Like most members of Nigeria’s ruling elite, Ireti Kingibe (Federal Capital Territory senator) is poorly informed on the subject of leadership. Apart from contemporary examples in other parts of the world, there are ancient and modern texts and journals on leadership that explicate the subject and make its fundamentals so crystal clear that it is hard to see why anyone, let alone a senator, would continue to misrepresent the matter. Referring to her ex-husband, the 80-year-old Babagana Kingibe who was Moshood Abiola’s vice president-elect in the 1993 presidential poll and later holder of three ministerial portfolios under the late Gen. Sani Abacha from 1993-1998, the senator suggested that Nigeria’s complex problems demanded someone with fresh perspectives and vigour.
Her argument was straightforward: “Even if you are starting off with a president who is not 40 years, he should at least be reasonably young. I have always felt that my former husband Baba Kingibe would have made an excellent president, but if he were to wake up today and say, ‘I am running for president’, I wouldn’t support him. Why? Everything has its time and when your time passes you give it to your successors, younger people.” No one is sure what age has done to her intellect or perspectives, whether she has become more mature or impressionable; but she seemed to indicate that she is less rigorous than she used to be. Her present condition, or perhaps Abuja’s political ecosystem, has indicatively led her to rule out another shot at the senate in 2027.
What of her 80 years old former husband, whom she regarded as no longer fit for purpose, despite having confidence in his ‘excellent’ ability? Two things come out of her dismissive characterisation of Ambassador Kingibe. One, he is too old for the job. But is that really so? Is he too infirm and lacking in the vigour she said a leader must have? Perhaps. She knew him well, having married him and was and perhaps is still able to gauge his physical and mental strength. Here, however, lies the problem. The senator has obviously read few books, knows little or nothing about leadership, and has hardly improved herself on the arcane subject of leadership. Indeed, having heard her declaim upon her husband’s leadership capability, in addition to her many and lengthy extrapolations, it is charitable to suggest that she knows little when in fact she appears to know nothing about leadership. She and the thousands of Labour Party (LP) obidients that continue to pollute the social media with their war whoops and acidic rhetoric in favour of their champion, Peter Obi, seem to equate leadership with physical strength or superficial intellect.
Students of leadership, not to talk of statesmen who have gifted the world with their rich experience in leadership, are united regarding what qualifications a great leader must have. In all their accounts and expositions, there was never any emphasis on age or physical strength because they recognise how radically different the world has evolved beyond the use of javelins, swords and spears in warfare. All emphasis, according to former French leader, Charles de Gaulle, is now placed on attributes such as intelligence and instinct, moral courage, authority and prestige, self-discipline and sacrifice, devotion to the nation, feeling for reality, vision and determination. He should know, because he cultivated them. These qualities are neither propelled nor limited by age. In fact, if anything, they get better with age. Senator Kingibe, like most of her fellow lawmakers, has read very little about anything, for the National Assembly, to many legislators, has become a cul de sac, a vacuum where the drudgery of legislation is the preoccupation.
Her poor judgement is revealed in her summation that without the limitation of age, her husband would have made an excellent president. She unfortunately did not elaborate whether her view of her husband’s presidential qualities was conditioned by her perception of most of Nigeria’s past and failed leaders. It had to be; it could not be otherwise. For, to consider her former husband as a potential president without any demonstration of leadership character is indeed a manifestation of a distressing lack of perceptiveness. The clearest proof that Ambassador Kingibe lacked the capacity to be president is the summary way he betrayed the June 12, 1993 presidential election won by the ticket comprising Chief Abiola and himself. He not only worked with the usurpers who seized that mandate and neutralised it, he infamously became at a point the face of the repudiation of that mandate. Worse, he has neither apologised for the betrayal nor disqualified himself from benefiting from the recent canonisation of the mandate. Ambassador Kingibe was in his late 40s when he helped or joined others to trade the mandate.
Sen Kingibe will not be the only one or last public officer to talk about the prequalifying role age plays in leadership selection and succession. Her ilk will not be dissuaded by reason or history. For even right under their noses, as indicated by the First Republic, nothing suggested that the quality of leaders of that era was far higher than those of the succeeding eras. Indeed, virtually all First Republic leaders at the regional and national levels before and after independence were in their 30s and 40s when they assumed office. And they were not particularly more talented than those who took office in the Second and Third Republics or in the Fourth Republic. As recent as the last presidential poll, former president Olusegun Obasanjo and military head of state Ibrahim Babangida were still lionising age as the greatest qualification for leadership. Why their egregious lack of perspective does not embarrass them is hard to explain.
