadow' humour' mangle, massage, match, misrepresent, mock, negate, nibble (at)' ridicule, romanticise, stretch' violate REALITY.Before we dwell on the president's four-part asseveration, let us fist practice what REALITY CHECK boils down to by visiting the husband's original response to his wife's query, and the three assumed responses.Given the fact that the wife looked like a masquerade more than any other thing to the husband, his original response ('Honey, you look perfect to me,') certainly negates reality. I would say that the first assumed response ('Honey, to me, you couldn't look better.') caresses or massages reality, while the second assumed response ('Darling, to me, you look rather awkward.') approximates, but does not quite match, reality. I will leave it to you to say what the third assumed response, 'Honey, you could look better than this, you know,' does to reality.MOVING back to the beginning, what do the words of President Jonathan, as contained in the first part of his asseveration, do to reality' When the president said that God selected him to be president of Nigeria, what do those words do to reality' Would you say that the words match, approximate, affront, misrepresent, stretch, or mock reality'To those whose faith makes them believe that it is the Almighty that allows anybody to become a leader, the president's words may either romanticise or match reality. But to realists, the president's words distort, if not violate reality, since God did not vote or command the Nigerians who did vote, to vote for Candidate Goodluck Jonathan.Tell me, if you know, was he the sage who said, 'A people deserve the leader they get' a realist'What about the second part of the president's asseveration, 'We are not the best material'' You don't say! I don't know about you, but if you ask me to subject this portion of the asseveration to a reality check, the little I would say is: 'Perfect match!' But if you don't mind, I may just add that: 'The president is being candid to a fault.' Reality could not be better re-presented!As to the third part of the president's asseveration, the reality check is easy, since it follows from what it is in the first part. To realists, the claim that 'God know why he chose us' is at best an affront to reality.And all that one can say about the fourth part of the president's asseveration is that it foreshadows reality: 'We pray he (God) should use us to change this country.' I dare say that realists are likely to say that words like these offend reality.You see, everyday we do not only witness what words do to reality, we also use words to do something to reality. Whenever we read newspapers, listen to newscasts on radio, or watch newscasts on television, we can engage in the exercise of checking reality, if not at that instant, but later.Pardon me, if this news story does not sit well with you: I use it only for purposes of illustration. As I was riffling through some files some days ago, I saw this headline: 'Yar'Adua's Bubbling With Life, Says Jang.' The news story was in ThisDay of September 24, 2008.The news story began thus: 'Governor of Plateau State, Jonah Jang, has said President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua 'is bubbling with life' and is not only fit to complete his first term but is also fit to go for another four years as head of the Nigerian government.'The governor made this declaration after he returned from Abuja to 'welcome our father, President Umaru Yar'Adua back from Saudi Arabia.'The rest, as they say, is history. But, in his heart of hearts, what was the governor doing to reality with those words' Was he abrading, bashing, or conjuring reality'Talking about conjuring reality, on the last day of April this year, a national newspaper published a story to the effect that President Jonathan held a meeting in Lagos with the former governor of Lagos State, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu.The very next day, May 1, 2012, The Nation carried a news story, headlined: 'I held no meeting with Jonathan, says Tinubu.' And the newspaper that conjured that reality of a meeting never thought it fit to tell its readers where it got its facts.Sundry and amazing are the things that words ' the basic unit of language ' do to reality!
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