Etse Sikanku: The driver's mate conundrum

There have been a lot of conversations about the use of the driver's mate phrase by Vice President, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia.

It has been the subject of widespread commentary sometimes bordering on ridicule, humour and attack.

While this is all well and good, it has drowned the essence undergirding the larger point made by the Vice President.

And this could be a lesson in leadership or life value we can all learn from.

As a Vice president, there is a certain element of support, assistance, dependability, loyalty and service and to a very credible extent, humility expected of the office holder.

Servant leadership is something that has consumed leadership and the governance industry for some time now.

The Vice President perceives himself as a person of service not only to the nation but the president who is his direct head.

Certainly, it is worth appreciating that as a Vice President, he didn't see himself in competition with the President but rather as his person of service.

It takes some measure of humility to be able to adopt such a position of public service and servant leadership.

It assured the president that he had a loyal and dependable assistant who he could count on.

This fosters trust, unity and purposefulness to the national cause.

In the long history of presidential and vice presidential studies, we all know of Vice Presidents who have used the position as power bases, not always directly or consciously, but in ways that have been distractive to the presidency or bred suspicion, to put it mildly.

Sometimes they have created fiefdoms that have at times led to serious cracks or divisions in an administration.

What has to be communicated more is not a sense of non-responsibility but rather that of commitment and devotion to the national course.

Once a president is elected, he becomes a national figure.