Younger leaders: Obasanjo is right

Younger leaders: Obasanjo is right

Ethelbert Okere

Obasanjo

President Olusegun Obasanjo a forth night ago stirred another controversy when he told an audience that the younger generation of politicians is to blame for leadership failure in the country and by extension on the African continent. In the case of Nigeria, Obasanjo specifically made reference to what he called a “failed generation of leaders” and went ahead to list some names. The occasion was the fourth annual Ibadan Sustainable Developed Summit organized by the Centre for Sustainable Development of the University of Ibadan in collaboration with African Sustainable Development Network. There, the former president of Nigeria gave a keynote address during which he made the declaration that has earned him umbrage from a section of the media. A particular Lagos-based newspaper, whose proprietor was among those the former president listed as among the younger generation of leaders who failed the country, has been particularly hard on him.

The newspaper took out an entire Editorial in which it categorically protested the inclusion of its proprietor in the list. Let's take a look at what the Editorial had to say; “On his list was former Vice President in his administration, Atiku Abubakar, and former House of Representatives Speaker, Salisu Buhari. He also named former Bayelsa state governor, Diepreye Alamieyeseigha; former Edo state governor, Lucky Igbinedion and former Delta state governor, James Ibori, among others”. The newspaper continues: “Although it is true that these individuals were linked with unflattering controversies, Obasanjo's classification betrayed his confusion and prejudice when, in one revelatory moment, he also reportedly mentioned former Lagos state governor, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, a top opposition figure who is acclaimed as a positive example of purposeful leadership. This glaring case of incorrect inclusion put a huge question mark on Obasanjo's leadership standards”.

This means that the newspaper would have endorsed Obasanjo's thesis if he did not mention Bola Tinubu. Differently put, minus this “incorrect inclusion”, Obasanjo was right in his assertion. I think he is.

But if I were him, I would not even have bothered to mention names since the message would still have been clearly delivered without names. Besides, I would not ordinarily begin to look at the leadership problem of Nigeria from point of view of age delineation because it is actually difficult to make a sharp difference between the so-called younger generation and older one in terms of which category is precisely responsible for the leadership woes of the country.

Let me even say that I personally am not carried away with the talk that the problem of the country is entirely that of bad leadership. For me, it has become a platitude, even a cliché, to the extent that there exists a penchant for overlooking the several and various attitudinal and social factors that have been the bane of our society. The major reason why I do not flaunt the leadership theory is that we have, in the first place, not been able to define what is good leadership in the Nigerian context.

What is our standard for leadership as a nation or as a people? What we have is that there are as many (leadership) standards as there are thirty six state governors, for example. If we go through the states, one after the other, we will discover that leadership standards vary from one to the other. For example, we could have in one state where the government is ran like a private estate; where contracts are awarded without tender and where a kilometer of road can be constructed with N60million and another with N450million. Then, we have another state where the governor stays in his office and decrees who becomes the local government council chairman, or who gets the ticket of his party for elective contests. We have some states were the Houses of Assembly are nothing but rubber stamps for the executive arm.

Moving up, we have a National Assembly whose members ask for gratifications from agencies under their supervision; or which may refuse to pass the federal budget because the president tampered with provisions for phantom constituency projects.

The point being made here is that the talk about leadership has become too loose and open ended to lead to what is desirable. What we have is a situation where, once a particular group or click is not in power, then there is no good leadership. President Obasanjo himself is even guilty of this. As soon as he handed over power in 1979, he became a fire brand, hitting the very administration he helped midwife. When his former colleagues came back again, he became the most vociferous critic of the successive military regimes to the extent that one had to rope him in and sent him to jail.

Out of office as a civilian president, Chief Obasanjo dominates the airspace as a critic even when he enjoys the privilege of putting his views across outside the focus of television cameras. He is not alone. A good number of those who shout themselves hoarse over alleged bad leadership were themselves known to have exhibited undemocratic demeanor while in office and were intolerant of opposing views.

Still, I would not hesitate to align myself with the view that even as pervasive as the problem is, the so-called younger generation of leaders have made themselves more vulnerable to failure. It is the younger generation of politicians that make politics look like something out of this world. Under them, politics has lost glamour and in the place of the latter rancor and hatred has taken over.

A cursory check today will reveal that many of the state governors are not in talking in terms even when they come from the same geo-political zone or the same ethnic group. By 1999, the average age of all the governors in the thirty six states of the federation was about 45. But it was from them that we began to have a situation where governors would go to the Aso Rock Presidential Villa to “report” their colleagues to the president (this same Obasanjo) in order to curry favour. Pray, are those leadership qualities? Under the so-called younger leaders, alienation of the people has become quite acute. Younger politicians invite members of their constituencies to functions and keep them waiting for hours. Today, a constituent will wait for days to see his representative. He may not even be attended to at the end. The representatives have no schedules for meeting members of their constituencies. Is all long convoys, siren blaring, motion without movement.

In those days, politicians would stretch out their hands from their cars to greet the people. Now, the cars carry dark windows and surrounded by hostile security agents waiting to pounce or abuse any fellow who dares to come close. Well, the situation is, overall, systemic or circumstantial in the sense that many of the younger leaders are bringing into politics the same type of mentality they employed while hustling to survive in their private lives.

Since politics is now the only thriving business, they bring into it the same survival of the fittest instinct. In the 1960s and perhaps even up to the 1980s, Nigerians could afford to face their business without going near politics. In business, people made all the money and became famous. But today, it is only in politics and government that there is money to make. The only fame in Nigeria of today is in politic; the reason why every Okonkwo, Tunde, Okon, and Ibrahim wants to be a governor, a senator or even the president