Issues In Nigerian Leadership: Political Prospects And Challenges By Salihu Moh. Lukman

Divide and rule is by far the dominant strategy in Nigeria's
contemporary politics. It thrives on zoning and rotation of political
offices with aspiring candidates for leadership at all levels of
government and society cheaply brandishing their religious and ethnic
credentials over any other qualification. Admittedly, in terms of
educational qualifications, virtually allaspirants meet the minimum
constitutional requirement. Although we have some cases whereby
leadersare found to have presented wrong qualifications, often because
of some manifestation of inferiority complex which made our aspirants
and even so-called leaders to claim advanced educational
qualifications. And given our current national pathetic proclivity for
titles, some leaders have also commercially acquired educational
titles such as Doctors and even B. Sc and M. Sc certificates from
doubtful sources. On the whole however, it can be argued that
predominantly our political leaders are more driven by ethnic and
religious sentiments and hardly governing our nation and society based
on knowledge and commitment to ensure that Nigerian citizens overcome
challenges of survival and the quest for improved livelihood.
Thus, the big issue is whether such knowledge acquired through formal
educational, which so-called qualifications comes with suggest
competence and capacity to perform leadership tasks as required by the
offices being aspired. Aside competence, there is also the demand for
leadership vision and capacity to prioritise and take the right
decisions. Ahead of all these is the critical leadership
responsibility of coordinating and managing human relations in its
broad context, which requires not just friendly dispositions but being
open and accessible to all irrespective of differences. These are
requirements that endear leaders and societies to citizens even beyond
their immediate domain and are often part of the attractions that
invites other non-residents to explore opportunities in communities
other than their own.
A quick assessment of developments in Nigeria, at all levels since the
mid 1990s will highlight remarkable departure and erosion of
especially leadership values. At all levels of Nigerian society,
standards have crashed and leadership requirements have been reduced
to purely material(money) wellbeing. Anyone with money can buy his/her
way to power at all levels, be it local governments, states, federal
government and even nongovernmental organisations. In the
circumstance, people with poor knowledge, without any vision, lacking
of any priority and often of doubtful integrity are vested with
leadership responsibility. Citizens are coerced, blackmailed or
hoodwinked to support so-called leaders based on primordial sentiments
with our leaders hardly challenged to win support of other Nigerians
beyond their immediate narrow support base,often limited to their
birth places, local governments, senatorial district,states,
geo-political zone and hardly the nation as a whole.
Ethnic and religious factors have therefore emerged today as perhaps
the most defining factors for contest for leadership positions in the
country. As a result, there are incidences whereby leaders are
produced with very narrow and parochial perception of their
constituencies. In many cases, they even emerged just based on the
endorsements of sections and few members. Even the practice of
campaigns using posters, handbills and media hardly takes place, and
if it does, it is reduced to mere symbolism. It is just simply a case
of arrogance and contemptuous disrespect of the support of other
sections and citizens other than so-called birth places, local
governments, senatorial districts, states and geo-political zones.
This practice is widespread in many ofour political institutions
today. A visit to many seats of governments at all levels is enough to
make any genuineNigerian sick. Perhaps, it can be argued that this has
been with us as a nation since independence. In some ways, it is an
acceptable norm and little or nothing can be done about it. Yet, to
the extent that it projects us asa fractured nation and promotes
primordial hatred and anger, it constitutes a major national problem.
How can we address this big national problem? Is there any
possibility, however remote, that Nigeria can produce a leader who is
not just a sectional leader? Or, is there anythingthat can be done to
transform any of our leaders today from being narrowly perceived as a
sectional leader to a national leader? By the way, what is the
prospect that Nigeria's problems can be solved by producing a national
leader as opposed to sectional leaders? Anyway, what is wrong with
sectional leaders? Have they not been serving their people? Do we even
have leaders?Our notion of leadership and assessment of their
relevance to societal problems, in every respect, will influence our
judgement with respect to these questions. To the extent that
leadership is about having unregulated and unaccountable access to
public resources, competition for leadership will continue to be
driven by sentiments. Once leadership is blind to the issue of
nurturing good human relations, our societies and nation will be
highly vulnerable to reckless and crazy management of governmental and
non-governmentalaffairs. So long as competition for leadership in our
society and nation isreduced to our identity and the hegemonic drive
for dominating others, knowledge and the challenge of environmental
control will be a distant responsibility, if at all.
Without any doubt, if we want to survive as a nation, we must change
our ways of producing leaders in every facet of our national life as
Nigerians. We need a leader that is driven by knowledge, aspiration to
unite our people across religion, ethnicity and all other differences,
burning desire to reposition our society based on the capacity of
citizens to discover their talents, respecting the values of the human
person over and above any other thing and therefore recognising that
the most fundamental asset of our nation is its citizens and to that
extent not perceiving citizens as parasitic and the biggest liability.
How can this be done given a situation where the most important source
of government revenue is the oil sector, which is a sector where
government really don't need the participation of citizens to be able
to realise revenue? Why should government and our leaders respect
citizens when in truth all they need is OPEC, US government, EU and
other oiltrading partners to be able to realise all the revenue needed
to run government? With oil exploration and extraction being the
direct responsibility of the Federal Government on account of which
our states and local governments enjoyed huge revenue from the
federation account for almost doing nothing in the process of revenue
generation, why should the Federal Government not dictate to states
and local governments? How can we be making any claims to federalism,
when in fact our governance reality is anything but federal?
At the root of our leadership problems are so many issues that require
urgent attention. It is beyond simply focusing on the individual. If
the truth is to be told, government as oriented today is the source of
our leadership problems. It is a situation that is known to virtually
every Nigerian. Unfortunately, at best, almost every Nigerian only
lament about it and conclude that nothing can be done to change it.
This has given rise to a situation whereby all our governments are
simply on auto pilot just facilitating importation and consumption
with virtually the only production taking place being crude oil
extraction.
This is a matter that calls for organised political initiatives based
on selflessness and patriotic disposition. Unfortunately, most of our
political actors are more driven bypersonal aspiration which weakened
their capacity to develop the needed group approach. On account of
personal aspirations, most of our political leaders are very defensive
and susceptible to narrow and parochial approaches. With revenue
given, all they need to worry about is not citizens' contributions
especially given zero correlation between government revenue and
economic reality of citizens. All they need to worry about is perhaps
their capacity to dominate citizens, which in the midst of high
poverty levels money has become the main factor. The challenge
therefore before anyone interested in addressing problems of
leadership in Nigeria will be to initiate strategic approaches of
organising Nigerian citizens around the values of re-inventing
communal spirits of mobilisation and pulling resources together to
drive initiative.
This is a critical rescue factor to pull Nigeria out of all the
calamities facingthe nation with all its varied manifestation. It is a
factor that required everyone genuinely interested in moving Nigeria
forward as a nation to submit and subordinatehimself/herself to. This
will be far more effective if driven by a superior political
organisation such as a political party. The reason being that a
superior political organisation would have the advantage of both legal
and moral ambiance, which would engender not just commitment regarding
leadership conduct by individuals but also prescribe orderly processes
of nurturing citizens who subscribe to new conduct, including those of
our leaders based on the need to create new outcomes that may perhaps
place more premium on the welfare of citizens. Accordingly, issues of
tax and how it translate into strong revenue sources for governments
at all levels could then create a positive correlation between
citizens welfare and governance at all levels.