Nigeria presently faces socio-economic and security crisis with attendant hardship foisted on its citizens who put the blame for the nation’s woes on their leaders. WALE AKINSELURE, in this piece, examines whether all the blame should be put at the doorsteps of the leadership.
Like never before, most Nigerians presently are faced with biting hardship stemming from hyperinflation, high cost of living. It is an utter state of misery as many feed from hands to mouth while there are those who virtually have nothing to move from hands to mouth. The gong for the start of the misery of many Nigerians went on May 29, 2023 when President Bola Tinubu, while delivering his inaugural speech, announced that fuel subsidy was gone. That singular announcement came with a geometric increase in the pump price of fuel and attendant hike in the cost of goods and services. Building materials, drugs, food items, transport fares, virtually all goods and services have gone above the rooftop.
While yearning for succour, then went another gong from the Tinubu government with the announcement of the floating of the Naira to cope with the sliding value of the curency in the foreign exchange market. But the value of the naira further declined leaving dwellers of the import-loving Nigeria to agonise. The huge burden of coping amid present hard times has even drawn comparisons with the General Sani Abacha era, with arguments that the present times are even worse. However, full backs and centre backs of the Tinubu administration are quick to say that the present woes are consequences of the actions and inactions of the immediate past administration of President Muhammadu Buhari. Among them, a former Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) governor, Mohammed Sanusi blamed the current hardship on huge foreign and domestic debt accrued by the Buhari administration, adding that Nigeria’s fall into its present situation was inevitable. Sanusi held that the difficult situation Nigerians are facing had to be experienced pointing to such situations in Germany, Zimbabwe, Uganda and Venezuela. Other defenders describe the present suffering as Nigerians temporarily paying the price of the removal of fuel subsidy which was also inevitable in the interest of the economy. They praise Tinubu for the courage to announce the removal, though some argue that the president could have provided palliatives or the enabling environment that allows Nigerians to breathe before the announcement.
To cushion the effects of the subsidy removal, the Federal Government released billions of Naira to state governments to provide their residents with palliative packages just as Tinubu recently ordered the release of 102,000 metric tonnes of rice, maize, yam, millet aimed at ensuring food surplus across the nation. Similarly, in a move to rescue the drowning naira, the CBN Governor, Yemi Cardoso did proclaim various financial measures, mandating banks to ensure compliance. But the problems of the country are double-barreled as the nation also grapples with serious security issues. Like the return of the recent past, Nigerians now live in fear as there are daily occurrences of kidnapping, killings, theft and acts of terrorism. Both the low and the mighty are now targets as massacres have been recorded, traditional rulers killed and people kidnapped for ransom.
Whenever there is a drift in the fortunes of a society, the followership is quick to blame the leadership, while the leadership, if it accepts responsibility, is also quick to blame the followership or the institutional framework upon which they lead. Presently, for every problem, the name, Bola Tinubu, is sounded. This has been the same for every administration since Nigeria’s independence in 1960. The rhetoric over the years has been that the country has had more of sectional leaders, self-seeking leaders, dictators than nationalists as leaders. The governing elite are seen as having converged on the need to preserve the political system for continuous perpetuation of control over the polity.
Since independence, Nigeria has continued to seek solutions to the Nigerian leadership question. Nigeria is categorised as archetype of a failed petrostrate with characteristics that include oil dependence, falling production, turbulent economy, soaring debt and hyperinflation. In seeking solutions, cases have been made for the building of strong institutions and systems to eradicate corruption and leadership failure. Professor Taibat Lawanson of the University of Lagos argued that our issues devolve from the weak systems and institutions, that do not demand accountability from both leadership and followership. She said the nation will be better for it if we strengthen our systems.
There is also the premise that wrong values are at the root of our national problems and challenges for both leaders and followers. Meanwhile, there is equally a relationship between strong institutions and a strong persona. The Singaporean strongman, Lee Kuan Yew, demonstrated how a strongman could facilitate the transformation of a state’s governance and developmental apparatuses for the benefits of the citizens.
Back in the days, there used to be part time legislature while councilors of old were retired public officers who were collecting just sitting allowances yet they were productive and credible. Leaders also put in place measures to cut down cost of governance but nowadays the cost of governance increases by the day while corruption reigns from top to bottom. The leadership recruitment process is also questionable. Primaries are unclean, monetized, based on godfatherism such that it is difficult for honest, clean politicians to emerge. “Followership is also a problem. Because of poverty and fear, followers fail to demand accountability. Then we have faulty administrative structure hence the call for restructuring,” Professor Osisioma Nwolise, a political scientist said.
From 1959 through 1979, 1999 till date, Nigerians elected one democratic leader or the other. Nigerian has had the as presidents and heads of state: Tafawa Balewa, Nnamdi Azikwe, Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi, Yakubu Gowon, Murtala Mohammed, Shehu Shagari, Olusegun Obasanjo, Ibrahim Babangida, Ernest Shonekan, Sani Abacha, Abdulsalami Abubakar, Musa Yar’Adua, Goodluck Jonathan, Muhammadu Buhari and Bola Tinubu. However, persons like Secretary, National Democratic Coalition (NADECO), Ayo Opadokun, argued that the military interventions in our leadership retarded the progress that Nigeria could have made leadership wise.
Why all eyes on leadership?
Famous leadership coach and author, John C. Maxwell wrote that everything rises and falls on leadership. When a football team is underperforming, for example, the coach usually comes under the lens and bears the consequences in being sacked. An economist of the University of Ibadan, Professor Dhikrullah Yagboyaju said leadership has been a subject or object of attack in Nigeria, at the highest political level because of the long encounter of the ordinary people with squandered hope, hardship and loss of confidence in government. The Mo Ibrahim Foundation (MIF) locates governance and leadership at the centre of the transformation of the African continent. The MIF defines leadership as the “ability to make choices, assess and take risks, define and order priorities.” Yagboyaju also describes leadership as a critical factor in the performance of any society and in its level of development in that leaders are pathfinders and problem-solvers. “Leaders, rather than being complainants or agonisers, are deep thinkers who take their people to where they ought to be not where the people want to be,” he added.
Chief Obafemi Awolowo wrote in his book, “The People’s Republic,” that the primary obligation of leadership is catering to and promoting the welfare of its peoples to the end that they may live a full and happy life. He, however, held: “Most African leaders appear to lack the vision, sense of mission and mental magnitude essential to enhance the status of the States under their charge to the level of self-respecting and respectable economic entity. Africa suffers from three grave disabilities: inhuman degradation, lack of sufficiently dedicated leadership and economic subservience. As long as Africa or most of its States remain underdeveloped and economically subservient, so long will poverty, ignorance and disease persist in the continent, together with their concomitants of colonialism, neo-colonialism, Ian-Smithism, Vorsterism and Salazarism. Today, Africa is a continent of competing beggar-states. They vie with one another for favours from the developed countries, especially their former colonial masters.” Awolowo prayed that the nation be blessed with the right type of leadership to implement the right political, economic, social, external policies for the nation.
The chess game
Speaking on the topic: “Leadership Question: Prospects for Nigeria,” at the Unveiling of the Adebisi Akande Foundation and Lecture, held at the University of Ibadan, Governor Babangana Zulum of Borno State held that both leadership and followership must assume responsibility for the state of the nation. On the part of the leadership, Zulum queried how many political leaders came into power with a plan which they then prioritise in order of what they want to achieve. He acknowledged that some leaders waste time attending to frivolities. The Borno governor tasked leaders on self-assessment, monitoring and evaluation, just as he said leaders must appoint people with quality and capacity to work with them. On the part of the followership, Zulum said everyone must be a leader in their spheres of influence, and be keen on electing honest and competent leaders.
Like Zulum, Professor Yagboyaju said leadership must live up to its duties and responsibilities. The don argued that citizens must assume themselves as leaders in every facet of life: family, schools, associations, socio-economic and professional groups, religious and worship groups, among others. His stance is that political leadership in Nigeria is a reflection of the type of leaderships in the other sectors in the country. To this end, he noted that Nigeria will get political leadership right only if there is a critical mass of right thinkers in the other leadership platforms.
Governor Zulum, on his part, identified corruption as the bane of good leadership. He noted that corruption in the system is attributed to poor salaries of civil servants, lack of administrative justice where offenders are punished, lack of mentorship in the leadership space, emergence of incompetent leaders.
The Vice Chancellor, Dominican University, Professor Hyginus Ekwuazi, pinpoints followership as bane of our problems, saying it is followership that empowers the leadership to build institutions of state that are much weaker than personalities. He said: “Chinua Achebe was unequivocal in holding up leadership as the problem; you find that in, ‘The problem with Nigeria’. As far as he was concerned, leadership was the problem. But in the light of unfolding situations, we are beginning to look at that again. I will seriously think that followership is actually the bane of our problems. This is because the followership empowers leadership. It is followership that empowers leadership to build institutions of state that are much weaker than personalities. We have very weak institutions of state and very powerful individuals. Who made all that possible? The followership. Who adulate our leaders to the point that we follow them blindly. Followership is the bane of our problems.”
In his intervention, renowned economist, Professor Pat Utomi says leadership is critical as it holds together all the other factors that guarantee nation’s growth like “the kind of policies that we make as a country, the strength of our institutions, the quality of our human capital, the nature of entrepreneurship venturing in the system, our values.” He described leadership as influence, having a sense of service, sacrifice, but noted that Nigerian leaders construe leadership as capacity to deploy power with many not having vision, knowledge of where they are taking the people to. Utomi said: “Leadership is no doubt a critical part of it. There is an interdependence between some of the factors holding us back. In many ways, leadership helps hold them all together. Unfortunately in Nigeria, many who come into positions of authority have been driven by this self-love, the love for power where people revere you or because they want to make money through the use of their position. These things diminish leadership. Our people think once you have money, you can buy your way to power.”
In the history of the nation, Utomi said Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Dr Nnamdi Azikwe and Chief Olusegun Obasanjo stood out as visionary leaders and people who offered service in interest of the majority of the people.
A renowned professor of Political Science, Professor Osisioma Nwolise said both leadership and followership are problems. He, however, pointed out that the main problem in the country is lawlessness whereby leaders emerge through rigging, manipulation and not normal constitutional democratic process. He said the situation is worsened by lack of strategic thinking by the youths such that they are easily tossed around and unable to demand accountability from their leaders.
Nwolise said: “Leadership is a big problem because leadership determines the direction of a society, mobilizes the resources of a nation in moving in that direction. If leadership is wrong, the nation will move in the wrong direction. But for Nigeria, leadership is not the key problem. The key problem is lawlessness. If we are lawful, good leaders will emerge through the normal constitutional democratic process not through election rigging, manipulation, which has been our bane since 1959. There are good people in the system. The masses have to be educated. The schools have a role but for the fact that our schools are not fashioned in such a way that our youths can demand accountability. Our children are brought up to be Yes-men and women. They are not trained to have critical thinking. The ruling class is afraid that the youths will start asking questions, demanding accountability and be chased out if they do not perform.”
Secretary of NADECO, Mr Opadokun said the nation was on course pre and immediate post-independence but the military takeover of power subverted the possible continuation of the trajectory of mentorship and growing up the next cadre of positively directed leadership. For Opadokun, the military usurpation of powers did a collateral lasting damage to our cultural values, traditions customs, artefacts, folklores, mores, morals. To return on track. He said the nation must regain her nationality, values and orientations to produce positively directed leadership.
Opadokun also points to the fact that most public institutions have been so corrupted in the last 40 years. Aside from corruption of public institutions, Opadokun said the militarily imposed centralist and unitarist laws have encouraged and permitted the gross abuse of power which remains neither unchecked nor punished because of primordial/ethnic bias and sentiments. Also identified is the feeding bottle federalism in Nigeria which has bastardised especially the local government system. The NADECO secretary noted that the local government used to perform critical works for many communities until General Olusegun Obasanjo set up Ibrahim Dasuki panel on restructuring of the Local Councils. The implemented report still in use, according to Opadokun, is the currently unproductive local councils where all councils must have the same number of councilors and paid the same wage. He added that the military, for purposes of overall control of all levels of powers, created what they call joint account which has enabled the state governors to access the LGA funds as they will and any local government chairman that fails to cooperate is usually dismissed and humiliated.
A don at the Lead City University, Dr Bayo Busari, averred that it was the responsibility of leaders to provide direction, hence the bane of development in the country is the leadership. He argued that lack of good visionary, good leadership had corrupted the followership who tend to copy the ways of their leaders. For us to have a turnaround, Busari said: ”leadership will have to change its ways and provide quality leadership and good governance to reawaken the interest of the citizens in governance and bring them out of the despondent state they’ve found themselves. We should not deceive ourselves; trust in governance is at the lowest ebb, and the reason for this can be traced to lack of quality leadership.”