Tendai Ruben Mbofana
Turn on the television on any given evening, and the spectacle is as astonishing as it is humiliating.
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A state media news bulletin hardly passes without nearly half the stories featuring citizens, business leaders, and community figures singing praises to the Head of State.
Viewers watch in quiet shock on current affairs programs as villagers effusively thank the president for a single borehole or a basic rural clinic.
Urban dwellers, not to be outdone, line up before the cameras to praise executive leadership for a brief stretch of recently patched-up road.
Even seasoned corporate executives feel compelled to attribute normal commercial expansion, such as growth in the tourism sector, directly to presidential benevolence.
This daily ritual of compulsory gratitude is not a sign of widespread popular endorsement.
It is the visible, disturbing symptom of a deeply broken governance model, an institutional collapse, and an economy trapped in political compliance.
At its core, this continuous media presentation reflects a deliberate blurring of the line between state resources and personal favors.
Public goods, infrastructure projects, and social services are funded by national wealth and tax revenues.
They belong to the citizens as a matter of constitutional right, administered through transparent and accountable public institutions.
Yet, state media systematically reframes routine government duties as acts of personal generosity from the Head of State.
When citizens are conditioned to believe that accessing basic infrastructure like water, health facilities, or usable roads requires publicly thanking executive authority, the fundamental compact between a government and its people is inverted.
Rights are downgraded to favors, and public servants are elevated to benevolent masters.
Crucially, this performative gratitude exposes a severely shrunken economy defined by a critical shortage of independent opportunities.
Decades of economic distress have eroded traditional pathways to success—such as merit-based employment, private entrepreneurship, and transparent credit markets.
In an environment where the formal job market has collapsed and independent capital is scarce, securing a livelihood through normal commercial channels is nearly impossible.
As a result, the state becomes the primary gatekeeper of survival.
When the pie is this small and the private sector is this constrained, citizens, community leaders, and corporate figures are forced to curry favor with the powers that be simply to access the few remaining lifelines.
What appears on screen as spontaneous enthusiasm is often pure economic desperation.
This dynamic naturally dictates a survival strategy where political alignment overrides professional capability.
The public expressions of loyalty seen across news broadcasts—whether from rural communities or corporate boardrooms—are rarely about genuine praise.
Instead, they represent calculated acts of self-preservation.
In an environment where state patronage controls land rights, mining concessions, commercial licenses, government tenders, and access to foreign currency, publicly demonstrating fealty serves as an essential insurance policy.
To remain silent or neutral is to risk economic marginalization or total collapse.
From a broader perspective, this culture of mandatory gratitude illustrates the death of open, competitive market principles.
In a functional economy, business success hinges on efficiency, innovation, product quality, and market demand.
When access to capital, tourism growth, and operating permits depends on executive favor, meritocracy is replaced by crony capitalism.
Capital is allocated not to the most productive or innovative enterprises, but to those with the closest political ties.
This creates a deeply distorted economic structure dominated by a small, well-connected oligopoly at the top, while the vast majority of citizens and small business owners are forced into the fragile informal sector, completely shut out from meaningful state support.
Furthermore, an economy built on executive discretion and political gatekeeping sends a destructive signal to investors.
Serious capital seeks predictability, rule of law, and strong, independent legal and regulatory institutions.
When property rights and commercial opportunities are perceived as personal gifts from political leaders rather than entitlements guaranteed by law, investment becomes high-risk and speculative.
What is granted by executive favor today can easily be revoked by executive displeasure tomorrow.
This arbitrariness repels productive, long-term foreign direct investment, leaving the country dependent on speculative capital and short-term rent-seeking activities that yield little real developmental value.
Ultimately, the persistent conditioning of society to thank leadership for basic governance severely degrades civic agency and institutional integrity.
It strips local authorities of their rightful mandate, marginalizes parliament, and weakens bureaucratic systems designed to serve the public impartially.
Citizens are reduced to passive recipients of charity, perpetually awaiting the next presidential intervention to address basic community needs.
A nation cannot achieve sustainable prosperity or true democracy when economic survival and civic life are bound to the personal favor of one individual.
Progress demands a fundamental shift away from personality cults and patronage networks, back toward robust institutions, constitutional rights, and equal opportunity for all.
Until public resources are recognized as the property of the people rather than the gift of the state, nothing will change.
The cycle of performative gratitude will simply continue to mask the systemic vulnerabilities holding the country back.
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