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.