Two Saturdays ago, the Arewa Media Forum, a forum of some Northern journalists and friends of the Northern media which I chair, held the third of its annual lectures at Arewa House, Kaduna. The topic was “The Crisis of Leadership in Nigeria as a Source of Insecurity in the Country: The Way Forward.”
As guest lecturer, we invited Archbishop Josiah Idowu-Fearon on account of his integrity as a man of God and as a well-regarded scholar of comparative religion. This was in consideration of how religion, along with ethnicity, has since become the first refuge of the failed leadership of this country.
We invited two other scholars, Professor Kyari Mohammed, an expert on the Boko Haram scourge, and Malam Ibraheem Sulaiman, a scholar of Islamic Law, and one politician, Mrs Margaret Ichen, a former, and so far the only female, speaker of the Benue State House of Assembly, to discuss the archbishop’s paper.
To chair the occasion we invited Professor Ango Abdullahi, former vice-chancellor of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, the Magajin Rafin Zazzau and District Head of Yakawada, and lately a very outspoken spokesman of the Northern Elders’ Forum led by the First Republic minister, Alhaji Maitama Sule, Danmasanin Kano.
The Royal Father of the Day was the Emir of Kazaure, Alhaji Najeeb Hussaini Adamu, one of the younger and more outspoken traditional rulers in the North. The Chief Host was the Kaduna State Governor, Alhaji Mukhtar Ramadan Yero.
All seven came, except two of our three discussants, Mrs Ichen who had called earlier to say she was bereaved shortly before the event, and Malam Ibraheem who sent an email to say he had to attend to an unforeseen family matter on the day of the event. The Chief Host too did not come in person but sent his chief spokesman, Alhaji Ahmed Maiyaki, with a powerful speech.
In his paper, Archbishop Idowu-Fearon disagreed with the usual conventional wisdom that the failure of leadership in the country begun with the military overthrow of the First Republic in1966; “From Tafawa Balewa (1960 – 1966) to Olusegun Obasanjo (1999 – 2007),” he said, “the crisis of leadership remains the same.”
Quoting from Arthur Nwankwo’s 1989 book, Before I Die, apparently approvingly, he said in effect, that Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, our first and only prime minister, was reactionary; J.T.U. Aguiyi-Ironsi, the general who took over after the 1966 coup was ignorant and clueless; General Yakubu Gowon who took over after the second military coup in July 1967 was the only leader in the world who had so much money he didn’t know what to do with it; General Murtala Mohammed who succeeded Gowon after July 1975 coup was dynamic but ruled too briefly – all of only seven months – to make a lasting impact; General Olusegun Obasanjo on whose shoulders the country’s leadership fell after his boss was assassinated in February 1976 kept faith with his predecessor’s promise to return the army to the barracks but had “a pathological hatred for intellectuals.”
Alhaji Shehu Shagari, the country’s first executive president, was, like Tafawa Balewa, too enamoured of the status quo; General Muhammadu Buhari, the first military ruler after the overthrow of the Second Republic, was too draconian; General Ibrahim Babangida who overthrew Buhari in a bloodless palace coup, had the intelligence and personal charm to make a difference but lacked the integrity and discipline to keep faith with his own transition programme; General Sani Abacha who Babangida left behind as army chief to strengthen the backbone of the interim administration he installed under Chief Ernest Sonekan, not only exceeded his brief by overthrowing Sonekan. He became arguably the most kleptomaniac leader in the country. Until, that is, the return of General Olusegun Obasanjo to power in 1999, this time in mufti.
Obasanjo, according to this assessment, pretended to fight corruption but ended underselling public property, mostly to himself and his friends; General Abdulsalami Abubakar, who handed over to Obasanjo after implementing the shortest transition programme in the country –all of only eleven months – was “coolheaded and compassionate” but “emptied the foreign reserves of the country in the name of democratic transition”; Alhaji Umaru Yar’Adua, who Obasanjo handed over to, was “incompetent” and weak; but the world, he concluded, was now “watching to see the direction of the current administration of President Goodluck Jonathan”
Singly, the accuracy of this assessment of our leaders since Independence is debatable. Certainly the claim that the jury is still out on the present administration is hardly tenable; on the contrary most observers, I suspect, may have since concluded that it is clueless and corrupt – at least so far. Generally speaking, however, most Nigerians would agree that the archbishop’s assessment has more than a ring of truth to it.
The big question, of course, is how to end this long run of bad and poor leadership in the country. For a man of God, his solution was hardly surprising: a return to our religious values. “My simple contribution,” he said, “is for Nigerians especially those of us from the Northern states (to) go back to our religious teachings and take seriously what our two communities, Muslim and Christian, share in common as far as leadership is concerned.”
Nigerians, he said, are a religious people. Problem is, he added, the same people are “practical atheist,” i.e. those, he said, quoting a French Catholic Philosopher, “who believe that they believe in God, but who in fact deny His existence by their deeds and the testimony of their behaviour.”
It may be difficult to change this attitude, he said, but it is not impossible and, in any case, we have no option, but to try and succeed if we want our country to become great. A country, he said, needs good people to have good government. “However good the system of government,” he said, quoting Lee Kuan Yew, the Singaporean leader who took his country from Third World to the First in one generation, “bad leaders will bring harm to their leaders. On the other hand, I have seen several societies well governed in spite of poor systems of government, because good strong leaders were in charge.”
The credibility of Mr. Lee’s recipe for progress is debatable; it may be argued, as Professor Kyari Mohammed, the only discussant that turned up did, that bad systems have a way of corrupting good and strong leaders. There is no doubt, however, that a bad leader can only bring harm to his people no matter how good the system.
It should also be obvious, as the archbishop implied, that a country can produce good leaders only if its people too are good. Until, as I said on these pages recently quoting Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) , each and every one of us sees himself as a shepherd who must account for his flock no matter how small the flock and no matter how lowly his position in society, we will not produce good leaders.
As the archbishop said, quoting an Hadith as narrated by Bukhari, “Each of you is a guardian, and each of you will be asked about his subject.” This, he said, has it Biblical equivalent in the words of Jesus Christ when he said in Matthew 20:28, “If you love me, keep my commandments.”
The long and short of all this is that we must each re-examine ourselves as individuals to see if we do our own bit for society and do unto others what we expect them to do unto us.
Before the archbishop’s speech, the chairman, the royal father of the day and the chief host all spoke about the need for good leadership and they all agreed that we suffer from a serious deficit of same. The emir, however, entered the caveat that the public and the media are all too often unduly harsh on the leadership, a position, the chairman later begged to disagree with.
Of these three probably the harshest criticism of our leaders came, interestingly, from the chief host, himself a leader even if by default. The country’s leaders, he said, have, since the First Republic, become greedy with a penchant for “convert(ing) public wealth into private riches.” He even spoke more harshly against leaders in the course of the short speech and concluded with the advice that the country in general, the North in particular, “must sit together and identify the myriads of problems facing our region and together find solutions to them.” He did not say how this sitting should take place, an answer which would no doubt interest the country’s advocates of National Sovereign Conference.
News of killings in Baga in Borno State of hundreds of innocent civilians, including women, children and old men, and the virtual sacking of the town in an apparent reprisal attack by soldiers for the killing of an officer by Boko Haram insurgents over the weekend, coupled with the denial of the killings by the military in spite of the fact that the figures are from the Red Cross which has hardly been known to over-state casualties of hostilities, suggests that anyone hoping that the end of our long running crisis of unaccountable leadership as a source of the insecurity and the attendant underdevelopment of our dear country is in sight, still has a long wait ahead.
However, the way to shorten that wait is clear; pray to God and at the same time organise individually and collectively to reject any politician with a track record of bad leadership who asks for our votes in 2015.
