The leadership Nigeria needs

As we contemplate the Nigerian condition or non-condition, the stark reality is that as a nation we continue to punch below our weight. At the domestic level, for instance, all the various indices of human existence continue to point south. One feature that readily comes to mind here is access to fundamentals like nutrition, potable water and decent accommodation. All of these basics continue to elude a vast majority of Nigerians.

Meanwhile, at the global level, there is a palpable diminution of our power and influence. A nation that was once viewed in superlative terms as a regional superpower has since lost this pride of place. What could be wrong? Where and how did we miss it?

At the risk of sounding presumptuous, we are of the conviction that what is sorely lacking in our country is leadership. And here, we are not saying anything new, if only because our own Chinua Achebe spoke to the same problem in his book, The Trouble with Nigeria, where he magisterially declared that “The trouble with Nigeria is, simply and squarely, a failure of leadership.”

Way back in 1983 when this deposition was made, the hope was that in the course of time, we as a nation would get it right in this critical and fundamental area. Sadly enough, this desired situation is yet to obtain.

Nothing has perhaps illustrated this better than the fact that no Nigerian leader, past or present, has been found fit for a leadership prize at the continental level in recent times. For instance, to the discomfiture of discerning Nigerians, the latest winners of the Obafemi Awolowo Leadership Prize and the Mo Ibrahim Prize for African Leadership – two prominent prizes on the continent – hail from Southern Africa. The implication is that the rest of the continent, including our own West Africa, is bereft of these wholesome human resources.

Indeed, as we go down memory lane, one thing becomes clear: the quality of leadership in Nigeria continues to take a dip by the day. And in a rather perverse way, those leaders that we have condemned in the heat of the moment have turned out to be saints in the context of hindsight. For instance, when our first prime minister, who was overthrown in a coup, is placed beside a Sani Abacha, the saintly qualities of the former begin to shine through. Yet, he was overthrown on the basis of malgovernance dynamics.

However, if we may venture an answer to this recurrent problem, it is arguable that two features have mainly contributed to the deepening of the leadership deficit in our country. The first is the military. Over time, and despite its reformist stance, the Nigerian military exhibited buccaneer and pillaging tactics whose essence, consciously or otherwise, has been imbibed by the rest of society. Not for us an Ataturk, as in Turkey, or even a Rawlings in Ghana. Rather, we have had to contend with military leaders who turned our dreams into a nightmare.

But in coming forth like this, it should be appreciated that the military did not act alone. Rather, and in consonance with brutalising realities, the military acted in concert with other critical segments of the populace like civil servants, journalists and businessmen. The late Ken Saro-Wiwa rendered the situation in more lyrical terms when he spoke to what he called the military and the colluding elite.

What the immediate foregoing demonstrates is that leadership as a variable cannot be separated from the rest of society which, in the main, constitutes the followership. More often than not, what has been vividly shown is that a passive and apathetic followership has served as a catalyst for the irresponsibility which hallmarks our leadership. And, on a related note, as one leadership generation gives way to another, the painful realisation dawns that our leaders are not drawn from outer space. Rather, they emerge from nowhere but from the stock of followership available.

Another variable which has deepened our distress in this area is oil. In a way, this has turned out to be a curse since the rentier phenomenon effectively severed the dialectical linkage between the government and the governed. The upshot of easy oil money was that the country had to contend with the issues of representation without taxation.  Thus, a free-booter’s paradise was born.

When much of the foregoing is complemented with the fact that there are no active and credible institutions to rein in our leaders’ monumental greed and excesses, then all seems lost for us in this important area of committed and responsible leadership.

However, hope springs eternal in the human heart. And this is why we should seize the opportunity provided by the just concluded elections to chart a new course in the area of leadership. After all the din and clamour to lead as witnessed in the just concluded elections, another opportunity presents itself to have a leadership which will consummate our huge potentials.

Our hope, therefore, is that as a new government (headed by Jonathan or Buhari) comes into place, an equally novel, committed and visionary leadership will emerge such that Nigeria will ultimately live up to the dreams of its founding fathers and mothers.