It is a cliché that the business of leadership is a Herculean task. It is convenient to criticize but certainly very difficult to lead a people. This is why people who aspire to leadership of any type in life populate in the minority despite the fact that all of humanity is created equal. This is a popular myth that we have recycled in governance since we attained independence. We must begin to demystify this notion if the electorate wants to maximize the best of its leadership for societal transformation.

Unlike the argument is some quarters, Nigeria as a complex country can be effectively led, administered or governed through proactive leadership that is responsive to the welfare and socio-economic development of the electorate. This is as simple as ABC. Is Nigeria bigger than United States of America in any way? Are we saying that we cannot manage our population, ethnic diversity, natural resources and culture to emerge as a superpower in the world? Are we saying that we cannot have leadership that is creatively action-based? Are we saying that we cannot have a leadership that is anticipatory? Are we saying that we cannot have a leadership that realize that because disaster is not sentimental in nature and can happen without notice at any time Nigeria, has gone ahead to put technology in place to minimize the impact of such disaster? Are we saying we cannot have a leadership that is capable of swiftly responding to natural or human-error induced disaster? Are we saying that we cannot have a leadership that is alive to its responsibility in all strata of governance?

Daniel Goleman in his best-seller article published by Harvard Business Review titled Leadership That Get Results recreated traditional styles of leadership and expanded them to six dynamics namely coercive, authoritative, affiliative, democratic, pacesetting and coaching styles. The motivation for this expansion is to engender performance from leaders in organizations. Beyond Goleman, only a responsive and proactive leader can effectively adopt or switch among the different dynamics for performance and results in the attainment of organizational objectives or in governance. That is why Glasow Arnold said, “One of the true tests of leadership is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency.”

We are not unfamiliar with human-error induced disaster and avoidable losses of lives in Nigeria. However, the wanton loss of lives of our beloved ones in the last eight weeks is a burden too heavy for the electorate to bear. First came down Bellview. We have hardly shed the mourning garb when Sosoliso went down. Mother Nigeria lost more than 200 of her brightest sons and daughters to plane crashes that are preventable, to say the least. The electorate should not sit still to merely count their losses. We must probe our leadership in the court of morality to prevent disasters waiting to happen in other areas of our national life.

Is our political leadership reactive or proactive?

Yes, we cannot forget our dearly beloved sons and daughters who lost their lives in the Bellview and Sosoliso plane crashes. Now, how is our leadership preparing for the challenges of safety and security of lives and properties in Nigeria? How is the leadership organized to ensure the protection of the territorial integrity of the nation, protection of intellectual propriety of the future generation of Nigerian youth and food security? How is the leadership responding to delivering on the millennium promise to the electorate?

Is our political leadership reactive or proactive?

It is widely acclaimed that Nigeria armed forces have demonstrated its capacity to mobilize, deploy and sustain battalions in support of peacekeeping operations in ECOWAS and some parts of UN-led peace operations in Africa and beyond. It is, however, incomprehensible going by intelligence report that the Nigerian Navy is poorly equipped compared to countries of similar size and resources across the globe, and the Nigerian Air Force flies transport, trainer, helicopter, and fighter aircrafts that are currently not operational. How can we win a major war if we lack power in the air? I am not a military expert but Israel will educate our political leaders that modern warfare is either won or lost by aerial combat powress.

While I agree that the military high command will not disclose or publish their strategy for dealing with either internal or external aggressions that challenge the territorial integrity of Nigeria by air, sea and land, pray such containment plan actually exists as a blueprint somewhere awaiting deployment and not just existing in the imagination of some phantom or long-retired generals who depend on foreign intelligence of agencies like CIA, MOSSAD and the likes for guidance. Now, much ado about full disclosure of military capability! If you have it, show it. The website of the Nigeria armed forces is not impressive. This is what anybody can check out on the Internet. If you check out the military technology and capability of the United States by visiting any of its armed forces websites, you will be impressed and rest assured that when trouble comes, you could stay at home in peace while your forces are combating the enemies. Saddam Hussein now knows better.

Do we have a containment plan to deal with internal and external aggression? Suppose another civil strife breaks out now, can Nigeria survive it? I am not a proponent of the break up of Nigeria. This is a possibility. USSR is a case study. Similar examples are replete. I affirm that our beauty as a nation lies in unity in diversity where equality, meritocracy and the rule of law guides our existence and promote our survival.

Truly speaking, can the military high command manage another large-scale civil unrest now? The civil war that broke out in 1967 was prolonged for three years until the federal forces finally overcame the Biafran forces in January 1970 because of the minor military support the later received from France. Today, many forces threaten our peaceful co-existence as a nation, and the leadership is apathetic like a frog in the kettle that is being heated by a cooker. MASSOB unlike other ethnic militias is manageable now because it is towing the path of peaceful resistance. Suppose it changes tactics and receive major but discrete support from the superpowers like Israel, France, Russia or even dissident countries in the Axis of Evil in terms of financial resources and military hardware to engage in prolonged urban guerrilla, can the Nigerian Army contain them? Will the Army wait until MASSOB is pushed to the wall to change tactics and forcefully push itself out of the commonwealth of Nigeria? Suppose Cameroon changes tactics, chooses to unilaterally disregard United Nations peaceful resolution of the Bakassi boundary crisis and engage Nigeria in a full scale military campaign with the discrete support of France, can the Nigerian Army match them intelligence for intelligence, hardware for hardware, airplane for airplane, navy for navy? Or, will Nigeria crumble like a Goliath before David? Of course, Goliath was better equipped than David but was not as smart and intelligent as David.

Is our political leadership reactive or proactive?

Education has been politicized and ‘quotarized’ by our shortsighted political leaders and accepted as normal by the electorate. After years of national policy formulation on education to cater for national development, it is a sad reality that the educational system in our country today is dysfunctional. Now, when the education sector has fallen apart we react by founding private schools to redress the problem only to create more problems for the masses that cannot afford to pay the fees that these private schools charge their students. Unless we overhaul our education system, fund and implement applicable policies to execution as appropriate from playgroups to post-graduate, we cannot experience socio-economic development. Are some political leaders thinking somewhere? Shall we wait until all our children emigrate to other countries to acquire education before we realize what has happened to us as a nation? These children may not return to develop their country that they do not now. Instead, they will stay back and contribute to the socio-economic development of their host countries that give them opportunities to become somebody in life.

If we measure the rate at which young and vibrant Nigerians check out of Nigeria, we will realize that the country is at war with itself. The crops of bright and intelligent Nigerians who should have stayed back and contribute to national development have been lured away to other nations of the world. What do we have left? The rich fool minority who blindly clutch to power and wealth at the expense of the lives of the downtrodden millions, the sizeable ‘down but not out’ middle class who are hopeful that one day ‘Nigeria go better’ and the pauperized millions of our people who live below poverty level and could hardly afford subsistence of US$1 a day with ‘the struggle continues’ or ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’ slogans. In addition to this mass exodus is the continued wanton destruction of lives of the youth of our future through plane crashes, carnage on the road through motor accidents in the hands of illiterate and drunk drivers, armed bandits and bad roads.

Is our political leadership reactive or proactive?

Yesterday it was Ethiopia. Then it was Eritrea. Then it was Sudan. Today it is Niger. Will it be Nigeria? Will we face food crisis? Are we growing enough to feed the nation? Is any agency of government involved in scenario planning to forestall food crisis in Nigeria? Are there any scientific activities geared towards cultivating hybrids that we can mass-produce and stock to prepare for a major food crisis in Africa as the desert erodes the forestlands of Africa and marches towards the Atlantic? Can Nigeria feed itself today? We do not lack the natural endowment by nature to feed ourselves. What we lack is a Joseph to coordinate our activities in time of surplus and save us in times of scarcity. The utopia of food for all in the year 2000 is a mirage that has been easily forgotten by the promising leadership and the gullible electorate.

Agriculture has suffered from years of underdevelopment by the electorate and, mismanagement and lack of intelligent planning by political leaders. We can no longer boast that we are a major exporter of cocoa from the West, groundnuts from the North, rubber from the Midwest and palm oil from the East. Everybody is trading in black gold – oil – today. The irony is that oil has not been able to and will not transform the fortune of the electorate unless we go back to agriculture and cultivate our lands through traditional methods for small-scale farming and mechanized methods for industry farming.

Providence gave us oil to enable Nigeria liberate Africa from poverty, ignorance and disease and place us in a place of pride side by side United States of America, Europe, China and Japan. The shortsightedness of both the political leaders in governing aright and the electorate in demanding equity and social justice do not allow us to perceive this eternal mandate. Today, we are subservient to oil, enslaved by oil and may perish by oil. He who lives by the wealth that oil generates shall perish by the evil of the attendant mismanagement of this wealth. We should turn back to the land, but in a modern and creative manner. Government should review and abrogate the land tenure system that does not encourage long-term investment in technology and modern production methods. Government should also encourage, short of saying, mandate (and who says it is not possible) the banks to promote long-term micro-credit financing for investment in agriculture. These are some of the ways we can reverse the economic distortions that our dependency on oil create, if we are sincere.

Is our political leadership reactive or proactive?

Five years into the new millennium, we marvel why we are yet to have stable electricity that justifies our annual national expenditure on the power ministry. Certainly, if Nigeria were a company run by one of the efficient and hardworking under 45 years old CEOs we have around today, thousands of inept and federal-character civil servants would have been fired, and discipline and efficiency instilled into the system.

Five years into the new millennium, majority in the cities and towns in Nigeria still depend on fuelwood and charcoal to serve us at the junctions and on the road while we pull up our sleek cars by the roadside causing obstructions in order to buy ‘boli’, roasted corn, and fried yams instead of tapping into the wonders of solar energy or at least gas-powered cooker to give us descent fast-food.

Five years into the new millennium, some rural communities are yet to be electrified by NEPA and our political leaders pride themselves in shoring up the wealth of the nation into their personal foreign accounts and buying themselves and their families homes in London, Paris and US to mention but a few. We lack ingenuity and the will to improve our own condition of living. We will be stretching the truth by saying that thermal stations at Egbin, Afam and Sapele as well as the Kainji Dam and other sites at Shiroro Gorge and Jebba are tired and begging for innovative leadership who can look at the sun in the face and tap its energy for electricity as well as convert gas flaring into veritable source of electricity for the nation. How could the most populous country in Africa, which accounts for approximately 20 percent of West Africa’s people depend on only five percent of its potential hydroelectric capacity for electricity in AD2005?

Is our political leadership reactive or proactive?

The price of reactive leadership is too heavy a burden to bear for the electorate. It purchases a common coffin for the mutual funeral of both the leadership and the electorate. If Nigeria will outlive the first two decades of this new millennium, the leadership must get its acts together and become proactive in establishing a solid structure to support the Nigeria State. We are not progressing any where with reactive leadership. Can the leadership at all levels of our corporate life get proactive, please? Even, if it has been reactive to date. It can never be too late. Today is where to begin. Now is when to begin. This is a journey of a thousand mile. And, it must begin with some proactive leaders! Everett McKinley Dirksen has said it all that “Life is not a static thing. The only people who do not change their minds are incompetents in asylums, and those in cemeteries.”

Robot  # 1 | 15.12.2005 18:24

It is a cliché that the business of leadership is a Herculean task. It is convenient to criticize but certainly very difficult to lead a people. This is why people who aspire to leadership of any type in life populate in the minority despite the fact that all of humanity is creat...Read the full article.

Unregistered  # 2 | 15.12.2005 21:23

So OBJ populates the minority. Another nonsense.