Poor leadership and governance is usually at the root of every nation’s problem. This assertion must have prompted former President Olusegun Obasanjo to acknowledge recently the leadership deficit reality even in the midst of a large number of technocrats in the country. “Nigeria has no scarcity of people to lift the country and Africa up. But Nigeria is deficit in leadership.”
When one takes a look at the simple definition of leadership, it involves knowing what to do and how to bring resources together to achieve a particular purpose. Leadership is influence and management. Leadership is basically the ability of followers to follow willingly without compulsion based on how positively their lives are affected by the leader.
Leadership is a determinant of the success or failure of government institutions or non-governmental organizations including businesses. Little wonder that efforts are always being made by critical stakeholders to bequeath or train people aspiring for leadership at all levels. This is in recognition of the role leadership plays in driving the objectives of development agenda in the society or in an organization.
Leadership position is one many aspire to get to as it puts one in control of affairs in a particular group, organization or at different levels of governance.
Some of the essential qualities of a great leader are known including clarity of vision, accurate decisiveness, good courage, passion and importantly high humility on the job. In Nigeria today, many leaders lack some, if not all of these qualities, and this affects those being led or workers. Some have risen to leadership positions by favoritism, meaning without any trace of training or mentorship.
This development has created room for people to ascend leadership positions without having requisite skills and experience to pilot the affairs of organizations or communities thereby leading to misplaced priorities in development programmes. This challenge in leadership usually reflects in the way problems are mismanaged, leading to the negative consequences we often find in the society including the rampaging insecurity and parlous state of infrastructure in the country.
There are many followers, supervisors and managers, among others, but very few leaders. People have not given leadership the importance that it deserves. From history and leadership studies, we know that leaders are not necessarily born. Leaders can be trained and groomed through a process. But what we see across the country is that there are government establishments and non-governmental organizations that have leadership centres which operate by name only. The contents of their works are devoid of comprehensive leadership training programmes that are meant to groom leaders to know the skills required for leadership including leadership style, effective leadership, leadership imperatives for organizations, among others.
All these can be narrowed to the leadership deficit in the political landscape where we are having unfortunately poor political party management and very dismal governance outcomes. This deficit can be attributed to our political history and experience. Military intervention changed the trajectory of leadership in the country.
The common conversation these days has to do with the nexus between leadership deficit and the governance challenges that the country is experiencing. When we look at the first republic, most senior citizens’ lamentations have always been that the military truncated the modeling system in this country in terms of who to look up to in order to become somebody. In other words, we lost the mentorship track or link during the military interregnum in 1966.
In more recent years, there was a time any aspiring leader in the community must be recognized by the military leadership in Abuja. And that changed the dynamics. More tragic was the strategic error that was made by many activists in 1999 by refusing to participate in politics which threw up the kind of leaders who have dominated the scene till today.
The political space has been hijacked since 1999 and those who had a foothold have seized the space and they are replicating their kind. Godfatherism has become a euphemism that describes all the wrongs that happen in political leadership. Leadership qualities don’t really matter much now in the face of godfatherism. Political godfathers are concerned about the next election and willing to dispense patronage, as nobody seems to care about leaving a legacy. It has permeated in the society which is characterized by corruption, nepotism and moral degeneration.
This shows that political leadership is so central and important that it affects all other sectors in terms of policy formulation and passage of laws. No doubt, politics has influenced the socio-political atmosphere in the country. The type of leadership we see that is predominant is transactional leadership where people follow because of what they will get. Most of them are just after the gains and rewards.
Many people who work diligently no longer depend solely on their salary because of unfavourable economic climate. So, for them, a good leader is one who gives them handouts to solve their problems. Not much attention is paid to a value-driven transformational leader that emphasizes hard work, character, competence and other leadership qualities. People who ordinarily want to be good are affected by the system and the exigencies of the time. They follow leaders who they don’t like because it’s their means of survival.
In the political arena, the recruitment process is a big challenge, as the criteria for leadership selection are marred with irregularities. Many politicians believe they can just come overnight and occupy elective positions. Many are drafted into various high positions unprepared. For instance, in the early 80s, a gubernatorial candidate who didn’t go beyond secondary school education emerged from one of the northern states. The media went to him to find out his plans to govern a state given his poor educational background. He told them that what he needed to do was just to wake up every morning and order that ‘a road be constructed here, a borehole be drilled there.’
That’s militarization of the system. We still have the hangover of dictatorship. We have problems not only in the elective offices but also in the leadership of the parties. In most cases, elective offices are monetized which makes it possible for the highest bidder to become the party’s candidate.
Parties write beautiful manifestos but most of them do not implement what is therein. It’s the leadership of the party that makes the rules. We must get it right in the political party leadership because that will now translate into ensuring that the process of getting those to contest elections and come into office will be put into proper perspective, and probably get the appropriate leadership that we require. If we don’t get it right in the leadership of the party, then nothing positive can come out of elective offices.
Looking at this issue from the political point of view gives us a direction as to where we are headed. There is a need for societal reorientation. We need more than good men. We need to build firewalls around governance, and we need to build the people into that conversation. There are societies that have had very profound programmes of reorientation of their people. Those societies passed through major political upheavals like the former Soviet Union, China, India, among others. They also go to ideological schools right from youth and are schooled in the values of the state and the values of society.
Thirty years ago in the policy circle, people were not clear about how to move people out of poverty. But China demonstrated that. In 15 years, they moved 730 million people out of poverty through enlightened leadership, pressure from below and social protection policies. India removed 170 million people from the poverty bracket through the same process.
This can be replicated in Nigeria because we have the rudiments. We are already clear about our national ethics and values. But for the leadership to do this, they have to be committed to total change. It comes close to what is called ‘committing class suicide.’ In other words, reproducing one’s type in politics and emphasising those things that hold us down, will be a thing of the past.
Ethnicity, culture, religion, among others, are used by the elite as instruments of manipulation. We should look beyond this, knowing that what defines all of us is our humanity; the fact that we all need food, shelter and clothing.
We have to get more credible, capable, responsible people into the political arena; not just to occupy elective positions but also to take part in contributing in the discussion of what the vision could be.
Political leadership should be about the welfare of the people. The elite should come out of the social media and get involved in politics. In that case, a ‘development coalition’ could emerge to say enough is enough. If we are sincere in implementing the existing laws, we will have a better society. When leaders are chosen the right way, and we have people that are properly mentored coming into leadership, we will overcome some of the current challenges we are facing.
People emulate what they see in the political terrain, as there is a particular set of people that are interested in politics. Many of those in government are there for their selfish interests. Sadly, the environment has continued to reproduce itself such that both leaders and citizens now fulfill a negative prophecy in the leadership terrain.
We need to understand the dynamics that are driving us into this bottomless pit. It’s the failure of leadership; failure of leaders to build institutions, observe the basic tenets of the rule of law, and the context in which people have rights which they have to promote and defend; it’s the failure of the fact that citizens have also not been organized to demand accountability. This tells you about citizen participation and the role of the civil society in terms of being that soft underbelly that should push the state to do what is right in the best interest of citizens.
The beauty is that what needs to be done to change leadership deficit is known whether in terms of leadership grooming, process of preparing leaders or policies that can change the dynamics of the country. The framework of leadership is already set, as the vision of our forefathers is captured in Chapter 2 of the Constitution. So, what needs to be done to achieve a better society is no longer what should be debated.
In complementing this debate, experts are of the view that there are about four fundamental issues for leadership to succeed. First, is vision. This has to be identified and planned for before getting into office. Any elective officer who waits until he gets into office and starts planning what to do, may not succeed because the time is not there. Bureaucratic process will stand in the way. The very day the leader steps into such responsibility, he will be overwhelmed with protocol, courtesy calls, visitors, meetings, among others.
Second, is the planning to achieve the vision. The leader has to know the priorities, and this he can only get when he taps from the experts.
Third, is the issue of recruiting those who will help the leader to implement his plans. Sadly, most of the appointments are political patronages, not based on the capability, experience, background or antecedents of the people that are coming to do the job. And finally, is the need for leaders to showcase exemplary conduct.
The purpose of leadership and good governance is to qualitatively transform the state and society. A just society provides basic needs, ensures equal opportunity for self-development through education and gainful employment.
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