March 2, 2009
The caption of my article derives from the influential book of Judith. E. Glaser titled The DNA of Leadership. There is little contention that leadership crisis is key to understanding the African crises. Why is leadership at the heart of the crises and what are the conditio sine qua non and credentials necessary for defining and nurturing a new leadership in Africa ?
Being a leader is like being a driver or a medical doctor. Those professions, like any other, require special skills and credentials. Nobody can plunge into either of them; else it will spell disaster for the country. The same applies to leadership. At independence, there were many problems associated with governance. This was partly because many post independent leaders trained in western institutions, they either tried to caricature the west or took an extreme rejectionist position such as “boycott the boycottables” (ala Mbonu Ojike). Neither position was helpful; neither was set in the context of the African challenges in post independent. At independence, Africa was confronted by multiple challenges in form of manpower and infrastructural development and cultural rebirth.
At the core of how to develop was the question: what did we understand as development? Was there an internal discussion in various African countries about how to address development? Those who took over leadership either were planted by the departing colonial masters or were surrogates or were compromised to accepting colonial ideology. This marked the transition into neo-colonialism. Neocolonialism is a complex social and political system; however, one of its key features is that the local political actors who engineered it were intolerant of internal consensus and debate. As a result, although there was some interest in development-the developmental state-however the approach towards development and the social forces that led the development project used authoritarian mechanisms to embark on development. This approach also meant that democracy was arrested or repressed, it was not deepened it was merely specifically embraced or foisted on the people.
In that context, first, the state became the party and the party became the state; and second, the political leader became the state and the state became the political leader. Everyone else was meant to fall in line and to respect the leader. Development overshadowed democracy and in the process made it a dwarf- if not annihilating it. In the end, Africans had neither democracy nor development! Or in some cases they had partial development, but not democracy.
Second, the structures of governance at independence were cohesive, repressive, alien and dominating. This is because it was the same structures and instruments that were used to repress African subjects during colonial rule that were kept intact and used by post colonial Africa leaders to repress their own people. Those structures still persist until today. There is no genuine democratization project that can take place without a fundamental overhaul of those structures. The structures include the Police, prisons, Judiciary and the military-they all need fundamental overhaul, they all need to imbue the true meaning of democracy and how to lubricate, serve, protect and safeguard democracy.
The third key issue is two-fold. There are no role models and mentors in many Africa countries. Political leaders who have distinguished themselves and taken principled positions all through their political career are in huge deficit. Many political leaders are merely concerned about how to acquire and retain power at all cost-as a result they shift the responsibility for the political disaster that afflicts African nations at elections and in governance. Many of such leaders are corrupt and greedy. Many of them cannot stand up to western powers or interest and say NO to their antics. They simply joined the bandwagon and everything becomes “business-as-usual”. Lack of courageous political leadership has dampened the political will that is needed to take Africa out of the doldrums. No matter how well conceived policies and programmes might be, if there is no political will to execute or implement them, there is going to be problem. Politics towers above all else in everything. Claude Ake has repeatedly told us “it is politics not economics that under develops Africa ”. He is perfectly correct.
Many young, promising, and upcoming politicians in Africa have no mentors. They have nobody to take them through the ropes of politics. Political elders or more experienced politicians are more concerned about how to instrumentalise the youth, how to use them as political thugs during elections; indeed they often used them and dumped them. As a result, many youth have no clue about what politics truly mean or how to make first entry into politics or even what to do while you enter the political arena. With this politically clueless foundation, many of such youth simply start politics on the wrong note. Taking a cue from the elders, many of them feel that politics is simply about election; and that election is a zero-sum game characterized by violence-who has the highest thugs and AK-47. Rancor and bitterness take over and the system gets overheated; rather than serve as periods of joy and change of mandate, elections become the most compromised period in the political histories of many African countries. Such that today, out of 53 countries on the continent, there are less than five African countries that can truly and genuinely claim to have had free and fair elections. This is indeed a sad commentary on Africa and we have nobody except ourselves to blame.
The other core issue in leadership is that of accountability. The attention span of many African leaders is nil. Many African leaders feel and believe that once a mandate has been given, no matter how circumscribed it may be, it cannot be questioned or withdrawn. To them, accountability has to do not merely with due process, and even due process is recognized in a very narrow sense of “let them say”! But accountability has to do with how, on a daily basis leadership is open to followership on programmes, policies and social deliverables. Accountability has to do with how open and accessible a government is to the people. It is about the ability of the people to ask questions, seek answers and to be carried along by leaders.
Financial accountability is just but one of many components of accountability. The people are easily carried along where they have an accountable government. To state the point, governments are supposed to be accountable to the people. They must answer to all the queries of the people and be honest and transparent in their approach to governance, this is the basis upon which the people could renew their mandate or withdraw it. In this context and as a prerequisite to genuine accountability, leaders MUST be willing to respect the wish of the people as expressed through the mandate.
A related issue is the spirit of tolerance. Leaders need to tolerate, respect and listen to what the people say. The resilience and ability of leaders to accommodate the views of the people is quite elastic. That attitude and spirit need to change.
Finally, leaders need tutelage and need to build their political profile incrementally. In Nigeria , politics is not a vocation, it is now meant for gatecrashers-people with no visible means of livelihood or those who lack profession and political tutelage. Hence, without going through the arithmetic of political class, politicians want to be in the Class of Algebra. Anybody who feels he/she has made or stolen enough money simply feels he/she is qualified to be in the Senate or House of Representatives, to be Governor or President. Yet many of such people do not have a proven record of accomplishment of public service. They do not understand that political office comes with great responsibility. Some of the greatest political leaders in American history started by serving their communities at the grassroots and then running from the lowest to the highest political office. Such is the political history of Abraham Lincoln and Richard Nixon. Even Barack Obama started as a community organizer in south-side, Chicago before he ran for the State Senate in Illinois , then the US Senate.
Michael Bloomberg, the current Mayor of New York City, is a multi-Billionaire, indeed; he is the eighth richest man in the United States of America . Yet he ran for a Mayoral post. If it were Nigeria , with his wealth, somebody would have convinced him not to settle for anything less than the Presidency. Indeed, some people wanted to drag him into the American Presidential election, as an Independent candidate but he addressed a press conference stating empathically that he was not interested. Learning through the ropes and in an incremental way is important.
The quality of leadership in Nigeria is better enhanced where aspiring leaders show sensitivity to the tenets of democracy, respect for the rule of law and the will of the people, seek mandate in an open and transparent way and be accountable to the people. They should stand to make quality contribution by serving as mentees and willing to start not with the highest office of the land but the lowest and grow. I do not wish to be misrepresented here. I am not saying that every Nigerian should go and start with a Councillorship position before they can hope to aspire to be Governor or President. No.
What I am saying is that the crave for the highest office and the contempt for lower offices in state and local governments is not good, it partly contributes to the poor quality of leadership we have in the country because many of those leading at the national level have no experience and the qualities required to govern-hence they become intolerant, insensitive and even callous. They feel all that is important in politics are godfathers, moneybags and political thugs. This attitude to politics must change. Finally, true leadership is a perpetual conversation between those who govern and their people. Such conversation is built on mutual respect and honesty of purpose; hence even if errors are made, they are appreciated as genuine errors.
Being a leader is like being a driver or a medical doctor. Those professions, like any other, require special skills and credentials. Nobody can plunge into either of them; else it will spell disaster for the country. The same applies to leadership. At independence, there were many problems associated with governance. This was partly because many post independent leaders trained in western institutions, they either tried to caricature the west or took an extreme rejectionist position such as “boycott the boycottables” (ala Mbonu Ojike). Neither position was helpful; neither was set in the context of the African challenges in post independent. At independence, Africa was confronted by multiple challenges in form of manpower and infrastructural development and cultural rebirth.
At the core of how to develop was the question: what did we understand as development? Was there an internal discussion in various African countries about how to address development? Those who took over leadership either were planted by the departing colonial masters or were surrogates or were compromised to accepting colonial ideology. This marked the transition into neo-colonialism. Neocolonialism is a complex social and political system; however, one of its key features is that the local political actors who engineered it were intolerant of internal consensus and debate. As a result, although there was some interest in development-the developmental state-however the approach towards development and the social forces that led the development project used authoritarian mechanisms to embark on development. This approach also meant that democracy was arrested or repressed, it was not deepened it was merely specifically embraced or foisted on the people.
In that context, first, the state became the party and the party became the state; and second, the political leader became the state and the state became the political leader. Everyone else was meant to fall in line and to respect the leader. Development overshadowed democracy and in the process made it a dwarf- if not annihilating it. In the end, Africans had neither democracy nor development! Or in some cases they had partial development, but not democracy.
Second, the structures of governance at independence were cohesive, repressive, alien and dominating. This is because it was the same structures and instruments that were used to repress African subjects during colonial rule that were kept intact and used by post colonial Africa leaders to repress their own people. Those structures still persist until today. There is no genuine democratization project that can take place without a fundamental overhaul of those structures. The structures include the Police, prisons, Judiciary and the military-they all need fundamental overhaul, they all need to imbue the true meaning of democracy and how to lubricate, serve, protect and safeguard democracy.
The third key issue is two-fold. There are no role models and mentors in many Africa countries. Political leaders who have distinguished themselves and taken principled positions all through their political career are in huge deficit. Many political leaders are merely concerned about how to acquire and retain power at all cost-as a result they shift the responsibility for the political disaster that afflicts African nations at elections and in governance. Many of such leaders are corrupt and greedy. Many of them cannot stand up to western powers or interest and say NO to their antics. They simply joined the bandwagon and everything becomes “business-as-usual”. Lack of courageous political leadership has dampened the political will that is needed to take Africa out of the doldrums. No matter how well conceived policies and programmes might be, if there is no political will to execute or implement them, there is going to be problem. Politics towers above all else in everything. Claude Ake has repeatedly told us “it is politics not economics that under develops Africa ”. He is perfectly correct.
Many young, promising, and upcoming politicians in Africa have no mentors. They have nobody to take them through the ropes of politics. Political elders or more experienced politicians are more concerned about how to instrumentalise the youth, how to use them as political thugs during elections; indeed they often used them and dumped them. As a result, many youth have no clue about what politics truly mean or how to make first entry into politics or even what to do while you enter the political arena. With this politically clueless foundation, many of such youth simply start politics on the wrong note. Taking a cue from the elders, many of them feel that politics is simply about election; and that election is a zero-sum game characterized by violence-who has the highest thugs and AK-47. Rancor and bitterness take over and the system gets overheated; rather than serve as periods of joy and change of mandate, elections become the most compromised period in the political histories of many African countries. Such that today, out of 53 countries on the continent, there are less than five African countries that can truly and genuinely claim to have had free and fair elections. This is indeed a sad commentary on Africa and we have nobody except ourselves to blame.
The other core issue in leadership is that of accountability. The attention span of many African leaders is nil. Many African leaders feel and believe that once a mandate has been given, no matter how circumscribed it may be, it cannot be questioned or withdrawn. To them, accountability has to do not merely with due process, and even due process is recognized in a very narrow sense of “let them say”! But accountability has to do with how, on a daily basis leadership is open to followership on programmes, policies and social deliverables. Accountability has to do with how open and accessible a government is to the people. It is about the ability of the people to ask questions, seek answers and to be carried along by leaders.
Financial accountability is just but one of many components of accountability. The people are easily carried along where they have an accountable government. To state the point, governments are supposed to be accountable to the people. They must answer to all the queries of the people and be honest and transparent in their approach to governance, this is the basis upon which the people could renew their mandate or withdraw it. In this context and as a prerequisite to genuine accountability, leaders MUST be willing to respect the wish of the people as expressed through the mandate.
A related issue is the spirit of tolerance. Leaders need to tolerate, respect and listen to what the people say. The resilience and ability of leaders to accommodate the views of the people is quite elastic. That attitude and spirit need to change.
Finally, leaders need tutelage and need to build their political profile incrementally. In Nigeria , politics is not a vocation, it is now meant for gatecrashers-people with no visible means of livelihood or those who lack profession and political tutelage. Hence, without going through the arithmetic of political class, politicians want to be in the Class of Algebra. Anybody who feels he/she has made or stolen enough money simply feels he/she is qualified to be in the Senate or House of Representatives, to be Governor or President. Yet many of such people do not have a proven record of accomplishment of public service. They do not understand that political office comes with great responsibility. Some of the greatest political leaders in American history started by serving their communities at the grassroots and then running from the lowest to the highest political office. Such is the political history of Abraham Lincoln and Richard Nixon. Even Barack Obama started as a community organizer in south-side, Chicago before he ran for the State Senate in Illinois , then the US Senate.
Michael Bloomberg, the current Mayor of New York City, is a multi-Billionaire, indeed; he is the eighth richest man in the United States of America . Yet he ran for a Mayoral post. If it were Nigeria , with his wealth, somebody would have convinced him not to settle for anything less than the Presidency. Indeed, some people wanted to drag him into the American Presidential election, as an Independent candidate but he addressed a press conference stating empathically that he was not interested. Learning through the ropes and in an incremental way is important.
The quality of leadership in Nigeria is better enhanced where aspiring leaders show sensitivity to the tenets of democracy, respect for the rule of law and the will of the people, seek mandate in an open and transparent way and be accountable to the people. They should stand to make quality contribution by serving as mentees and willing to start not with the highest office of the land but the lowest and grow. I do not wish to be misrepresented here. I am not saying that every Nigerian should go and start with a Councillorship position before they can hope to aspire to be Governor or President. No.
What I am saying is that the crave for the highest office and the contempt for lower offices in state and local governments is not good, it partly contributes to the poor quality of leadership we have in the country because many of those leading at the national level have no experience and the qualities required to govern-hence they become intolerant, insensitive and even callous. They feel all that is important in politics are godfathers, moneybags and political thugs. This attitude to politics must change. Finally, true leadership is a perpetual conversation between those who govern and their people. Such conversation is built on mutual respect and honesty of purpose; hence even if errors are made, they are appreciated as genuine errors.
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