A new paradigm of leaders both in Government, the News Media, the Judiciary and even in Business circles have taken over in Nigeria, polluting the waters and making some of us look back on our founding fathers as our greatest generation without any question in my mind. A nation is on the right path when her today is better than her yesterday and her tomorrow is better than today. Most Nigerians would have a problem describing Nigeria of today as fitting that bill. Ours is always one step forward and two steps backwards. Nigerian present generation of leaders believe more in “I before others and self before country.” We cannot say that of our founding fathers.
A new paradigm of leaders both in Government, the News Media, the Judiciary and even in Business circles have taken over in Nigeria, polluting the waters and making some of us look back on our founding fathers as our greatest generation without any question in my mind. A nation is on the right path when her today is better than her yesterday and her tomorrow is better than today. Most Nigerians would have a problem describing Nigeria of today as fitting that bill. Ours is always one step forward and two steps backwards. Nigerian present generation of leaders believe more in “I before others and self before country.” We cannot say that of our founding fathers.
Neither of them became multi- billionaires just because they have been lucky to rule Nigeria at one point in their lives. Not one of them built a Taj Mahal from money stolen from Government. Awolowo for all his genius as an Ijebu man and an economist and a lawyer, left behind one modest building at Ibadan next door to Ibadan Boys High School, one at Apapa, Lagos and one at his home base at Ikenne. You can say the same thing of great Nnamdi Azikiwe who left behind one simple 2 story building around Yaba, Lagos and one at his home base at Nsukka and one or two other properties at Enugu. If both Zik and Awo had any mansions in America, France, the UK, Dubai or South Africa like Babangida, Obasanjo, Ibori, Alimiyeisegha and Goodluck Jonathan to mention a few, such houses will all have been known to Nigerians before or after their death.
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Those houses, if they exist, cannot be kept as a secret for too long
Neither Kabiyesi Ooni Adesoji Aderemi as first indigenous Governor of the Western Region or Sir Francis Akanu Ibiam as Governor of Eastern Region or Sir Kashim Ibrahim, the Governor of Northern Nigeria has a building to their name overseas or a coded Bank Account out there in Switzerland. The most powerful of them all, Sardauna Bello of blessed memory had not a penny in his Bank Account when he was assassinated and he did not have a personal house to his name anywhere in the North or abroad. Same thing with Tafawa Balewa. You never hear of Sardauna’s wife or children up till now. He devoted all his life to serving his own people to the best of his ability. Their wives and first ladies are never heard or seen like the first ladies of their successors who are often more vocal and more powerful and tyrannical than their husbands. Mariam Babangida, Stella Obansanjo and yes, Dame Patience Jonathan, to mention a few, always argued that the “baby elephant does not “trumpet” like its mom, only because there is not enough trumpets to go around.” Dame Patience flaunted her powers as first lady a lot more than her husband ever does as President.
Any where you look in Nigeria, even in the public or private sector, you find this observation to be true and self evident. When a father swears by the name and the ideals of his son in Heaven, you have to know that something is fundamentally wrong in the life of that father. By the same token, when the future generation of a nation is worse off that its founding fathers, that nation has to be seen as a nation in retrogression, retreat or some distress.
I am closer to 70 today as a retired senior civil servant in the Public Service of Nigeria. Any time I look back in time on the kind of Civil Service Nigeria used to have in the days of the 4 musketeers of Allison Ayida, Philip Asiodu, Eme Ebong and Ahmed Joda and others like Ejueyichie, Abdul Azeez Attah, Damcida,Grey Eronmosele Longe, Francesca Yetunde Emanuel, Alhaji Abubakar Alhaji, Ogbuefi Gilbert Chikelu, Pius Okigbo in the east, Simeon Adebo and Odumosu and August Adebayo and Aribisala and Iwajomo in the old Western Region, I see more retrogression than progress in the Nigerian Civil Service. That observation gives me some pause and a deeper insight into what is wrong with Nigeria. When I compare that observation “mutatis mutandi” with the situation in developed countries like America and the UK, I see that the present generations of leaders in those country would just appear to have continued the struggle from where their founding fathers left off, and in many instances, they all seem to have improved or at least maintained the standards and the legacies of their founding fathers by and large. The exact opposite is the case in Nigeria every where you look now.
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The hoes and the cutlasses our blacksmiths used to produce at that time are far superior to what our blacksmiths make today. When Akure got electricity for the first time in 1957 as I recall, power outages in Akure were unheard of until we started hearing about the national grid and the acronym N.E.P.A which stood for (National Electric Power Authority) which has now changed to (No Electric Power at All). Today many parts of the country remain in total darkness for weeks and months, as people blame lack of transformers as the culprit. My plane had to land in total darkness at Murtala Mohammed Airport the best and the oldest airport in Nigeria, on one occasion, due to power failure. It is retrogression galore everywhere you look.
Even among our royal fathers, you can clearly see every thing is going down the drain with the caliber of people we now crown as traditional rulers at every nook and craney of Nigeria. You now hear of traditional rulers being taken to Court and found guilty of domestic violence in the market place, Rape and Hooliganism and Money Laundering, and even murder. Such reports were few and far between when I was growing up in Akure my home town when I never saw my grand father Kabiyesi Deji Afunbiowo ever eat or drink in the public or ever go to ease himself. The man was just larger than life in my esteem as his grand child.
I recall the mystique associated with the great Ooni of Ife, Arole Oodua or the great Alaafin of Oyo in those days as two of the most powerful traditional rulers in Yoruba land talk less of the Almighty Sultan of Sokoto, the great Emir of Kano, or the great El Kanemi, the Shehu of Bornu or the powerful Oba of Benin the great Oba Akenzua, to mention a few. It was almost a taboo when Kabiyesi Oba Adeniran, the late Alaaye of Efon was accused of child kidnap and murder and was tried in court, and eventually found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging. It was the talk of the town in my own neck of the woods in Akure and the whole of Ekiti.
I recall the case of the Aremo, the first son of Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Adeyemi being found guilty of raping a little girl at Oyo and having the effrontery or the foolhardiness to go around the town poking fun at the girl and the late Lawyer Bode Thomas who represented the little girl free of charge just to serve notice to the Aremo, he would not escape justice in a country governed by the rule of Law. The Aremo trivialized the charge by singing about it to ridicule the little girl and her rebel lawyer. “Won ni a fadi ya, a ni won ni a fadi ya, ohun gbogbo lo njo ara Oko loju, won ni a fadi ya” meaning “some commoners and idiotic so-called educated fools are accusing me of committing a Rape against a nobody. They are making a mountain out of a mole hill by accusing me of a Rape. We are going to see where their court action is going to lead them.”
The very offensive song was good music to the Aremo’s ears but poison and an insult to Bode Thomas one of the first indigenous lawyers at Oyo Alaafin. Bode Thomas got a conviction against the Aremo. The point I want to underscore in telling the story is to say how our value system has continued to be debased or put under siege by our current generation of traditional rulers across the country. The Aremo was in deed found guilty by the colonial magistrate, but he was given a suspended sentence or a punishment totally out of sync with his offense. To put an Aremo in jail at Oyo was tantamount to putting the Alaafin in jail. Not even a white magistrate could afford to bell the cat of Iku, Baba Yeye in those days. What did magistrate do? Instead of sending the Aremo to jail, he ordered his wrist watch confiscated for 6 months. I am not making up the story. It is a true story that I stand by if any one wants to dispute it.
The then Alaafin, Kabiyesi Lamidi Adeyemi felt so embarrassed and humiliated that he never forgave Bode Thomas who was also the first Deputy leader of the Action Group before Samuel Ladoke Akintola. The resulting feud between Bode Thomas and Alaafin Adeyemi Senior was believed in many quarters to have hastened the untimely death of Bode Thomas and the reason for the Alaafin’s exile by the Action Group and the man’s eventual death at Abeokuta. I narrated this story to show how much the Alaafin of Oyo title was so highly regarded back then in Yoruba Land. Even though the present Alaafin to his credit, as the first educated Alaafin, is trying to reestablish the prestige and influence of his awesome title, we now have a situation in Oyo State where the Olubadan, Oba Odugade and the Soun of Ogbomosho, Oba Oyewunmi Ajagungbade are now openly challenging the great Alaafin while asking Oyo State Government to let them rotate the chairmanship of the Oyo State Council of Obas with the Alaafin. Such a move would have been considered a Heresy in Yoruba tradition back then.
That was something no Olubadan or Shoun of Ogbomosho in history has ever tried before. They might eventually succeed because the protocol was not written in stone in a society where very little to nothing is documented and preserved for posterity. The development clearly shows how many things are going down the drain from the way it used to be in our country. Can you imagine the Sultan of Sokoto Alhaji Dasuki being banished from his throne and exiled by a commoner of a military Governor acting on the orders of the Federal Government? Can you imagine the powerful Emir of Kano, Alhaji Sanusi being banished for granting permission for Obafemi Awolowo to go campaign somewhere in Kano without first obtaining clearance and authorization from the then N.P.C Government in Kaduna? Lamido Sanusi the no-nonsense Governor of the Nigerian Central Bank is the son of that Emir. Another Alhaji Sanusi who was the Ambassador of Nigeria to Morocco for the 3 years I served as the delegate of Nigeria in the Board of Trustees of CAFRAD (African Training and Research Center in Administration for Development) based in Tangiers, Morocco was also a son of the same Emir.
The Ambassador did something I would never forget for the rest of my life. I did not expect him to support my motion to have the chairmanship of CAFRAD rotated among member states just like it was done in the African Union at the time and till now. As a devout Muslim, I thought he was going to side with the Government of Morocco as another Muslim country. You know the guy broke ranks with Morocco, and he came out supporting my motion telling Morocco he could not, in good conscience, support King Hassan’s Government on that motion. Of course Nigeria won the motion by a landslide and Nigeria became the first country besides Morocco to ever produce another Chairman of CAFRAD. Chief Oluyemi Falae, a Federal Permanent Secretary at the time was named the first Chairman who was not a Moroccan and his regime appointed Professor Thomas Kanza of Zaire as the first Director General of CAFRAD replacing Dr. Kariuki of Kenya.
The Sanusis of Kano are as tough as a nail. I knew most of them. They do not suffer fools gladly and they would fight for what they believed in with the persistence of a demon. Any wonder, the current Governor of Central Bank is doing today what none of his predecessors on that apex Bank has ever done calling out the NNPC on some of their fraudulent deals and corrupt practices regardless of President Jonathan's views on the scandal. He is the son of his father, I might add.
A lot of water has passed under the bridge for Nigeria. The old order is changing quite often for the worse, if you ask me or other historians who pay attention to these kind of developments in Nigeria.
If you pay attention to all these developments like I do, you will not but come to the same conclusion that our present generation of leaders is a far cry from the generation of our founding fathers. The opposite ought to be the case, but sad to say it is not, and that is why many pundits are already predicting a bleak future for Nigeria despite her abundant blessings as a leading country in Africa in man power and natural and mineral resources, and good weather all the year around.
Nigeria is really a blessed country with very fertile soil for agriculture even without the use of fertilizer in many parts of the country. Her water resources like the River Niger and River Benue and Lake Chad which is shared with Chad Republic and many of her rivers that flow to the Atlantic Ocean make it possible for Nigeria to dam many of those rivers like Asejire near Ibadan, Owena Dam near Akure, Ero Dam in Ekiti and so many other dams in the North and the East and the South/South all of which could easily have been tapped for more equitable distribution of water for agricultural expansion in a country which now relies on importation of food to feed her fast growing population. If our current leaders are as good as our founding fathers, the sky should have been the limit for Nigeria and nobody should have been talking of breaking away or holding an endless national conference to stop Nigeria from falling apart. Many people are suggesting that because most of us belong to the wasted generation as correctly observed not long ago by Wole Soyinka because our current generation of leaders are up to no good.
Around the area called Zaki Ibiam in the Middle Belt of Northern Nigeria which is now known as the food basket of Nigeria, you don’t have to go thru the pains of cultivating ridges like the Yoruba farmers do to grow yam or cassava in abundance. I have all of this information because I was the pioneer Director of Rural Development in Ondo State under late Governor Okhai Mike Akhigbe. I toured some of the rural areas of the North and the East in my capacity as Director and what I found were profoundly mind-boggling and jaw-dropping to say the least. In most parts of the Middle Belt around Gboko and Tiv country in Benue Plateau areas, all you need do is tuck a yam or cassava tuber into the soil, and just wait for the harvest time to come.
The harvest in yams, tomatoes and onions should be enough to feed the whole nation in pretty much the same way like Iowa and New Hampshire and Idaho in the United States have become the food basket of America. Some of those places produce oranges and tangerines in abundance just like the orange counties of Florida and California. Nigeria is the proverbial land flowing with milk and honey but our current leaders are just too blind and too self-centered and corrupt to make the best use of those limitless resources.
There is a tree known as Dogo Yaro in the northern parts of Nigeria. Dogo Yaro whose leaves and juices can be used as an antidote for Malaria fever flourish the best around the desert area of the North providing shade and enough vegetation to protect the ozone layer and prevent tornadoes and flooding and landslides and erosion from ravaging much of those arid parts of Nigeria where the abundance of grass provide an all year round food for their cattle and horses, donkeys and camels which are all used as a form of transportation and haulage before motor vehicles and 22 wheelers and railway transportation became the rule and not the exception in Nigeria. In most parts of the North till tomorrow cattle, goats, ram, and sheep have become the bedrock of their economy.
During the Muslim celebrations of the Ramadan and "Idel Malud" and the other festivals, cattle rearers and farmers in the North have since replaced their groundnut pyramids of the past with a very thriving business in Kola nuts and the sale of goats, sheep and rams, cattle and horses which are are far more expensive and lucrative today than any other business our people could engage in. A big cow sells for upwards of 135,000 the last time I checked talk less of a horse which can sell for close to 200,000 Naira and above per one. There are rams selling in Lagos during Ramadan for upwards of 70,000.00 per ram. Because of that, many farmers in the North have abandoned the groundnut farms that used to be the mainstay of their economy back then in the 50s and 60s in Nigeria.
The most popular occupation or profession today in Nigeria is Politics where all of our current generation of politicians seek power only to go there to steal and share Government money without any conscience at all. That is why Nigerians can kill to have one of their own become President who controls the oil blocks. The most thriving industry in Nigeria apart from the Music and Entertainment industries and starting a Church or building a Mosque. Every store front in Nigeria is a church but that has not impacted the minimization of crimes and violence in that country. 7 out of every 10 Nigerians today is a pastor. If you think that should make Nigerians better Christians and less criminally-minded, you are probably living on another planet.
You go down south which is equally rich in products like Cocoa, Palm trees, Rubber and abundant timber which is monopolized by the few timber magnates and saw millers among us who have to obtain Government licenses to fell those lugs but who take undue advantage of the ignorance of our people to feed fat on that commonwealth with little or no effort made by Government be it local, state or federal levels to have a policy of afforestation that the Awolowo Government in the defunct Western region was famous for. Nigerian trees, lumbers and vegetation are being destroyed daily with nothing to replace them. Tornadoes and tsunamis are now increasingly becoming the threat of the future which may well destroy much of the coastal towns like Lagos, Port Harcourt, Warri and many of the towns in the creeks and swamps of the Niger Delta, Ilaje Ese-Odo in Ondo State and Ijebu Waterside up to Lagos Epe, Badagry, Okun Ibeshe, Lekki and other places where new cities are being built as we speak.
The pristine forests and vegetation at Igbo Ofosu Forest Reserve of Akure and other places in Nigeria are being destroyed to a point that Nigeria would in the near future have to depend on foreign imports of timber to remain competitive with the rest of the world.
Nigeria is a potentially great country, if we count our blessings. Those valuable assets are being wasted and frittered away or criminally neglected by our present generation of political leaders unlike our founding fathers who rely mainly on those agrarian blessings to develop the economy of the country prior to our independence on October 1, 1960 and before Nigerians came to know our country was actually sitting on a huge reservoir of crude oil which now generates close to 98% of our externally generated revenues. If you remove those revenues, forget it, the Nigerian economy would collapse like a park of cards and there would be no country left to preserve. A one product country like Nigeria which only consumes and does not produce anything of her own, cannot be called a developed country with the level of corruption associated with our current generation of leaders.
You have to give kudos to our founding fathers and the leaders of the tripod on which the country was delicately balanced. The three most conspicuous of them were Obafemi Awolowo as leader and Premier of the Southwest and the Yorubas, Ogbuefi Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe as leader and Premier of the Eastern Region including much of the zone now classified as the South South incorporating the former Cross River and River States of Nigeria and the Delta region. The third and not the least was the great Sardauna Bello as leader and Premier of the massive Northern Region embracing the zone now known as the Middle Belt. The three of them talk less of the others were amazing leaders compared to the generation that took over from them.
The amalgamation of the North and the Southern Protectorates in 1914 had led to the emergence of Nigeria as one nation. Even though the 3 leaders plus Dennis Osadebe of the Mid West had their differences, they still managed to keep the nation united in their fight for independence. They managed to keep the country going before the first military coup in Nigeria on January 15, 1966. It must be noted that before these 3 or 4 leaders emerged, there was great Herbert Macauley who led the first Nationalist Movement of Nigeria which later metamorphosed into the first organized political party N.C.N.C (National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons at the time before the Action Group and the N.P.C (Northern Peoples Congress) began to carve out their separate identities and mission statement.
To show the superiority of our founding fathers compared to their successors, we all must shower encomiums on Herbert Macauley, a Yoruba man who picked Nnamadi Azikiwe, a Nigerian of Igbo extraction as the man to succeed him. Azikiwe fondly referred to as “Aisiki Iwe” by his millions of his Yoruba loyalists and supporters not only succeeded Herbert Marcauley, he was on his way to becoming the first Premier of the Western Region and the Yorubas as leader of the N.C.N.C in 1954 beating the Awolowo-led Action Group by a few seats at the Western House of Assembly before Awolowo mobilized the Yorubas to think again before the Yorubas committed a horrendous mistake that would have gone down as the dark part of our history as a free and proud people.
The Igbos would have been more than happy to always draw our attention to that part of our history if Zik had succeeded for only one day. Azikiwe who speaks Yoruba fluently and have each of his children given Yoruba names was a fearless journalist and editor and publisher of the West African Pilot Newspapers which was a thorn in the flesh of the colonial masters and imperialist with his mighty pen and powerful editorials. Herbert Macauley had not problems at all picking Azikiwe as his successor because he considered him the best qualified at the time. It is not at all clear that if the great Zik had found himself in Herbert Macauley’s shoes, he would have done the same thing picking a Yoruba man as his successor. The Igbos track record with the Yorubas does not lead any credence to such assumption. That was before Tribalism and Nepotism has begun to rear its ugly head to become a Cancer in our politics.
None of our current generation of leaders would dare think like Herbert Macauley. Even though Azikiwe, Obafemi Awolowo and Sardauna Bello became rivals, they still managed to play their politics with some decorum and civility. Awolowo and Azikiwe actually wanted Nigeria to beat Ghana as the first country in West Africa to achieve independence from Britain in 1956. Their joint effort was thwarted for the right reasons by Sardauna Bello who rightly believed that the North was not mentally, intellectually and administratively ready at that point, and he minced no words at all in telling the His Majesty’s Government loud and clear that the North was not ready for independence in 1956.
What Sardauna feared was going to happen were some of the factors that led to the first civil war from 1967 to 1970 which nearly broke up Nigeria. Even though Sardauna was the least educated among the 3, he was able to hold his own ground and he did so without pulling punches delaying Nigerian independence till October 1, 1960 and making sure that a northerner was named the Prime Minister while Azikiwe was named the ceremonial Governor while Awolowo became the leader of the opposition. The Westminster system Nigeria embraced always regard the Opposition as the Government-in-waiting if the ruling Government fumbled.
Of course the ruling Federal Government led by Tafawa Balewa, a Grade Two teacher from Bauchi fumbled so many times, but Sardauna made sure the Government could not be dislodged by the opposition and he did it thru subterfuge and anything that worked for him and his NPC/NCNC coalition Government. He saw Awolowo as a big threat, and he knew he had to break the Yoruba solidarity which sustained Awolowo and his fine legacies as the most productive and the most progressive Premier and political leader of his era in Nigeria. He was the pace setter for both the East and the North in everything including Free Education and free medical health in the old West as far back as 1955. I know a lot of our Igbo brothers and sisters don’t want to hear about Awolowo, but it is the truth. What Awolowo did is what we are talking about. They too should reserve the right to talk about what Zik has done. We would be more than happy to listen because I know Zik was a great leader of his people too.
The Awolowo Government built the first radio and television station in Nigeria. His Government built the Cocoa Hose, the tallest building in Nigeria from proceeds his Government had made from cocoa. He initiated Agric Farm settlement to accelerate food production and his government built the first housing estate in Nigeria starting with the Sonibare Estate in Lagos to secure Lagos for the Yorubas, and to raise funds to support all of the ambitious schemes and projects of the Action Group. He opened the Bodija Estate in Agodi and he built the first Government Secretariat in Nigeria and the first stadium of international standard in Liberty Stadium which made it possible for Nigeria to be able to host the first Middle Weight Boxing championship between Gene Fullmer and Ihetu Dick Tiger who would have wanted the fight to be staged in the Easter Region, his home base which could not boast of a great stadium like the Liberty Stadium. Awolowo took advantage of the Lanlate Satellite station in Ibarapa area of Oyo State, so it was easy to beam the Dick Tiger fight to the world via the Lanlate Satellite station. Awolowo was a "sui generis"who could easily have taken over from Tafawa Balewa as Prime Minister if Nigeria was truly operating a Parliamentary system like great Britain. Awolowo ended up being put in jail to forever silence him. The rest is history.
The defeat of the Balewa Government to sign a Defense Pact with Britain which Awolowo killed by mobilizing Nigerian students and the Labor Union to was one problem that should have led to a vote of no confidence against the Balewa Governmemt and hasten the fall of that Government. Sardauna in collusion with his British advisers was not going to let that happen. Sardauna decided to break Yoruba solidarity by driving a wedge between Awolowo on one side and Samuel Ladoke Akintola and Fani Kayode on the other side after Awolowo became the leader of the Opposition. Nigeria never recovered from the sabotage which paved the way for the first coup in Nigeria and ushered in 38 years of military rule in Nigeria which was always dominated by the Northerners.
Awolowo Government floated the National Bank, the Agbomagbe Bank and the WEMA Bank and the first Insurance Company in Nigeria. Awolowo floated Odua Investment Corporation as the only Corporation with enough money and clout to sponsor or under-write the Dick Tiger and Gene Fulmer fight in Nigeria. Awolowo was the greatest credit manager and “the best President Nigeria never had” as correctly observed by Oxford-trained rebel leader, the one and only Odumegwu Ojukwu. After Awolowo none of his aides has been able to step into his giant shoes in the old western Region of Nigeria. The reason for that is not far to seek. It is simply because of the phenomenon I have highlighted with the title and the opening chapter of this article.
The new generation of American leaders are forever breaking new frontiers for their country just like their founding fathers unlike their Nigerian counterparts. Reaching for the Moon and shooting for Mars and the Sun is within the realm of possibility for the younger generation of American leaders. Marriage used to be the union of one man and one woman for the founding fathers of America. Not so for the current generation of American leaders.
The only constant in America is change. Nigerian leaders could learn something from America and not just the bad things I might add.
I rest my case.
Dr. Wumi Akintide.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of SaharaReporters
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