into Goodluck Jonathan II in less than a year. I
give you my words. Our institutional collapse and
indiscipline is that infectious.
Too many beautiful ideas, too many dreams, too much
passion, but the road to implementations remains rough
and uncertain. This is the atmosphere of Nigeria's
revolutionary minds. Here is a country where patriots who
had advocated the praxis of good leadership, and had even
adopted models whose achievements they aspired or
expected incumbent governments to match, ended up as a
bunch of our problems when given an opportunity to
serve. And we ask ourselves: where did we go wrong?
Last Friday I listened in on interesting rhetoric of Nigerian
youth at a discussion circle, and their theatrics actually got
me worried and thinking even though it was not the first of
such experiences of anger over a dysfunctional
government. The consensus of the majority was that mere
individual declarations to stand out, easy imitations of
America's Barack Obama's "Yes, We Can" gimmicks, are
enough motivations for rebuilding Nigeria. Sorry, I find
that proposal for rescuing Nigeria from this gang of
thieving and under-performing leaders who were once like
us, ambitious and honest, rather impracticable.
It is as misleading and fraudulent as many motivational
books marketed as "New York Times Best Seller".
Obviously we have followed the happenings in the West
for too long, we have lost tracks of our realities. Ours is a
diseased system deserving a streak of surgeries, and in
which an individual contribution is just like a placebo.
Calling for surgical operations on Nigeria is asking for
adoption of strict measures to deal with whoever tampers
with national resources. Unless our legal system can resist
bribes and issue a writ of execution for the hanging of,
say, corrupt public servants, the temptations to
misappropriate public funds may possess us all.
There is another delusion that suggests that Nigeria needs
qualified leaders, and by these they mean intellectually
sound politicians, to oversee the affairs of government.
Proponents of this idea are the intellectual elite still
confused by years of theorising the tragedies of Third
World countries; their intellectual delusion is as a result of
attempts to copy the ways of their hosts, American and
European governments whose policies are not models for a
people in need of Bread and Fanta to stay alive.
To be very frank, Africa doesn't need more education –
outside the technical, that is! – nor leadership training to
build viable nations. There is a PhD-holder almost per-
family across Nigeria, especially. We have everything:
Harvard-trained, renegade, elitist, visionary and whatnot
intellectuals, trained overseas, all strutting to become
change agents. But what's missing is a system wherein to
exist, a law to check them, to stop them from becoming
corporate rogues, an institution to inspire and breed them.
I always assure myself that everybody is indisciplined in
the absence of rigid laws, everybody is potentially corrupt
where penalties for misappropriations of public funds or
compliances therein are not stiff or impunity is a sure gain.
We have the political think-tanks, everything necessary to
build a nation of functional institutions but our system is
built on the foundation of steal-and-let-steal philosophy.
This philosophy has accomplices not because Nigerians
are genetically criminal, but because…"Why suffer when
nobody appreciates?"
Calling for a political reform based on a delusion that
African leaders have insufficient leadership training is an
error. Bring Barack Obama to Nigeria, and he will turn
into Goodluck Jonathan II in less than a year. I give you
my words. Our institutional collapse and indiscipline is
that infectious. We underestimated the statistics of our
influential human capitals. Perhaps we may return to the
records of Petroleum Technology Development Trust Fund
(PTDF) to get an estimate of our citizens on its oversea
scholarship scheme, and ask the Nigerian "big men" and
politicians to send us the CV of their many children to
appreciate the vastness of our human resources.
See, I patronise this hangout where some children of the
"financial elite" ally to pass the time, and one idle day I
awakened to a certain realisation – that I was actually
seated among people who ought to have been celebrated
on the basis of their academic credentials or should have
been engaged in a functional institution here, for among
them were graduates of Yale, MIT, Princeton, name it,
and the least educated actually has an M.A. I can count
many Nigerians from our infamous politicians to those
unknown patriots of that hangout who had had training in
Leadership at Harvard, and like-minded Ivy League and
Red Brick institutions.
But how has theirs affected the fortune and political
realities of this structurally diseased nation? My governor,
for instance, was trained at Pittsburg. He holds a doctorate
in Public Policy and Strategy Studies! But, well, you may
need to compare him to his contemporaries to understand
the analogy I don't want to draw in this brief piece. Why
couldn't these leaders abide by the lessons of their
trainings? Because they exist in a system where they get
away with their frauds, where their private interests are
more important than public trust. May God save us from
us!
Via: Premium Times
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