22 Mar 2009 |
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| Everything stands or falls on leadership By Pat Utomi In my last article 'Rabbit at rest in a global recession,' I made the point to ask if Nigeria was the way it was because we could not see our problem or because we could not solve it. I had intended this to be a rhetorical question, but I was somewhat surprised when recent events answered this question. By this I refer to the Federal Government's reaction to the Electoral Reform Committee's recommendations. Being mindful of the belief that you get what you expect, I had made an effort to expect that this administration would do the right thing and accept the Committee's recommendation because I was convinced that those recommendations would go a long way to ensuring that the next election would be largely free and fair and would produce an administration that had the moral authority to begin to make the changes needed to set Nigeria on the right path. I know for a fact that there is a direct connection between how an administration comes into being and its ability to govern effectively. The president in his first month in office confessed to the world that the process that brought him in was thoroughly flawed and to address it he set up an Electoral Reform Committee headed by former Chief Justice, Mohammed Uwais. The committee has now come out to say to the government that to have a free and fair election you must have a truly independent electoral body and to have a truly independent electoral body you must have a neutral person heading this body and to achieve this end you must have such an appointment made by the National Judicial Council whose members are independent of the executive. And what has the president who set up the ERC in the first place done? He has rejected this proposal. How then can we have a better election if we stick to the same logic that produced what we saw in 2007? Has this government shown that it has the willingness to change for the better? They have said they want change, but as we know action speaks louder than words and their action speak very loudly. As the late U.S. president Franklin Roosevelt said, the job of the president is primarily one of moral leadership. How does a president get his initial moral leadership rights? The very obvious answer is that his initial moral leadership comes from the process that brought him into office. A straightforward process will produce a president who has moral authority and he can then build on this and increase it until his capacity for effective leadership is so strong. But where a leader comes into office by suspicious means how then can he have moral leadership? And when a leader does not have moral authority how can he effectively govern and bring about positive changes in the country he governs? Everything is connected to everything and in Nigeria we can see how the moral issues plaguing our leaders are having a ripple effect on the society. An administration that emerges from a flawed system which is riddled with fraud will not have the moral authority to condemn fraud. An administration that came about via an election where money was used as inducement will not have the moral authority to challenge theft of public funds. And where you have a government that is deficient in this manner this deficiency will trickle down on the society. A government cannot give out what it does not have. And we are beginning to see the actual results of a failure in moral leadership in the day to day life of the ordinary Nigerian. For instance, we have been living with some insecurity in Nigeria and have come to accept it as the norm, but never before had we experienced insecurity on such a grand scale as we have today. I am no prophet, but I am almost certain that tomorrow's headlines will have one story or the other about dare devil armed robbers and kidnappers. Relatives of high profile politicians and civil servants dare not visit certain parts of the country without adequate security and even then they hold their breath. An ever-increasing population is competing for diminishing resources leading to more incidences of riots and ethnic clashes because government is focused on how to cure its lack of moral leadership rather than how to create an environment conducive for the creation of sustainable wealth. I love the youths as they are the key to bringing about change in any society because they are more flexible, more able to change their ways and are impressionable and a good leader can make the right impression on them and galvanise them in the direction they should go. My love for our Nigerian youths is the reason I feel pains when I watch NTA news. I cannot count the number of times I see the bodies of young people shot by the police as armed robbery suspects. I have trained myself to look at the youth and see them with the eye of potential and I am saddened when I see these scenes on television. But how do we help our youths to fulfil their potential when the government and our elders are caught in this loop of failed leadership and still causally dismiss measures that can help us break out of this cycle of failed leaders and a failing society. Yes armed robbery is bad, but in Nigeria it is to a large extent a symptom rather than a disease and to eradicate the symptom we need to cure the disease. Untold millions of unemployed youths read the newspapers and watch the news cast and see politicians who had been arrested by the EFCC for stealing billions of naira and are out on bail being received at our presidential villa, being celebrated at parties and also being recognised and even celebrated in churches! These are the very people who have a vested interest in seeing that the Uwais Committee's recommendations come to naught. As a society we have shown undue tolerance for corruption and intolerance for law enforcement. If you are in doubt of this then consider the haste at which the government acted in handling Nuhu Ribadu's 'insubordination' and compare it with the slow pace of the trial (or lack of it) of those he arrested. Oh what positive impact the government would have made had it acted with its 'Ribadu' haste in accepting and implementing the Uwais committee's recommendations! Have we paused to think about the type of subliminal messages we are passing across to these youths when we celebrate looters and punish those who go after them? As the late Fela Kuti sang "Authority man in charge of money, him no need gun, him need pen, pen get power gun no get, if gun go steal two thousand naira pen go steal two billion naira, you no go hear them shout thief their thief". I am tempted to believe that if Bernie Madoff where to have been a Nigerian, he would have been out on bail and be making the rounds of government houses and parties. This attitude we have of celebrating what should be disdained is the very reason why our youths have taken to violent crimes. As Ezeulu said in Achebe's Arrow of God a she goat does not suffer in its parturition while an elder is in the house. If our youths can see leaders giving national awards to men whose source of wealth is certainly questionable, if churches can give honours to men whose incomes can never justify the large donations they make, if we have heads of law enforcement bodies attending parties and dancing with those whom their own agents have previously arrested, then inevitably we will have the scenario we now experience.
To be continued
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