Is Nigeria’s problem squarely a failure of political leadership?

Every Nigerian agrees on this: the trouble with Nigeria is squarely a failure of leadership. It was Chinua Achebe, the best African novelist and iconic writer, who espoused that thesis in his pocket-sized book, The Trouble With Nigeria. Sadly, over the years, owing chiefly to Achebe’s diagnosis and prognosis of Nigeria’s condition, we’ve not looked outside Achebe’s political diagnosis of Nigeria’s condition for solutions to our country’s myriad of problems.

We all know that good, purposeful, visionary, competent, and accountable political leadership is a fillip to a country’s development. The absence of good political leadership in a country will cause the country to experience economic recession, technological backwardness, slow industrialisation, infrastructural rot and deficit, and political stasis. There is always a nexus between national development and good political leadership.

And it is an irrefutable fact that we have not gotten it right politically since we became a sovereign nation-state in 1960. Didn’t the first republic fail because of the egoism, narcissism, political myopia, corruption, and crass incompetence of the first republic politicians? Their promotion of ethnic bias, ethnocentrism, and religious bigotry expedited the demise of the first republic. Thereafter, we experienced a military interregnum, including a thirty-month civil war.

The second republic was short-lived, lasting from 1979 to 1983. The collapse of the second republic ushered in the era of the reign of the jackboots and brass-hats. Then, save for a brief period when Chief Ernest Shonekan presided over the affairs of Nigeria, we had spells of military governments in the country between 1983 and 1998.

Thankfully, now, we have enjoyed, uninterruptedly, twenty-five years of democratic leadership in Nigeria. But we have no concrete achievements to show for those long years of democratic governance in Nigeria, given our possession of immense human capital, abundant natural resources, many waters, and equable weather conditions. Since 1999, when the fourth republic dawned in Nigeria, each new civilian government we had in Nigeria fared far worse than its predecessor government.

Consequently, the Nigerian economy is now in the woods. And the hope that it will start to look up as soon as possible is very dim. While the education sector is paralysed, the health sector has become comatose, not to talk about the infrastructural rot and deficit, which we contend with on a daily basis. And the energy crisis in Nigeria has become a permanent fixture of our national life.

So it seems that bad political leadership is at the root of our national malaise. Truth be told, the successive civilian governments, which have led Nigeria from 1999 to the present time, have failed to transform Nigeria positively. Those successive civilian governments could be likened to the Abiku phenomenon: the democratic government has kept on dying and reincarnating in different grotesque and malevolent forms, bringing sorrows and suffering to us.

So, although almost every Nigerian has concurred that Nigeria’s underdevelopment is traceable to bad political leadership, which has been our lot for six decades, I beg to differ with those who espouse that thesis. Why am I toeing this line of thought? The reason is not far-fetched. If the citizens of a country have moral scruples, they can band together to thwart the efforts of their leaders to game and pervert the systems of doing things in their country. A morally regenerated populace can constitute a counterforce to a tyrannical, corrupt, and soulless civilian government that is bent on ruining their country.

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But that is not the case in Nigeria. Millions of Nigerians, who are deeply religious, acquiesce in our leaders’ definition and perception of political leadership. Our leaders who govern at different governmental strata perceive their occupation of political posts as an ample opportunity for them to loot our public exchequer. Our leaders’ misperception of political leadership and their warped political beliefs have been drilled, willy-nilly, into the people’s consciousness.

So, in today’s Nigeria, millions of people who are outside the loops of political power view the political and moral degenerates, who masquerade as our political leaders, as clever and smart persons. And they are waiting their turns to become political leaders in order for them to start looting our collective financial tills. Here, in Nigeria, good is perceived as bad, and bad as good. As a result, corruption, which is the cankerworm choking life out of Nigeria, has become normative in our country.

Nigerians are so morally bankrupt that they can’t turn down inducements given to them by occupants of exalted political offices. For a loaf of bread, a Nigerian who professes either Christianity or Islamic religion will help a corrupt politician to power. We circumvent the processes for securing government jobs by offering bribes to those who are in charge of recruiting workers for government establishments. Meritocracy has been dethroned by mediocrity in Nigeria because we are without moral scruples.

Nigeria, which has gone to the dogs, has become a laughing stock among the community of nations because of the misdeeds of the Nigerian leaders. But if a majority of Nigerians insist on doing things in the right ways and refuse to compromise on their positive morality codes, our leaders will be compelled to turn a new leaf so as to escape the wrath and vengeance of the people. When we have chosen to live by good personal examples and resist the temptation of perverting our systems of doing things, we will set our country on the trajectory of positive transformation.

Nigeria’s perilous economic state, technological backwardness, and infrastructural rot and deficit cannot be divorced from Nigerians’ non-possession of moral scruples. Let us insist on doing good deeds, no matter whose ox is gored. When we become the change we advocate, Nigeria shall realise its potential and manifest destiny and become the true giant of Africa.

Nigeria’s problem is not solely and chiefly a failure of leadership; we are the problem, which we seek to eradicate in our polity.

Chiedu Uche Okoye; Uruowulu-Obosi, Anambra state, 08062220654, 09125204141. Okoye is a poet.