By Paul Onomuakpokpo

What clearly is more tragic than the excesses of the leaders our nation is saddled with is the ease with which the citizens rationalise them. We do not take umbrage at the fact that our leaders who are supposed to deploy our resources to improve our lot have unconscionably appropriated them for themselves and their families. But occasionally, we are rebuked by fellow African countries. We are reminded that we do not need to go outside the black continent to get models of good leadership and citizenry. We do not need to go outside Africa to understand that it is possible for a nation to have stable electricity.

In most cases, these are nations that are not as big as Nigeria. For instance, Ghana has stable electricity, resulting in some industries relocating there from Nigeria. Yet, it is Nigeria that supplies Ghana gas for its electricity. We do not need to go outside Africa to understand that university students can have uninterrupted academic calendars. This is why Nigerians prefer to send their children to Benin Republic for their education.

Perhaps, we have become used to these aberrations. And that is why there should be fresh cases to remind us of our crisis of leadership. It is in this regard that we consider as cheery recent developments in South Africa. Nigeria was at the vanguard of the campaign to break the stranglehold of the apartheid regime that dehumanised black South Africans. Yet, in less than two and half decades after the blacks assumed the leadership of their country, they are now in a position to show Nigerian citizens and their leaders how to behave. This is why while Nigeria continues to provoke the contempt of the rest of the world due to the failure of its leadership, South Africans are telling Nigerians how to hold their leaders to account. South Africans are bristling with rage at President Jacob Zuma’s spending of some of the nation’s funds on the upgrade of his private Nkandla home. A court ruling has indicted Zuma and ordered him to make the refund and he has apologised to the nation.

Of course, Zuma behaved like a typical African politician. Instead of being bothered about how to improve the lot of South Africans, especially the blacks who are still wallowing in poverty after apartheid, his worry was how to upgrade his home. He is like Nigerian political leaders who neglect the citizens and rather deploy their state resources for their selfish ends. But it is a good development that Zuma has apologised. More importantly, it was the citizens who brought the conviction and made him to apologise. The challenge here for Nigerians is that if their leaders spend their time and the state resources on what negates the common good, it is the citizens who allow this as they often demonstrate a lack of capacity to check the excesses of their leaders.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE WHOLE ARTICLE »