We all know the pathetic profile of leadership in Nigeria. In his famous 1983 pamphlet, “The Trouble With Nigeria,” Chinua Achebe captured it like a camera:
“The trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely a failure of leadership. There is nothing basically wrong with the Nigerian character. There is nothing wrong with the Nigerian land or climate or water or air or anything else. The Nigerian problem is the unwillingness or inability of its leaders to rise to the responsibility, to the challenge of personal example, which are the hallmarks of great leadership.”
Those words were written before Muhammadu Buhari I, where the man preached discipline and character, and longer before Buhari II, which exposed his hypocrisy. They were before Ibrahim Babangida, who claimed to find Buhari’s weaknesses to be so repulsive he needed to be kicked out of power, only to install the most corrupt administration known to Nigeria until Buhari II 20 years later.
Those words were written after Olusegun Obasanjo I, in military fatigues, handed power over to a civilian administration, only to return two decades later as a democratbutbalked at the “challenge of personal example” Achebe had identified. Obasanjo was the quintessential preacher, but a reluctant worshipper. He knew the lyrics but not the song. He retired into letter-writing, publicly criticizing every other national leader without once calling himself by name, let alone by appropriate adjectives.
So, Achebe was right. Evidence of the collapse of leadership is all over us. Fifty years and trillions of dollars in oil earnings since then, we have no electricity. We have no roads. We have no rail.
Nearly 25 years since we nominally returned to a “democracy,” city traffic rarely runs smoothly, and flooding is guaranteed. Budgets are repeatedly padded; loans are free and easy and squandered. Public institutions, such as schools and hospitals, lack working elevators and sometimes, humane toilet facilities. Most airports lack night facilities. Local government chairmen sleep in the state capital, while governors sleep in the federal capital.
There is an explosion in the education sector: if you are powerful or rich enough, you can obtain a licence to set up whatever educational institution you please and charge students whatever you please. However, students in public higher institutions routinely spend several extra years trying to complete their studies. Should they complete within regulation, their reward is to walk the streets: any job openings often go to relatives and wards of the privileged.
If you are a governor, you are a lottery winner. Your child belongs in foreign schools and your wife shops to her heart’s content abroad. You build or buy mansions wherever you please in your state and in Abuja, and when it is time for you to exit the job—most likely to the Senate—you ensure that the House of Assembly and your successor are hand-chosen to protect you.
Yes, Achebe was right, and since his text was published, every administration at the centre and in the states has confirmed the authority of his vision. Until now.
What Achebe accomplished in his book was not simply to interpret for us what had held Nigeria back since independence in 1960, it was to provide a warning, a diagnosis, a guide, a manual.
But Achebe’s manual for mending Nigeria is not for the leadership, because a disease does not itself treat. It is for the citizen, who is the producer and owner of the leadership. Only the citizen can remedy what has gone afoul, and it is his failure to grasp this responsibility that has led to the continued decay of Nigeria, of which increasingly defective leadership is no more than a symptom.
Notice how reluctant the average citizen is to register to vote. When he registers, he is often unavailable to pick up his card. When he picks up that card, he is unavailable on polling day, except, sometimes, as a thug for one politician or the other against his own best interests. He loots, burns and snatches.
Something else is worse, still: many citizens who obtain voters’ cards often sell them to politicians and their agents ahead of the polls for a few kobo. Or they exchange them for a meal or two: the equivalent of giving away your soul for four or eight years during which he is not only hungry but can blame nobody else.
But that is still not the worst of it. When the voting is allegedly done, and the winner declared, the winning and losing constituencies retire to the same neighborhood of victims to suffer and lament until the next election, the winners “confused” that their reward is the same as that of the losers: poverty, hunger, deprivation, insecurity.
This arises principally because the moment someone—and it is often the “bigger rigger,” to borrow the characterization of Femi Osofisan—has taken office, he does as he pleases. This is how, particularly since 1999, a few thousand people have come to own Nigeria and the country has deteriorated by the day.
Ordinary citizens aid and abet this menace by taking a back seat. We retire to prayer to save us from our own indolence and our reluctance to get involved. But praying has not done it since 1960 or since 1999 because the problem is the province of participation, not of prayer.
What will save Nigeria is simply citizens taking control and taking it on themselves to assert themselves. Here is how to do it:
Even if you did not cast your vote, learn the identity of your elected official by name, position and office address. These are principally your local government chairman, House of Assembly member, House of Representatives member, Senator, and governor. Do not be afraid to request meetings, or to show up peacefully at the office, preferably with friends and other constituents, to express your views.
Do everything you can to remind your official that he was elected and that there will now be consequences—including, but not limited to the next election—for failing to act as such.
Demand—or find—the official phone number and email address of each elected official. Distribute it throughout the constituency. Use them to arrange meetings, including Zoom or WhatsApp meetings (all of which are free and easy), and negotiate on issues and appoint spokespersons.
Remind everyone on each contact list of the issues to be addressed with the official and ask them to call his office phone day or night to speak with him or leave messages.
If the official ignores you all—and he will—use clever means to find his private phone number: his disaffected girlfriend, his houseboy, his gateman, your former classmate at the phone company. If he changes numbers, find the new one. Give him no peace.
You do not need violence or even to raise your voice. He works for you. Take control and hound your irresponsible elected official until herepents orfleespolitics.But do it in numbers, never as heroes or solo campaigners. Show courage and initiative and strength towards making political life impossible for bad politicians.
It is your country, not theirs. Tell them their time is up.
Credit: Sonala Olumhense