The evolution of the political process to yield leadership or build organizations in Nigeria has witnessed political vasectomy accentuated by bankrupt polity and ideological scarcity since independence in 1960. Consequently, the plethora of leaders on Nigeria political landscape from the first democratic experiment in 1960 to military regimes and back to democracy as practiced today has been managed by people who are selfish, corrupt, mediocre, tribal and opportunistic small-minded people masquerading as leaders.
From Tafawa Balewa (1960-1966) to Goodluck Ebele Jonathan (2010-2015), the crisis of leadership remains the same and still continues even in the current administration of President Muhammadu Buhari. To the procreative capabilities of the leaders' and to the celluloid world, there exist two phenomena, The Ruler and The Ruled jettisoning the leadership factors. The rulers accumulate wealth at the expense of national development without devotion to the cause of the people (The ruled).
While incubating and nurturing the forgoing, it is imperative to ask these pertinent questions: Does Nigeria political process as it functions today capable of generating leadership on its own steam? Has the Nigeria political theatre the potential today to yield a system devoid of nepotism, ethno-cultural and religious bigotry, corruption, circumvention of national character? It seems not. An appraisal of how the political process has turned so sterile is instructive. Undoubtedly, the political process is incrementally becoming impotent and infertile to yield leadership on its own steam.
The independence movement of 1960 turned out a galaxy of leaders who provided leadership to free Nigeria and have featured in various regimes, yet the nation has hitherto not debated the transition in the mode of generation of political leadership. A testament of this statement is, a common phenomena exhibited throughout this regimes is the production of leaders who have directly or indirectly blighted the lives of Nigerians who now wallow in abject poverty, illiteracy, hunger, unemployment and insecurity among others.
This horrendous situation has been accentuated by Nigerian political leaders (be it military or civilian) who, during campaigns, make fantastic and seductive promises in order to win elections, but as soon as they secure the peoples mandate, the people are shortchanged of the dividends of democracy through criminal mismanagement of country's affairs and resources.
Generation of leadership rests on a complex process involving ideology, organization and activity. While leadership is moulded by political organization, the organization is in turn shaped by leadership, both being driven by ideology. On the one hand deceptive politics renders the political process infertile to generate leadership. Equally, increasing impotence of the political process to yield results is also the result of increasing acceptance of nepotism and the so called ‘Chop-I-Chop’ politics in the face of abundant available resources that could have been equitably distributed across borders. This ‘Chop-I Chop’ syndrome is by no means the first bulls-eye hit that expressed the near-general corruptive predisposition of average Nigerian.
A sociological perspective to this pervasive deception in the Nigerian politics garnished with corruption has been blamed on colonialism. According to this view, the nation's colonial history may have restricted any early influence of an ethical revolution. Throughout the colonial period, most Nigerians were stuck in ignorance and poverty. The trappings of flashy cars, houses and successes of the colonists may have influenced the poor to see the colonists as symbols of success and emulate the colonists in different political ways. This philosophy may have also influenced the monopoly in the political process and the generation of political leadership drawing inference from the monopoly of power exhibited by the colonial masters. This view is what has degenerated into a more recent disregard for public property and lack of public trust which over the years became the monster in public administration systems in Nigeria.
Sadly enough, this philosophy produced most of our contemporary leaders today especially, the State Governors, Ministers and Legislators, who have completely abandoned the path that could lead Nigeria into success, unity and prosperity and have rather chosen to diligently pursue their selfish interest over the path of honour and selfless service to humanity. Yet they either claim to believe in God or the disciples of either Christ or Allah.
Whether we play politics or not with the religious composition of this country, the fact remains, Nigerians are very religious people and for every 10 Nigerians randomly selected eight would jointly profess the religion of Islam and Christianity while the other two would tell your they believe in God but would not identify with either of the two major faith communities.
The salient question here is that since Christianity and Islam agree on the claims that; there is only one God and that God commands we love our neighbor as ourselves, where does the bad leaders emanate from? With the negation of Christian and Islamic values of righteousness and keeping of God's commandments, it is logical to say that a significant number of our leaders are what the French Catholic philosopher, Jacques Maritain, calls 'practical atheist, meaning those who believe that they believe in God, but who in actual fact deny His existence by their deeds and the testimony of their behaviour. It is worth mentioning that this attitude is also affirmed in both the Bible and the Qur'an: (Isa. 58:3-7, Baqarah, 2:177).
This frozen, acrimonious and seductive politics of Nigeria polished with ethno-religious inclinations and the antagonism the people in the political class that knows only how to attack in areas where Nigerians are exposed birthed the cosmetic problem solving approach in a bid to make Nigerians perceive a formidable solution to this endemic problem. In another dereliction of duty, the executive arms and lawmakers across all tiers of power further compound abject failure to deal humanely with the millions of Nigerians trying to process the horror of mercilessly inflicted pain.
The exposition in this piece is likened to ‘cosmetics’ on the premise that, in adjective term, Cambridge dictionary defines the word cosmetic as; Affecting only the appearance of something rather than its substance”, “they are intended to make you believe that something is better when, really, the problem has not been solved. It goes further to describe the word as meaning they are used to describe a small change that is made in order to make something seem better than it was before, and that does not really affect its basic character. From this definition and owing to the foregoing, our administrative tendencies as a nation is marked with commitment to making only short-term cosmetic changes rather than addressing the root causes of our problems validates the cosmetic problem solving approach in our system.
A chronicle of this seductive but impotent paradigm which is yet to be shifted is elucidated with respect to the current administration of President Muhammadu Buhari. Before year 2015, everywhere you turned at that time, Sai Baba was chanted to the tune of integrity and anti-corruption. The current ruling party; All Progressives Congress (APC) evangelized rigorously about the coming of this messiah whose no-nonsense stance will cleanse Nigerias Augean stables for good. Buhari himself, aware of the weight of Nigerians expectations from him sold himself as the antidote to Nigerias plague fine-tuned by poverty and corruption. Below were the promises Buhari and APC made to Nigerians before he was elected in 2015.
1. To reduce fuel pump price to N45 per liter in the first year of our administration
2. We will provide free education at all levels.
3.We will pay #5000.00 each to 25 million jobless Nigerians every month.
4. Expand electricity generation to 40,000 megawatts
5. Increase minimum wage to Nigerian workers.
6. To stabilize global oil prices at $100 per barrel.
7. To give every graduate allowances after their youth services until they find employment.
8. Provide free school feeding including fruit daily for all public primary school pupils.
9. Revive all refineries within one (1) year in office.
10. Crush Boko Haram and end insurgency in the first 3 months in office, and bring back all missing girls in their captivity.
11. No Nigerian will go outside the country for medical treatment.
12. Build one new refinery every year in the first 4 years of the administration.
13. Create 3,000,000 (3 million) jobs every year.
14. Stop importation of refined petroleum products in the first year of administration.
15. Wipe out corruption in the first year of the administration.
16. All refineries will be working at 100% full capacity.
Despite the seductive electioneering promises among others enumerated above and brought to fore by this administration, how much of these of this has been implemented to the letter? Even if we find answer to this question, isnt it morally and religiously disregarding to make promises and not fulfill them? I bet this is rhetorical. What exactly does this administration want the reaction of the people to be when there is an exponential rate of job losses since 2015 till now? Typically, more than 14 million people lost their jobs out of the few One Hundred and One Million that are employed between the fourth quarter of 2015 and third quarter of 2017 alone. Many Nigerians are yet to recover from the untold horror brought on them by the recession.
Many well meaning Nigerians youths who have lost confidence in the systems are trooping out of the country on a daily basis on Labour Flight to search for the so called Greener Pasture as we have refused to wet our own ground as a nation. Jobless Nigerians are still expecting their #5000.00 per month and graduates still crave for the promised allowances. It is at this juncture inconsequential to touch other areas as it is apparent that, not only are officials of this administration adept at just talk, they, in fact seduced Nigerians to a striptease.
While this piece recognizes the fact that this is not spectacular to only this administration, Successive administration established a network of stakeholders that makes it easy to manipulate public opinion and minimize negative reactions; prominent citizens keep quiet or grumble privately because they derive underserved reward from the regime they stand to gain if corruption persists. Evidently, instead of a subset of these stakeholders particularly the executive and the legislative arm to be responsive to the plight of people, they further compound the problem by proposing anti-masses bills.
Typically, a bill was recently proposed in the national assembly to ban the usage and importation of generators on the premise that it constitute hazard to the health and environment of people. This approach is rather too cosmetic as it addresses the problem just on the surface. A reasonable bill in this regard would have been to improve on electricity generation which would technically erode the use of generating sets. The impotence knows no bound.
It is apt to say that, the corrupt life style of a nation first develops from individuals indulgence to decay of national character. Ours in our peculiarity sprang from selfish desires, ethnic rivalry, a wrong desire to outshine others, as well as deadly quests for unholy wealth acquisition and personal aggrandizement, as encouraged by our culture and founding fathers and predecessors of this impotence whom we now exonerate on ethically biased basis.
The question is, how can we ever live a life of self control and righteousness in a culture where indulgence is deeply rooted, encouraged and proffered as the rule of the game? How can leaders who indulge in all these high level political deceptions, ever be able to chart a morally up-right nation the governed and the children who are leaders of tomorrow? How do we instill values that could be derived from self-control when all around us is seductive but impotent political administrations? Though Nigerians do not seem to place premium on image and integrity but henceforth now, let the government and our leaders change the narrative and demonstrate their integrity by keeping their promises to the people and acting the way they should, then, it will trickle down to the ordinary people.
Fellow Nigerians, if we are ever going to be able to minister to others and our children both born and unborn, values that will endure our lifestyle must first reflect our relationship with God and be perfect examples of what we would want others after us to emulate. Both Christians and Muslims must also do this because none of these religions supports deception and corruption in any form. There is also a growing need from all Nigerians to attack and crush the cancer of corruption before it strangulates both the guilty and the guiltless. If we fail to fight this colossal national destroyer and dream killer of Seductive but Impotent Politics that pervade our political systems, posterity will never forgive us. God bless the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
BABATUNDE F. EMMANUEL IS THE VICE CHAIRMAN OF CONGRESS OF NIGERIA YOUTH (CONYO) IN NORTH CENTRAL
You can email Emmanuel at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter @EmmyCool_Babs
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