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From: Ibini Olaide <ibini_olaide@yahoo.com>
Date: Thu, 25 Aug 2016 11:22:52 +0000 (UTC)
To: ayo_olukotun@yahoo.com<ayo_olukotun@yahoo.com>
ReplyTo: "ibini_olaide@yahoo.com" <ibini_olaide@yahoo.com>
Subject: Prof Olukotun's Column
LEADERSHIP DIMUNITION: GLOBAL AND NATIONAL PERSPECTIVES
AYO OLUKOTUN
In what appears to be a gripping reformulation of Chinua Achebe's influential aphorism that the problem with Nigeria is Leadership, the Emir of Kano, and Former Central Bank Governor, Lamido Sanusi on Wednesday warned President Muhammadu Buhari to retrace some of his steps or stand the risk of ending up like Former President Goodluck Jonathan. Sanusi's gentle but politically redolent chiding of Buhari is not that of an opponent who never sees any good in the helmsman but that of a visionary insider, an informed seer calling for urgent reset of leadership posture and performance.
To be sure, Buhari remains in my view popular, although in diminishing degree, but has been unable, thus far to translate popularity into acclaim earned by governance impact, except in one or two areas. Taking into account that the last 18 months of Nigeria's electoral cycle are usually devoted to political competition rather than governance, it may well be that Buhari's best friends are those, fearing that his tenure may end up as mediocre as Nigerian Leaders come, admonish a quickened pace of achievements, the odds notwithstanding.
On a global canvas, effective leadership as opposed to just hanging in there or keeping things going, has become such a scarce commodity. Justifying for example, their exclusion of United States President, Barrack Obama from their list of the world's greatest leaders for two consecutive years, the editors of Fortune paraphrasing Waren Bennis, drew a distinction between leaders who master or turn around their contexts and those who surrender to them. In other words, they do not think that Obama had fulfilled the momentous billings of the early years of his Presidency, a judgement with which close to 50% of Americans would seem to agree. Now bring up the troubling question: Who comes after Obama? You now begin to see the true immensity of the current leadership crisis. As Americans know too well, beneath the banner waving and campaign bonhomie is the jolting reality that there is little to choose between the often shockingly imbecile rantings of Donald Trump, the Republican Candidate and the intelligent but morally lousy Hillary Clinton, The Democratic Candidate. What do you make of an ever feuding Trump who has almost come to blows with senior party officials and Gold Star Parents? Even worse, Trump has slyly encouraged the assassination of his democratic rival.
Clinton may not be so disconcerting but with each passing day, damaging revelations about conflict of roles regarding the Clinton foundation and her former office as Secretary of State seize the political space. Cross the Atlantic and consider the leadership decline in British politics in the wake of Brexit. Recall the events that preceeded the choice of Theresa May as Prime Minister in particular the uninspring jostling between her and Andrea Leadsom in the light of the latter's comment that she was more qualified to be Prime Minister because she has children and May is childless. British politics has certainly seen better days than the low bar into which it recently descended. A commentator in the New Yorker puts it graphically by informing that " Perhaps May can make the country seem a little less leaderless. Now Britain just has to figure out where it is headed".
How then about England's neighbour across the Channel, France? Here we encounter a sitting President, Francois Hollande, whose approval rating has never gone beyond 20% since he took office in 2012. Although, sympathy for him rises after outrages by militant Islam, no one pretends that he has the makings of a great leader. Unmemployment ravages the distressed economy to the extent that when Hollande adressed journalists recently, and claimed that his policies are turning around the economy, one of the journalists retorted: Is this a joke?. So doubtful are his chances of re-election that the divisive Nicholas Sarzoky, former President, a few days ago announced his intention to contest the 2017 elections. Only a country in serious leadership trouble recycles jaded leaders from its past.
As a final example of the famished landscape of political leadership around the globe, consider the incredible desolation that has overtaken Venezuela, the Latin American giant that habours the world's biggest petroleum reserves. Under the innovative but somewhat iliberal Hugo Chavez, the country aquired iconic status as the watering hole of left wing politics, focused on the drastic reduction of poverty. Today, due partly to the collapse of oil prices and the incompetence of President Nicholas Maduro, it has hit a rough patch with the currency harshly devalued and people queueing up for food in Caracas, the nation's capital. Rather than face up to burning governance issues, Maduro keeps blaming the Central Intelligence Agency and the nation's rich.
To be sure, a vastly unpredictable world, accelerating economic crisis, the resurgence of militant islam, issues of identity conflicts, pose threats and challenges to countries established or struggling. What stand out or serve as game changers are the resolution and creativity which leaders bring to bear on problem solving. Hence, and returning to Nigeria, Sanusi is perfectly correct in asking Buhari and his spokespersons to stop blaming Jonathan or giving excuses for weak performance. He makes the point that there is nothing happening in the economy that was not predicted or predictable. At any rate, to push the point further, the hallmark of effective leadership is the ability to build scenarios, envisage developments and proffer remedies. The economic downturn traceable to the sharp drop in global oil prices had already commenced in the twilight year of Jonathan's administration. If we are horrified as we ought to be by the collosal theft of the nation's resources that took place in the name of political campaign by The Peoples Democratic Party, we are alarmed that the All Progressive Congress led by Buhari went into office without a prepared script for mitigating the fall out of the economic tsunami.
Almost 16 months into Buhari's tenure, it does no good to continue to focus on Jonathan's profligacy and corruption rather than pointing up the spaces for engineering change and overcoming challenges. True, Buhari scores highly on moral purpose as well as the determination with which he is tackling Nigeria's governance underbelly of running a bandit state in the shape of official corruption. Indeed, United States Secretary of State, John Kerry, who came calling earlier this week, mentioned excitingly the possibility that Nigeria's anticorruption reform may become a model for other developing countries. But that and the valour of the military in rolling back Boko Haram, though it falls short of bringing back the Chibok Girls, appear to be all there is to governance these days. The Punch Cartoonist on Wednesday made the point graphically by depicting an interlocutor conversing with Buhari who had just announced the war against indiscipline. Pointing to a badly malnourished man representing the Nigerian masses, the interlocutor said "Oga, how do I preach WAI to this one? He said he has not eaten for four days".
The point does not require amplification, Buhari must summon the best of our thinkers and technocrats to assist him in carrying governance beyond its currently narrow purview and fixations on past failures. That to my mind is one of the ways forward.
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