Developing a new leadership: An imperative for national development in Nigeria

I believe that the essence of the discourse in this forum is to enable us reflect on how our nation has journeyed in the last five decades since independence and the various development challenges we have encountered and how to progress with our desire to toe the path of genuine socio-economic transformation. It is in […]

I believe that the essence of the discourse in this forum is to enable us reflect on how our nation has journeyed in the last five decades since independence and the various development challenges we have encountered and how to progress with our desire to toe the path of genuine socio-economic transformation. It is in this light that the issue of leadership becomes very central to the theme of the colloquium. It is perceptible that leadership has been generally considered as the key impediment to our national development. I want to hypothesize that the organizers, deducing from this theme, assumed that for our nation to achieve socio-economic development, a new leadership vision and strategy must evolve. One may be tempted to ask a hyperbolical question, based on what Stanley (2003) discerned about leadership success amounting to succession. If this assertion is true, what can the next generation of leaders take from what the present leaders are offering and how can they build on it? If the next generation cannot build on what is being handed over to them, however minimal it has been, then we have a very serious challenge of leadership in Nigeria.  It is on this premise that I wish to focus my discussion on Developing a New Leadership: An Imperative for National Development. Our antecedents in the last five decades suggest that there is the critical expediency for us embark on the process of developing a new crop of leaders that will take us to the Promised Land. More, we must re-perceive the concept of leadership as transcending mere production of leaders.
Thinking Leadership
I do not intend to delve into any tedious academic exercise on theoretical and conceptual issues. Instead, I will attempt to sketch or highlight some basic essentials of leadership. It is a fact that quality leadership is central to the success of every strong nation, even as Erskine Bowles states that “Leadership is the key to 99% of all successful efforts”. Leadership, therefore, is a process by which a person or a group of persons influences others towards achieving a desired vision or goal in an organization or in a society. As a nation, when we think about leadership, we ought to be thinking of how the yearnings, desires, aspirations, agitations and visions of the citizens are translated into positive reality. It implies that, as a nation, we should have a vision or national objectives or goals as articulated in our constitution and our optimum dream is to see them manifest in the lives of the people. The expectation therefore is that our leaders must have a clearly defined vision of where we are going and how we can get there. As Napoleon Bonaparte put it, “A leader is a dealer in hope”. It is this hope that empowers the nation to keep faith with the leadership that there is a defined destination and there is need for collective action by all sectors of our social economy as we advance towards that destination.
It is, however, pertinent that the leaders on this journey must know the way, be committed to towing the way, and also, must be willing to show the people the way, but most importantly, they most go all the way with the people. However, as Rosalyn Carter observes, “A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don’t necessarily want to go, but ought to be”. In this process, there must be trust between the people and the leader. The people, according to John Maxwell, “buy into the leader before they buy into the vision. The credibility of the leader therefore is essential in effective leadership. In the words of Winston Churchill, “the nation will find it very hard to look up to the leaders who are keeping their ears to the ground”.
A visionary, strategic, transformational leadership is essential for good governance and socio-economic transformation. Having journeyed as a nation for more than five decades, to what extent have we produced and developed such leadership that should have led us to the path of fundamental national development? It is against this background that we shall discuss leadership and national development in Nigeria since independence in the next section. In the political history of our nation, how many of our leaders have, through their vision, performance, accountability and responsibility in governance, earned the trust and confidence of the electorate? We can count them on our finger-tips – mainly in the First Republic.
Why is it that the few symbols of our heroic ideals are the personages from the distant past – Chief Awolowo is the beacon of illumination and icon of development for South West, nay the President that the nation threw away. Sir Ahmadu Bello is the only reminder of the ideal North, different from the myth of the core north that is played up today. The Zik of Africa shared the inspiration of the formation of the NCNC with Herbert Macaulay and played a central role, partly through the widl fire impact of media empire to the robust growth to political nationalism in the country. Aminu Kano inspired and the first robust mass-centred/Talakawa movement, leading the opposition to the NPC political definers of the old North, and so on. I do not propose here that there has been total leadership vacuum in the country since then. If it were so, we would not be here today. Recently, definite and inspiring dynamism and focused leadership have happened in some States in the country – in all of the South West, in Rivers, Cross River, Akwa Ibom and Cross River in the South South; in Kano, Jigawa, Gombe in the north – to name but a few. Painfully, these have not ramified into structural leadership through the growth of a strong democratic culture for the entire country.
To be continued…