|
The English dictionary defines a leader as someone whom people follow. This, therefore, means that the essence of leadership is following; without which no person will be called a leader. The leader is the supervisor; the manager; the director; the overseer or the president if you may, with followers. He articulates the goals of his group and if he has a large following, the followers would not only share his dreams, they would assist in actualising those dreams. What then motivates someone to follow a leader? There are likely to be many factors, specifically. But in a broader sense it is a sense of fairness or neutrality. It is an elementary truth that no person will voluntarily follow someone that he perceives as prejudiced to him or his course. It only needs to be merely a perception, to affect the sensibility of the follower and not necessarily real injustice or justice. For instance, every decampment from one political party to another, as being witnessed presently in Nigeria, has its own story of perceived injustice behind it.
It stands to reason. People will always believe that they stand a better chance with a person who is either fair or neutral than a biased person. So, they gravitate towards who they consider as a fair person. Unfortunately, as stated above, it is the perception of fairness or injustice that triggers a follower and not the actual justice or injustice. The onus on the leader, therefore, is to be seen as fair or neutral at all times even if he is not impartial. That sounds like a tall order, but there are machineries that whitewash a leader in order to be seen as an impartial person. There are spin doctors, for instance, whose job is to launder the image of a bad leader. However, starting from a platform of a good person, it is easier to project such person as a fair person. The moment a leader fails to maintain the image of impartiality or neutrality – whether laundered or not - he begins to lose his following. As he loses his followers, his effectiveness reduces. He becomes a lame duck leader and as fewer and fewer people believe in him, he cannot get things done.
It appears very few who aspire to lead in Nigeria understand the techniques of leadership. It could be why we have not had an effective one so far. A leader who could ask Nigerians to jump and they would ask how high, not out of fear but out of purpose, is possible. A leader with large following could make Nigerians work from 6.00am to 9.00pm, 24/7 to move the country forward. This was done in South Korea in the eighties. To lead, you need followers and to maintain large following that would actualise your dreams, you need to be seen as impartial. The work of those who oppose any leader is to decimate the leader’s following, i.e. reduce the number of his followers. To achieve this, they – ninety nine percent of the time - always inject a stain of unfairness onto the garb of the leader. If it is allowed to stick, it works like magic. Immediately, the number of the leader’s otherwise large following starts to drop.
In Britain, Tony Blair’s opponents were able to inject a sense of injustice into the Iraq issue; with that he lost his large following and has started to pack his belongings out of
10 Downing Street (the official Prime Minister’s Residence) two years before time. George Bush of the U.S.A. is also in a similar situation. The Opposition in that country was able to paint Bush as an unfair leader. With that, he is a lame duck President with one of the lowest ratings in their history. Back home, everybody including the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s enemies knew, given the chance to lead the country, he could have taken Nigeria to the moon. But, the tag of tribalism that his enemies painted on him, which he himself was unable to wash away mainly due to arrogance, was enough to curtail his following. It did not matter whether Awo was truly guilty or not, the perception was what motivated people from the other tribes to draw away from him. They thought they would stand little chance were he to be their leader. Similarly, Buhari’s arrogant refusal to wash off the stain of the 52 suitcases and the inability to defend why Idiagbon’s child accompanied Idiagbon for the hajj while other children were barred, created a sense of injustice. Consequently, the number of sympathisers for that regime dropped.
Currently, it is the case of Obasanjo. Obansanjo, before incarceration, was the defender of the people’s interest. So naturally when he came out, he had a large following. Consequently, he made president. He, however, at this point made the worst tactical error a leader could make – he did not dissociate himself completely from his businesses. Sycophants and lawyers argued that it was Obasanjo’s constitutional rights to have, provided those businesses were run by proxy. All well and good, but the Nigerian Constitution fell short of compelling the citizens to follow the President, i.e. Obasanjo as their leader. Following a leader is a moral obligation and not a constitutional duty. Those who argue legality in what borders on ethic do not understand the nature of man. Many ordinary Nigerians saw it as morally incorrect and that was what mattered – not the constitutional rights.
Obasanjo’s temperament did not help either. He is opinionated. Furthermore, Obasanjo occupies a unique situation in our history – he is the first Head of State that has had some business names publicly associated with, while in office. As the lives of most Nigerians reverted to the Stone Age – no light, no water, no decent shelter or transportation, no security of life and a perpetual life in a disorganised society – they continue to hear about the thriving fortunes of their leaders. To millions of ordinary Nigerians, it does not matter whether Obasanjo gives undue advantage to the businesses publicly associated with him or not, it is the perception of unfairness that caused the withdrawal. Citizens hear about Otta Farm, the University, the proposed billion dollar Library, the Transcorp shares, etc. They compare these with their miserable lives and the number of sympathisers to his course began to drop.
First, a leader needs followers to actualise his dreams. The size of his following is also predicated by the perceived degree of his impartiality. If he is judged as fair, he is bound to command large following – pure and simple. People often follow such leaders; even blindfolded. It is only then he could ask his followers to share his dreams. And, if the State is endowed with resources like ours, then the sky could be the limit. He could galvanise the people and use the resources to propel the country to the moon, if that be the case. A leader needs the support of his people, without which nothing works. Our own Obasanjo once complained that he was surrounded by people that did not share his dreams. The world does not work the way some Nigerians want it to work. There is yet to be a thriving State that has survived solely on legal rights without high moral values. You are dealing with ordinary people here, who are not vast in the techniques of the law, but ordinarily live on moral codes.
Though these businesses are Obasanjo’s legal right to have, they are arguably morally incorrect to be linked with as a leader. As a private citizen, yes but not as the people’s leader. He was to be the people’s “Mandela.” His beautiful laudable programs and reforms would have bore fruits. Nigerians would have been working non-stop from 6.00am to 9.00pm just to assist the President to move the country forward if they thought he was fair. To galvanise the citizens, a leader has to be seen as morally correct. It is, however, his public responsibility to be. If people do not share the beautiful dreams of our leaders, these are why.
For the purpose of this argument, let us suppose a leader acquires for self; half of Nigeria’s businesses, like Abacha wanted to do. If he employs spin doctors to mask their true ownership whilst still the President, his following would most probably be large because of the perception of fairness. The spin doctors would have tinkered with the perception of him as a fair person. That alone would draw people to him and perhaps follow him blindfolded. The downside, however, would be his legacy were it to become public knowledge that the businesses were acquired while still in office. I wonder how the world would have viewed Nelson Mandela, who came out of prison with nothing, had he retired to a farm worth billions or a castle on the rock, a university, a billion naira library and millions of shares of a firm he had supervised as the President. It appears that Nigerians still do not know what is expected of a leader and could be why they have not got a purposeful one to follow.
The good people of Nigeria have been short changed just because of the image of the President. Because Obasanjo has allowed our perception of unfairness and injustice to stick to him and without any effort to correct that image, he has lost a large following. Because he has no large following, he could not actualise his beautiful dreams and reforms. Because his reforms have not bore the necessary result, when they should have, the lives of the Nigerian people have been reverted to the Stone Age. See what mere branding of an opinionative leader can bring to all of us? Leadership is serious business as it impacts on the well being of everybody. We cannot continue to pull the institutions of government to our level, just because we cannot rise to the challenges of governance.
Obasanjo himself must have realised that the tottering of his reforms is a result of his tainted image. He has, therefore, gone to shop for a successor with good image. Umaru Yar’adua and Jonathan Goodluck are probably the only two good-images around the President that can command large following to push through Obasanjo’s reforms. However, identical picture of 1979 re-emerges. Do you remember the wanted-to-be-senator that was cajoled to be the President? He was no doubt a good man but his lack of interest in the high office allowed the crooks around him to hijack the Presidency. These two good men, this time, appear to be similarly disinterested in ruling. It could be why Obasanjo has manoeuvred himself to control their political party in order to prevent the hawks hovering around to hijack the Presidency of Yar’ardua, should he be elected. That in itself creates an image of perpetuity that people are afraid of – another image problem.
One more thing! Nobody has heard Umaru Yar’ardua and Jonathan Goodluck talk during campaign rallies. They always look like bystanders like the rest of us. It has always been Obasanjo, or the chairman of their party on the podiums. The duo also was not interested in high office until cajoled. If PDP is serious about any chance in the poll, they should allow the duo to tell Nigerians what they intend to do if they get to the high office. He should come from their mouth and not from Obasanjo. I would rather, if I were them, distance myself from those with tainted image that people have stopped listening to. I will remember Al Gore and Bill Clinton. Similarly, most Republican Senators in the U.S. A. that were due for re-election distanced themselves from George Bush who had a credibility image problem. Most MPs in Britain that did not distance themselves from Blair in 2005 lost their seats in the Parliament. It is not that these leaders are bad people; they like our own Obasanjo just happened to be perceived as unfair. That alone is enough to hurt their leadership qualities. If it is true that Umaru Yar’adua is not physically fit for the rigours of what he is being cajoled to do as rumoured, then the blame will be laid to the feet of the cajolers.
From the foregoing, it is clear that the image of a leader is what the people respond to and not what he actually is. He could be a devil or an angel in reality; it, however, does not matter. What matters is how they see him. Maybe Obasanjo is frustrated because he is really a good man, but majority of the people do not know that. He could have been working overtime to make our lives better, but for lack of large following, which was predicated by his image of unfairness, he did not achieve much. For not achieving much, the eight years he had been in office appear to have been a waste of the people’s lives. For our own Obasanjo to have blatantly disregarded what we think about him and still remain in office is really a disregard to his extolled office, because it affects our lives. It is for this reason for example that Tony Blair of Britain has to leave the office before his time his up. Nigerians should start demanding this. It is the only way to produce effective leadership.
I hope our next set of leaders would not ignore what we think about them. If they are sincere about leading; they should do something about the image of unfairness. They do not really have to be fair, but they must be seen to be. How they are going to achieve this if they are not biased individuals is the real job of leadership. They need it to command large following, which is needed to make things work. People do not follow issues, they follow the leader. No matter the good intentions of a leader, if he does not command large following for his project it would amount to nothing. It is not really the leader that directs the day to day workings of a group, it is the technocrats. But, these technocrats do not have following, it is the leader that has. We can now see the importance of a leader that has a large following that resulted from an acceptable image. It is only then the leader can achieve anything. For our President, it appears too late. He could, however, start today to begin to launder his image of unfairness for the sake of his legacy. He may believe he is the fairest of them all, but many Nigerians do not think so. That is where it hurts.
Samuel Akinyele Caulcrick, is the author of the book, “The Devil Must Be Laughing.”
ISBN 1-4241-2196-5
|
Posted by Robot| 07.03.2007 17:42