The Leadership Crisis in Nigerian Politics
By Chinua Achebe
David and Marianna Fisher University Professor, Brown University, RI, USA
There is a story about Bernard Shaw arriving at the New York harbour, and being immediately surrounded by journalists as he stepped off the ship. But before even the quickest of them could open his mouth, the celebrated playwright stopped them cold as he fired off: ‘Don’t ask me what you should do to be saved; the last time I was here I told you and you haven’t done it!’
I feel very much the same way
about what is happening in Nigeria. We know
what we should do, yet we refuse to do it. Instead we have been “blowing
grammar” all over the country as if our problem
stems from
insufficient argument. So I have turned down or simply ignored all previous invitations to join the talking.
My little book The Trouble with Nigeria published twenty seven years ago on the eve of Shagari’s second term opens with these words:
The trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely a failure of leadership. There is nothing basically wrong with the Nigeria character. There is nothing wrong with the Nigerian land or climate or water or anything else. The Nigerian problem is the unwillingness or inability of its leaders to rise to the responsibility, to the challenge of personal example which is the hallmark of true leadership…
So the question of leadership was and is, pre-eminent, in my view, among Nigeria’s numerous problems. The little book does go on to identify other perennial issues such as tribalism, corruption, indiscipline, social injustice, preference for mediocrity over excellence, etcetera. But my thesis is that without good leadership, none of the other problems stands a chance of being tackled, let alone solved.
