LEADERSHIP IN CONTEMPORARY NIGERIA

It was a normal visit anybody might receive on a New Year’s Day, but the only difference was the surprise nature of it. I was together with my older brother, when someone more acquainted to him, socially, but equally one, I had more than a passing acquaintance of, emerged with his woman and an extra agile figure. The talk was what you would expect from a convergence of people who not only shared youth but a simmering casualness to one another. Staccatos of laughter and merriment shot out with gushing and generous overflow from our lips. There was one thing odd about this meeting; it had a political dimension. My brother had intimated the agile friend, in a jiffy, that he knew someone in position of authority in Nigeria, rather unseriously. ‘And you still do the kind of job you do.’ The agile figure said with a dismissive air. Sensing a shallow ethnic angle, I took it up with him and said that we must stick to merit and leave out ethnicity. He engaged me with arguments about the infantilism of my argument and insisted that mine was an untenable position. ‘Nigeria is about what you can get. Whatever you lay hold of, grab it, it is yours,’ his body settled with unashamed comfort in the couch. Soon, his other male friend joined the discourse. I stuck to my guns insisting that nothing can defeat substance and that we should aim to promote plurality of ethnicity at all levels of government.

‘Only indigenes at various states, should be in positions of authority,’ the newly awakened friend insisted.

After this meeting, I was strengthened in my belief that the problem of leadership in Nigeria lies with Nigerians. Our leadership failures are our own. A sense of self-righteousness exudes from critics who slam the government day and night, but they themselves are most likely, in their personal lives, far from paragons of morality. At the heart of the leadership crisis found in Nigerian lies a willful tolerance of corruption, glorification of 419 and assorted vices.

I pondered on the selfish stand I saw displayed so happily. The strength of conviction the agile fellow held, was scary. It was easy for me to understand why we breed thieves with no leadership competence. There was anger and irritation in me as he sang his perverted song. Leaders do not just come from thin air, they grow up amongst people, they have biographies many people can relate to. I picked up a book, out of curiosity recently, on Mao, a former communist ruler in China, responsible for the death of 70 million people in peace time, and read a chapter of a man, who had no extraordinary formation . According to the book – MAO The Unknown Story – he was born into a peasant family in a valley called Shaoshan, in the province of Hunan, the heartland of China, on 26 December 1893.

‘The valley of Shaoshan measures about 5 by 3.5km.The 600-odd families who lived there grew rice, tea and bamboo, harnessing buffalo to plough the rice paddies.’ Yet history records him as a most brutal bloodthirsty ruler. What about AL Bashir Omar, the Sudanese ruler, tied to at least one million deaths since he toppled a democratically elected civilian government in 1989? Did the birds sing at his birth? What about Haile Mariam Mengistu of Ethoipia, who feasted while his people starved to death and allegedly, ordered the execution of more than one million Ethiopians? Where did he come from? Was he not an Ethiopian? When people talk about heartless rulers they seem to imagine that they are aliens. They neglect the incubators in schools, playfields that nestle these people to experts. Incubators that flourish with the flight of restraint; a situation whereby, people are cooked into ethnic shenanigans in local politics and graduate into tribal vanguards who lack anything visible to show but a passionate avowal for incompetence and narrow grovelling.



Under our watch men and women have plundered with glee. This selfish audacity of the followership sustains such culture. In Nigeria finding a leader who has the interests of his subjects at heart is hard if not impossible to find. Anyone who appears to be a cut above the rest is soon portrayed in the same light, casting doubt on their genuity. In an atmosphere where ethnicity rents the air and little or no argument is made on substance the outcome becomes a self-fulfilled ‘prophesy’ of doom. I was informed by people and based on experience, that village members taunt and disturb public officials of the same ancestry for positions or advancements. The ones who do not comply are relegated and bad-mouthed. ‘This is your opportunity to elevate us,’ they say. And yet we wonder why our country rests and slides on such shaky grounds. Why red drips of blood slide down the wall in horrific spectacle. If at the grassroot level primitive and selfishness holds sway what future do we really have? If at the end of his tenure people are not bloated by corrupt largesse he/she becomes an outcast, a word of derision.

What people do not understand is a state/village/town’s prosperity is everyone’s prosperity. We all live in one confine empowered by constitution to live whosesoever we desire. Nonetheless, the joy of seeing a cast-down smile anew is refreshing. Seeing his land glow in sceneric radiance is beautiful. No doubt, help and opportunity should be extended to them but not with impartiality driven by fiduciary ties.

Every business that runs in a tight-knit competitive market emphasizes the importance of competence. People of relevant competence and experience are thrust at the helm and laden huge payroll or upkeep. They understand the importance of putting people of capability to stir their ship. They recognize the role mediocrities play in harming business. They poach; they hunt for the right personality. There are private-run universities that earn more money than the Nigerian government as well as other private efforts that net in huge profits – i.e. airports. At the helm of these bodies are people, able to shoulder the rough and tumble of operation. Of course, they do not have government to bolster or shore them up when they are down so they put in the best. A government head may not feel any constraint to yield results because of a massive big brother at the side. Incompetents are two a penny but ability takes time to nurture. Our public services met swift deaths at the hands of dead canons who could not run little match boxes but were entrusted into unmerited importance.

Instead of us railing at our leaders we should turn the fire to ourselves. Our environment hosts and encourages rogues. The people. Many of our leaders spent their formative years in Nigeria. They may have gone abroad later on and came back to fill positions of authority, but the fact remains that a significant portion of their lives were spent in Nigeria, evidenced by their outlook and culture. Think about what would have become of our society if every monthly allocation was used to build frameworks we so passionately cry for – sound education, hospitals, etc. If those millions stolen were invested prudently the returns would’ve been staring us in the face after almost eight yeas of leadership, but instead rot, disillusionment pervades the land. If every penny was thrown with a sense of community, surely by now, there must be legacies. Instead, many spend their effort throwing insults at leaders. They console and roll in fetid delight at aspersory rods thrown at them for their barratry. They never mention the cesspit they wash in that shoots out the leadership.

The Nigerian society is complex .Division not only gropes between ethnic groups but within tribes. What is known as ethnic groups in perhaps all cases, are groups of people, tied together by language and culture and may have dialects that are distinct or mutually unintelligible. And so, in States where sole ethnicities are in preponderance, there exists a chasm between the sub-ethnicities and it doesn’t stop there. Within sub-ethnic groups there may be slight differences in language and culture and these further create room for opportunism, readily exploited by the selfish. It still doesn’t stop here, it carries on through villages or family groups till the last man standing. While States with different ethnic groups play out a mini-national show. There is a tussle for leadership, a desire to opt out or alignment with one tribe over the another. This forms the genealogy of antagonistic and shallow approach to national government. From their little parochial enclaves, they emerge well-versed in ethnic football. So leadership in Nigeria is not just what plays out in Abuja but a kaleidoscope encirclement of debris flinging with feverish pace.


Issues of indelible importance stare us poignantly in the face. History watches us with curious eyes. Would we take the cue or sink further into groundless vacuity? We must insist on people to whom ability resides with delivery.

Until the afflatus to free ourselves from the grapnel of societal vices seizes us with enough passion, the dead, hollow sound of endless tunnel descent stares us in the face. Until the desire to rid ourselves, with unflinching finality, from people void of any baroscope, the austerity of their asocial impositions becomes a constant reality.