As mentioned here sometimes ago, all the rightly guided Caliphs strove to keep the exemplary leadership of Prophet Muhammad (SAW) aloft after his demise. This was done by Abubakr, Umar bn Khattab, Uthman bn Abi Sufyan and Ali bn Abi Talib. Ali in particular did not limit it to himself. He extended it to those who served under him. For instance while appointing Malik bn Ashtar as the Governor of Egypt, he gave him the following instructions in writing and advised him to follow it to the letter in his governance in that country. Below is the instruction:
“In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful. Be it known to you Oh Malik, that I am sending you to a country which had experienced in the past both just and unjust rule. Men will scrutinize your actions with a searching eye even as you used to scrutinize the actions of those before you. They will speak of you even as you did speak of your predecessors. The fact is that the public speak well only of those who do well. It is they who furnish the proof of your actions. Hence, the richest treasure that you may covet should be the treasure of good deeds. Keep your desire under control and deny yourself that which you have been warned against. By such abstinence alone, you will be able to distinguish between good and bad…”
“Develop in your heart the feeling of love for your people and let it be the source of kindness and blessing to them. Do not behave to them like a barbarian, and do not appropriate to yourself that which belongs to them…. Do not set yourself against God, for neither do you possess the strength to shield yourself against His displeasure, nor can you place yourself outside the pale of His mercy and forgiveness. Do not feel sorry over any act of forgiveness, nor rejoice over any punishment that you may deem fit to mete out to anyone…”
“Never take counsel of a miser, for, he will vitiate your magnanimity and frighten you with poverty around. Do not seek advice from a coward, he will weaken your resolution and dampen your morale. Do not take counsel of a greedy person, he will instill greed in you and turn you into a tyrant. Miserliness, cowardice and greed deprive man of piety and push him into unbridled desperation. The worst counselor is one who had served a tyrant before and shared his crimes. Do not appoint such a person as your adviser. He will lure you into crimes and turn you to a criminal…”
“Great care should be exercised in revenue administration to ensure, not only the prosperity of the tax payers but also that of the masses. You should regard the proper upkeep of the land in cultivation (i.e. maintenance of national assets) as of greater importance than the collection of revenues. He who demands revenue without helping land cultivators (i.e retired workers) ruins the state…”
“Fear God when you are dealing with the problems of the poor people. Always consider the fact that they have no one to protect their interest. They are forlorn, indigent and helpless who have become victims of the vicissitude of time. Assign for their uplift a portion of the state exchequer (Baytul Mal) wherever they may be. Let no preoccupation slip them from your mind for no excuse whatsoever, for neglecting their rights will be acceptable to Allah…”
“Finally, dear Malik, shun self-adoration. Do not indulge in self-assessment and self-praise nor encourage others to extol you because all these tend to undo good deeds of pious men and Satan relies most on praise and flattery. Never overrate yourself nor indulge in tall talks about the favours you have done for people. Breach of promise annoys God and man alike. Do not act in haste nor defer the execution of a good decision. Do not insist on wrong doing or slackness in rectifying the wrong already done…”
“When people as a whole have agreed upon a thing, do not impose your own view on them just because you are in power. Remember that power is transient and you will eventually exit or be forced to exit from it one day…”.
When the above code of leadership is compared with what obtains in Nigeria today one will surely be amazed by the wide gap between the world of a realizable dream and that of a nightmare. In Nigeria, there is no such document that can be called a code of leadership. Even the constitution which gives Nigeria its name as a country is only available to a clique of power usurpers called leaders.
As stated in this column weeks back, leadership in any sane society is not a function of policy makers alone. Leadership does not start from the top. It is rather a matter of good home management and excellent upbringing of children. Leadership is like a pyramid which has a base and an apex. Whoever wants to assess leadership in a society must start from the base rather than the apex. It will be unreasonable to sight a major fault at the roofing of a house when the foundation of the same house is evidently faulty. Generally, children learn from their parents’ actions more than from the latter’s words.
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In the religious sphere, most of the so-called leaders of Mosques and Churches in Nigeria have failed to rid the society of indiscipline and rottenness prompted by unbridled corruption because they have turned religion into a meal ticket. And, by so doing, they have become the real motivators of those vices. If those so-called religious leaders had genuinely and sincerely lived up to the requirements of the faiths they profess, Nigeria would have surely been a better place to live in today. But by their actions and dispositions esoterically and exoterically, the religious leaders in Nigeria have proved to be examples of the worst problem of constituted leadership. Since over 90 per cent of Nigerian population is a combination of Muslims and Christians and since the so-called leaders of Nigeria are from both religions, it is clear that the adherents of Islam and Christianity are together, the real cog in Nigeria’s wheel of progress.
Today, over 60 years after independence, more than 99 per cent of Nigerians who are 60 years and below have never seen the book of law by which they are purportedly governed in the name of constitution. Yet, they are forced to obey such a secret law and even reprimanded for breaking it. Perhaps Nigeria is currently the only country in the world where citizens are ruled and punished by a constitution which they have never seen. That same constitution, according to the rulers is being amended and very soon, we shall be told that a new constitution is in place.
In civilized countries, the constitution by which people are governed is a public document made available to all citizens including market women and primary school pupils in the languages they understand. In Nigeria, it is a secret document available only to the legislators, the executives and those in the judiciary. The few other people who are probably in possession of our constitution are professionals like Lawyers, Justices and a few Journalists who can hardly do without it in the discharge of their duties. Any other citizen who demands for the availability of the constitution is automatically regarded as a renegade and treated as such. In Nigeria, to be ‘Good People of a Great Nation’ you must have neither comment nor opinion about the constitution of your country. Just obey and follow the leaders’ order. That is one way of ‘REBRANDING’ Nigeria.
Hiding under the constitution which is exclusive to them alone, Nigeria’s self-styled leaders have been able to ruin anything ruin-able in the country to pave their own way to perpetual governance. They have been able to turn what was supposed to be oil boom into oil doom for many generations of Nigerians. They have been able to destroy all other sources of the economy including agriculture and manufacturing industries to gain maximum personal benefit from oil. They have been able to demolish the pillar of the ‘MIDDLE CLASS’ which is the backbone of any modern economy and eliminate the use of coins thereby widening the gap between the rich and the poor. They have been able to deny Nigeria the much needed refineries preferring to export crude oil and import refined products to enable them reap from the fruit of such a poisonous deal. They have been able to render the national electricity moribund in order to throw Nigerian doors wide open for importation of power generators thereby making Nigeria the world’s greatest depleting country of the Ozone layer through the use generators. By the last count in March 2010, Nigeria was said to have an estimated 57 million generators even as the country remained dark and millions of able bodied youth remained unemployed.
Not only that, these self-styled leaders have also been able to ground the country’s Airways in order to float their own individual private airlines just as they have had to paralyze the national Rail line for their private haulage businesses to flourish. And now, Nigerians can’t ply the roads anymore because the leaders’ haulage trucks have destroyed them. Then, to complete the cycle, they had to sell Nigeria Telecommunication (NITEL) to themselves in the name of privatization through what they called ‘BLIND TRUST’. And in their wild evil manipulation of the unseen constitution, they have been able to siphon billions of Dollars (public funds) into their own private bank accounts in various countries abroad while Nigerians wallow in hunger and squalor. One of the reasons why Nigerians are paying six times the amount of GSM services in other West African countries is attributable to the unequalled corruption of our rulers.
Thus, today, Nigeria is the only country in the world where constitution is secret and the use of coins is a taboo, courtesy of the political ‘Lotus Eaters’. And in all these, the brunt bearers are the ordinary citizens whose God-endowed resources are used to enslave them. If anything remains for this country now, it is her carcass. Yet, like vultures feeding on the carcass of a dead prey, the vampires of this land are shamelessly relentless in their struggle to continue the governance of Nigeria by fraudulent means. The summary of all these is that Nigeria has graduated from being one of the most corrupt countries in the world into adopting corruption as her alternative name. What else can one say about this so-called ‘GIANT OF AFRICA?
In Nigeria’s first republic, the system of governance was parliamentary in which every legislative contestant was voted as a legislator and the Prime Minister emerged through an in-house electoral college while the Ministers were appointed by the Prime Minister from among the elected Parliamentarians. At that time, Nigeria, by constitution, had only a ceremonial President appointed through a political arrangement sanctioned by the constitution. Federalism, at that time, held sway with strict adherence to the principle of exclusive and concurrent lists even as Ministers and legislators paid for their accommodations and means of transportation. Genuine political leadership, democracy and true federalism were however beheaded with the termination of the first republic in January 1966 by the military vagabonds through a coup d’état. Ever since, Nigeria has remained a country without leaders. Those who have been calling themselves leaders are nothing more than slave drivers who mounted the political ladder to that height by deceptively pretending to serve the people. And their slaves are the hapless and hopeless masses of Nigeria who ignorantly or innocently gave the mandate.
Things started to go bad for Nigerians when greed gripped the better parts of those called leaders and they veered into the realm of ‘WANT’ from that of ‘NEED’ which had characterized the first republic. Thence, they were lured into the enclave of avarice and the result is the massive corruption in which the country is now engrossed. Even a carnivorous animal like the lion will only prey on a lesser animal for its immediate feeding need and thereafter become indifferent to other lesser animals that cross its way until it becomes hungry again. Nigerian politicians on the other hand will rather amass all available things including those they never need and keep such things for their children and grand children in case of future scarcity.
In 2010, the federal government alone is spending about N10 billion to celebrate the 50-year-old rot called Nigeria independence despite the glaring death of hope in the land. To all these, what is the solution? The answer to this question is a return to conscience by everybody. Without conscience there can be no leadership.
Leadership is neither about power nor about authority. People who really understand the weight of responsibility involved in leadership will not vie for it. It was after experiencing such weight that Umar bn Khattab indicated in his personal will that none of his children should be allowed to partake in the leadership of the then vast and rich Islamic state.
Leadership must be recognized as a transient privilege conferred on man by the Almighty Allah. Some people had that privilege yesterday but they are out of it today. What they did with it has become history. Those with the same privilege today who cling to it as if it can never slip out of their hands should remember that they will become history tomorrow which will serve either as a warning on the vanity of human wishes or as encouragement to perform better or both.
“If we work marble it will perish; If we work upon brass, time will efface it; If we rear temples they will crumble into dust; But if we work upon immortal minds and instil in them just principles; We are then engraving that upon a tablets which no one can efface but will brighten to all eternity”. God save Nigeria!
