Part of the beauty of democracy is that it provides for how leaders should be chosen. Yet, leadership succession has remained a difficult subject in Nigeria. It matters little whether the political system is one-party, multiparty, or presidential or parliamentary. Succession everywhere, even in the best of democracies, has been difficult to manage. Monarchy narrows succession to a few families, but it seldom guarantees the best choice; and some dictatorships, like that of North Korea, have functioned like monarchies. Regardless of the political system, however, some countries, like France, have attempted to ensure that the available pool of successors is populated by brilliant and highly-trained politicians and technocrats. It is perhaps time Nigeria stopped leaving the politics of succession to chance. The United States, whose political system Nigeria copied, appears to leave succession to chance, to all-comers. But in reality, and despite the emergence of misfits like Donald Trump, the system, national institutions, and enlightened electorate ensure that on average, the US tends to produce fairly competent presidents, particularly at moments of national and existential challenges.
Nigerians have focused almost exclusively on remaking their constitution when in fact their problem goes beyond their constitution or political system. They must start to acknowledge that the world has always experienced crisis of leadership. Nature, so to speak, produces rare and excellent leaders, and sometimes conspires to create the conditions that would help their emergence. But sometimes, for decades, some nations are unable to produce even one great leader. Since 1952, Nigeria has only managed to produce a few great regional leaders. But from independence till 2023, no great leader has emerged. Both democracy and the political systems fail to guarantee success in electing a great leader. Even the military, which for decades kept shooting their way into office, never managed to produce one imaginative and effective leader. It, therefore, came as a shock when in the midst of controversies that riddled Poll 2023 many top politicians and commentators reposed hope in a coup d’etat.
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The problem of poor and incompetent succession is urgent at both the national and state levels. Ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo attempted in 1979 and 2007 to tailor his successors. He failed on both occasions because his criteria were weak and faulty, and the politics he orchestrated to produce those successors were brazen, offensive and even criminal. In the end, his successor in 1979, Shehu Shagari, did not pass muster. Alhaji Shagari was indecisive and out of his depth. Unwilling and obviously unable to learn any lesson from past mistakes, Chief Obasanjo also foisted Umaru Yar’Adua on the country as his successor in 2007. But not only did he die before it was determined he had the capacity to rule or not, he was also too languid to preside over the country. The same mistakes were repeated in some states at different times, to wit, Enugu, Edo, Ondo, Rivers, Kwara and a host of others. Clearly, faulty paradigms have been deployed to guide leadership succession. Rivers and Ondo, as analysed in this place two weeks ago, are the latest examples of the deployment of poor and faulty leadership succession paradigms. Edo is gung-ho about repeating the same mistake. Ondo’s ailing Governor Rotimi Akeredolu has discovered too late that he was backing the wrong horse. It is not certain, given the state of his health, that he can correct the error.
President Bola Tinubu knows a thing or two about leadership succession, though he was himself not too successful at orchestrating it. He should, therefore, commission a study of the world’s best leadership recruitment models from which he could distil a Nigerian paradigm to institute and guide the training of competent and reflective leaders in all strata and sectors of the society. His Lagos model, still probably the best so far, is nevertheless inadequate for the nation. But if the president is reluctant to create a model, willing states should seize the initiative in the interim by developing a leadership recruitment and succession paradigm capable of inspiring other countries and competent enough to help populate their civil services, agencies, political leadership and international agencies. It can be done. Indeed, it should be done.
