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| *Prof Ben Nwabueze |
Good leadership
The qualities and credentials needed for good leadership can readily be
identified. The primal credential is good education, such as would enable the
leadership to combine “ideas and power, intellectualism and politics.”
Leadership is a critical part of Nigeria
In these days of widespread “expo”,
certificate faking and general degeneration in the standards of education in
our schools and colleges, primary six school leaving certificate prescribed by
the Constitution for those seeking elective political office is really next
door to illiteracy. A semi literate President or Governor is what the
prescription tantamount to.
What little literacy is acquired from the
educational system at the primary school level is soon lost owing to the lack
of a reading culture that pervades our society, caused to a considerable extent
by the enthronement of wealth as the determinant of social standing and the
consequent inordinate pursuit of it and of other mundane, non-intellectual
pursuits. No one with this kind of thoroughly inadequate educational background
can be expected to read, with understanding, the Constitution of Nigeria,
laden, and it is, with difficult and perplexing concepts, or the books on
constitutional law, political science and sociology where the knowledge of
these concepts can be found. And knowing that he cannot understand them, he
would have no inclination or disposition to buy the books or to read them.
The desire to accommodate educationally
backward areas, which no doubt is the reason underlying the provisions, is no
justification for prescribing such low level of educational qualification for
election to the office of President, State Governor or member of the National
Assembly. There is no State in the country today that does not have a fair
number of university graduates.
The effect of these provisions is, lamentably, to entrench in the Constitution
the intellectual poverty and educational inadequacy which has characterised
leadership at the level of the presidency since independence in 1960 right up
to the election of President Umaru Yar’Adua in 2007 (the first university
graduate to hold the office of Executive President discounting the interim
arrangement under which Chief Ernest Shonekan, a university graduate, ruled for
four or so months) and the accession to the presidential office by
Vice-President Dr Goodluck Jonathan on 5 May, 2010 after the death of Umaru
Yar’Adua.
The low educational qualification prescribed
for elective political leaders has resulted, sadly, in the relegation of
intellectualism in government and politics in the country. Intellectualism is
concerned essentially with the notion of “ideas”, i.e. the mental ability to comprehend
ideas, and to reason or think them out. An intellectual is a person engaged in
creative and rational thinking about the world, about humanity, about human
relationships, and about the governance of human society; he is a person
dedicated to the study and understanding of ideas that govern and shape our
world, society, the organism known as the “state”, and generally to
intellectual pursuits and interests. The power of ideas in shaping human life
and in liberating liberalising and stimulating the mind is well highlighted in
a book by Peter Watson titled Ideas: A History From Fire to Freud, first
published in 2005, a
tome of a book, 1117 pages, which everyone aspiring to govern and lead Nigeria
should read.
Anyone aspiring to govern and lead Nigeria as President
should also be a person with plenty of energy, a high amount of energy
characteristic of the youth, the energy of youth, the kind of energy that will
enable him or her to engage in the arduous task of mobilising the people for
national transformation, mobilisation of the people for such a purpose being
one of the most arduous tasks of political leadership. The wear and tear and
stresses of life, coupled with health and other challenges, rob every one of
us, after the age of 70 years, of the energy required for the job of governing Nigeria Nigeria
In addition to the sort of education that
would enable the leadership to combine “ideas and power, intellectualism and
politics”, the type of leadership needed for our country has to be one, not
only committed to democracy and constitutionalism, but also one at once
dedicated, single-minded, selfless, disciplined, patriotic and highly motivated
in the national interest with a deep concern for the public good/welfare, a
leadership able to mobilise the various strata of society, and prepared to
commit suicide by sacrificing its vested economic interest in the preservation
of the status quo. It must be a leadership whose sincerity of purpose is so
transparent as to induce people to adopt the desired new patterns of behaviour
in place of the old ones and whose dedication to the cause is sufficiently
total and selfless to inspire confidence, a leadership that is seen to be
practising what it preaches. People cannot be persuaded by the leadership to be
tolerant, honest, public-spirited, patriotic, fair-minded, law-abiding,
devoted, disciplined, etc, if the leaders themselves do not practise those
virtues. Far from inspiring popular change in the desired directions, a
leadership that does not practise what is preaches, and is not seen to be doing
so, creates disillusion and disenchantment among the people. It must also be a
leadership that is able to impart to the society at large enlightened ethos and
values and a national ethic of truth and morality, and has itself demonstrably
internalised the ethic of humility and tolerance of differing opinions, an
ethic that regards public office as a public trust and its holder as a servant
of the people, not their master and oppressor, and bound to the people by the
obligation of probity and accountability.
Effective management
of the economy
It cannot be doubted that effective management of the economy is necessary to bring about economic growth, economic development and national transformation. No doubt too, Nigeria has, over the years since independence in 1960, achieved a good measure of economic development in terms of infrastructural development, etc, yet the development, such as it is, is not of a type and quality to transform the country into a developed state in the sense of the advanced countries of the world.
It cannot be doubted that effective management of the economy is necessary to bring about economic growth, economic development and national transformation. No doubt too, Nigeria has, over the years since independence in 1960, achieved a good measure of economic development in terms of infrastructural development, etc, yet the development, such as it is, is not of a type and quality to transform the country into a developed state in the sense of the advanced countries of the world.
With a per capita income of $2,177, compared
with $3,570 for Indonesia, $5,273 for South Africa, $8,649 for Brazil, and
$9,502 for Malaysia; with electricity generation of 4,000 megawatts in a
population of 180 million people compared with 40,000 megawatts in South Africa
(population 50 million), 120,000 megawatts in Brazil (population 210 million);
with 29 million Nigerians out of job as at 2016 (with unemployment rate of
14%); with the country’s national debt now at a point where more than 60% of
government revenue is spent on debt servicing; and where our poverty rate now
stands at 63%, Nigeria is not, in any meaningful sense, a developed, but rather
an underdeveloped, state. Sani Abacha’s Development Vision 2010, President
Yar’Adua’s Development Vision 2020 and President Goodluck Jonathan’s
Transformation Agenda amount to not much than an unrealised dream. Any claim,
based on such dream, that Nigeria
Professor Kingsley Moghalu, in his Goddy
Jidenma Foundation Lecture 2017, titled The
Challenge of Economic Growth in Nigeria, minces no words about our economic
situation. After an insightful examination and review, he admonishes us to
acknowledge “the reality that Nigeria
Professor Moghalu spoke as an independent,
informed expert analyst, and his views should not be lightly dismissed.
We may, for the moment, discountenance, as coloured by partisan political
interests and motives, the verdict on President Buhari’s management of the
economy by former President Obasanjo, who scored it low and below expectations,
as well as the response by Lai Mohammed, Minister of Information, who gave it a
good pass mark, but we cannot discountenance the verdict of the Catholic
Bishops Conference of Nigeria, an independent, non-partisan body. In the
latter’s Address presented to the President on 8 February, 2018, as carried in
the Vanguard of the following day, they said: “We…..come to you…..to share with
you the feelings of the multitude of Nigerians at this moment. We work with the
people at the grassroots and, therefore, have first hand information about what
they are going through. There is no doubt that when you came into office, you
had an enormous amount of the goodwill of Nigerians, since many saw you as a
person of integrity who would be able to bring sanity into a system that was
nearly crippled by endemic corruption.
“Nearly three years later, however, one has
the feeling that this good will is being fast depleted by some glaring failures
of government which we have the moral responsibility to bring to your notice, else
we would be failing in our duty as spiritual fathers and leaders. Your
Excellency, there is too much suffering in the country: Poverty, hunger,
insecurity, violence, fear….the list is endless. Our beloved country appears to
be under siege. Many negative forces seem to be keeping a stranglehold on the
population, especially the weaker and defenceless ones.
“There is a feeling of hopelessness across the
country. Our youths are restive and many of them have been driven by
unemployment to hard drugs, cultism and other forms of violent crime, while
many have become victims of human trafficking. The Nation is nervous.
Just as we seem to be gradually emerging from
the dark tunnel of an economic recession that caused untold hardship to
families and individuals, violent attacks by unscrupulous persons, among whom
are terrorists masquerading as herdsmen, have led to a near civil war situation
in many part of the country.”
Our dear country is bleeding to death. It
needs a leader to save it.
*Professor Nwabueze, Constitutional lawyer
and Chairman of The Patriots, sent this piece from Lagos
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