From Versailles to Abuja: a short lesson on sycophancy
By JOSEPHINE AKIOYAMEN
In the late 1680s, the French king Louis XIV developed a painful anal fistula. It was an embarrassing condition but, more importantly, it exposed something timeless about power.
At the time, surgery was not a prestigious profession. Physicians diagnosed and theorized. Cutting into the body was considered crude labour, left to barber surgeons who were skilled with sharp instruments. They pulled teeth, drained abscesses, performed bloodletting, and lanced boils. When the Sun King needed surgery, no court physician would touch the task.
So he turned to a barber named Charles François Félix.
Félix was terrified. He had never performed such a procedure before, and failure meant more than professional disgrace. If the king died, his life was effectively over. He refused to experiment on the monarch, so preparations were made.
To rehearse, Félix was given about 75 prisoners who conveniently “volunteered.” Many did not survive. There were no anesthetics, no antiseptics, and no modern surgical tools. Félix designed a custom instrument, refined it through repeated trials, and eventually named it the royal probe.
Only after months of practice did he operate on Louis XIV.
The surgery succeeded. The king survived, though he had to wear bandages on his backside and walk awkwardly during recovery. Félix was rewarded with a title, a fortune, and a castle, then retired immediately.
The medical drama should have ended there. It did not.
Afterward, courtiers with perfectly healthy bodies began requesting the same operation. Not because they were ill, but because the king had been. When barber surgeons refused, the courtiers improvised. They wrapped bandages around themselves and began walking stiffly, mimicking the king’s gait. The ailment itself became fashionable.
Louis XIV also famously disliked bathing. He reportedly bathed only three times in his life. Contemporary accounts describe his odour as overwhelming. The Duke of Saint Simon wrote that the king “stank like a wild animal.”
Members of his court responded predictably. They stopped bathing too.
None of this was about health, hygiene, or logic. It was about proximity to power.
This is sycophancy in its purest form.
Sycophancy is not loyalty or admiration. It is a survival strategy in systems where reward flows from pleasing the powerful rather than telling the truth. When power is centralized and unchecked, imitation becomes currency.
Nigeria understands this instinct intimately.
In Nigerian politics, power is not merely authority. It is access to contracts, protection, appointments, immunity, relevance, and security. In such an environment, behaviour adjusts accordingly. Aides begin to dress like their principals. Speech patterns converge. Personal quirks turn into institutional culture. Every thought is prefaced with “His Excellency believes” or “Our leader has directed.”
You can always tell who holds power by watching who is being imitated.
The most revealing moment comes when power shifts. Yesterday’s praise singers disappear. Yesterday’s “visionary leader” becomes today’s embarrassment. The same people who defended incompetence and cruelty suddenly rediscover conscience when the benefits stop flowing.
This is not betrayal. It is parasitism.
Sycophants do not attach themselves to ideas, principles, or outcomes. They attach themselves to hosts. When the host weakens, they migrate.
This is why leadership failure persists. Leaders are insulated from reality by applause. Honest feedback is punished as disloyalty. Warnings are dismissed as sabotage. Bad decisions go unchallenged because the system rewards flattery and punishes truth.
Like Louis XIV, many leaders mistake imitation for love and noise for legitimacy. They confuse performance with consent. And surrounded by courtiers limping in unison, they assume all is well.
Until it is not.
From Versailles to Abuja, the pattern does not change. Power attracts imitation. Only accountability attracts truth. And any system that rewards sycophancy will eventually collapse under the weight of its own self deception.
The bandages will come off. The courtiers will move on. And the damage will already be done.
© Akioyamen Josephine
