The Blunders Of Our Leaders

 by Michael John
"This is my final word on this third term issue. No third term to Obasanjo and no term to Bagangida. Both should leave us and our resources alone; they do not have the copyright on leadership. As a matter of fact they are part of our problems."

A careful appraisal of the Nigerian problem reminds me of the Indian statesman, humanist and philosopher, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’s (1869-1948) statement that there were seven blunders of the modern world. These he said were:

Politics without principles

Knowledge without character

Pleasure without conscience

Wealth without work

Commerce without morality

Science without humanity

Worship without sacrifice

To these his grandson Arum Gandhi added Rights without responsibilities.

These blunders manifest in different ways in different nations. But in Nigeria they manifest everywhere because they are intensified by our unwholesome ethos, endemic corruption, moral decadence, tribalism … the list goes on. The challenge of leadership has always been to chart a new course out of a quagmire - and our nation is in a moral quagmire. We are in an ethical morass beset by these haunting moral blunders. In his book The Trouble with Nigeria, published during the crazy 1983 elections, the celebrated Prof Chinua Achebe states emphatically in the opening chapter of the book “The trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely a failure of leadership.”

Leadership failure manifests in politics without principles and this is the major challenge facing democracy in Nigeria today. Politics without principles is the entirely strange concept of a few highly-placed and financially-endowed individuals in a political party deciding, based on their vested interests, that someone should bear the party’s flag in an election, and labelling him a consensus candidate. And do note that this term crept into our political lexicon when the evil Sani Abacha wanted to perpetuate himself in office and all the political parties he formed were manipulated into accepting him as a consensus candidate.

Principles if applied to the situation would have dictated that the party members decide who should carry the party’s flag in a fairly contested electoral nomination exercise. Democracy was born in the ancient Greek city-states based on the belief expressed in the saying vox populi vox Dei, (the voice of the people is the voice of God). And allowing the people (and giving them the chance) to make an electoral choice is the essence of democracy. Anything less can only be gratuitously described as aristocracy. Politics without principles is and has always been the crux of our problems as a country.

Politics without principles led to the impolitic annulment of the June 12 presidential election won by the late Chief M.K.O. Abiola for no apparent reason than that the person who annulled the election, Ibrahim Babangida, wanted to perpetuate himself in office. It is the reason local government chairmen do not embark on meaningful projects because they know they did not get into office through the popular vote but through carry-go. Their allegiance is therefore not to the people and they make no pretence about this.

The next blunder is knowledge without character. All the trouble- makers in the country are/were educated and knowledgeable. They were savvy about what was right and wrong, but they were not driven by the moral imperatives of right and wrong. They were obsessed with their selfish ambitions – they had the knowledge but they lacked character. The political scientists who usually were the rigging strategists in all the elections had knowledge but lacked character. The bureaucrats and technocrats, who consorted with Sani Abacha in the raping of the nation and the senseless state murder of Nigerians, all had knowledge but they lacked character.

Pleasure without conscience! If Abacha had not died and had ruled till today one wonders what he would have been worth. His pilfering habit and hedonistic lifestyle would have been paid for by the tax payers’ money. Life would have gone on and he would have continued to live a very pleasurable life without caring a bit about the masses. On satellite television we usually watch American presidents or governors, on their way to official assignments, stop at the scene of an automobile accident to coordinate the rescue operations and save the lives of the accident victims. In Nigeria the convoy zooms by and leaves sympathisers and the victims in a cloud of dust and bewilderment. The tin gods do not and can not stop for the mortals, the scum of this world who are so ignorant that they have to be “helped to vote right”.

It would be boring to go through each of the blunders one after the other. I believe that with deep meditation about the matter you could handle the rest of the equation.

However, a compelling part of the picture is the third term drama. Why does Obasanjo want to go for third term? And why for that matter should Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida who has not been able to convince Nigerians that he was not complicit in the murder of Dele Giwa and other crimes, want to come back as president?

And if the prospect of Babangida winning the election is factored into the equation, one may understand why some may go to any length to muster whatever resources and popular will to fight against such an evil spectre. Unfortunately, elections in Nigeria are not usually won based on popular electoral vote - they are usually rigged! This, in effect, means that even though Nigerians might not support Babangida, he might still use the human resources at his disposal to rig himself into office. Choosing between IBB and Obasanjo is like being asked to choose between an ape and a gorilla.

However, the truth of the matter is that Obasanjo was elected in 2003 to a final four-year term which would end in 2007. Amending the constitution to accommodate a tenure elongation might set a dangerous precedent for unnecessary constitutional amendments in future. The fear of discontinuity, as canvassed by Obasanjo and his apologists is untenable. Also, untenable is the strange opinion espoused by Cross River Governor, Donald Duke, in a recent interview. Duke argued that “Margaret Thatcher served as prime minister for twelve years” and added, “I am for no limit to term of office. Really, there shouldn’t have been limit. Let’s have an electoral system that would allow the actual winner of elections to assume office, so that whoever is doing well will stay and whoever is not will be voted out.” If Duke is to be taken seriously, we should have such an electoral system first before we do away with term limits. But how can we have this when Duke, according to what Bassey Ekpo Bassey, a former socialist ideologue and a political opponent said in an interview, polled more votes in the 1999 election than the total number of registered voters in the state.

But let’s leave that and discountenance the third term philosophy. It should be noted that success without a successor is failure. If in eight years, the Obasanjo administration had been unable to have successors to continue with the policies of the administration, neither have they been able to come out with policies so popular that any successor would have to continue with them, then this administration is definitely not a success. And if President Olusegun Obasanjo deludes himself that he has all the answers to Nigeria’s problems then he has taken stupendous egotism to new heights of eccentricities. Of course it is a known fact that Obasanjo is a man who is deeply in love with himself and who believes that there are always two sides to an issue: his side and the wrong side.

He has written three books and all of them have been about himself. The first one My Command was about his military exploits during the Nigerian Civil War. The second one, Not My Will was about his emergence as the military Head of State. The third one, The Animal Called Man, was about his prison experiences while incarcerated by the late Sani Abacha for his alleged participation in a phantom coup. He has not seen anything outside himself worthy of his writing interest. It stands to reason that such a man would have a messianic complex and this is the reason he is pushing the tenure elongation agenda.

In a similar situation the statesman and legend, Nelson Mandela of South Africa, opted to rule for only one term and resisted all the pressure to continue in office. He did this so as not to set a dangerous precedent for his successors. Over two centuries earlier, George Washington, the first American president and a statesman, stepped down from office voluntarily after just two terms in spite of all the pressure to continue in office. No man has ever been condemned for leaving office too early, but many villains have been condemned and villified for hanging unto power at all costs. These are historical issues Obasanjo should consider and imbibe the wisdom in John Maxwell (1993) warning, “the art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.”

This is my final word on this third term issue. No third term to Obasanjo and no term to Bagangida. Both should leave us and our resources alone; they do not have the copyright on leadership. As a matter of fact they are part of our problems.