Our leaders and short-term political pursuits

The first one Nigeria: a nation in search of a leader talked about the lack of strong stance taken on strike which has in turn led to a proliferation of sometimes illegal and generally disruptive and absolutely ruinous strikes embarked upon by all manners of organised workers in this country who have become more of […]

The first one Nigeria: a nation in search of a leader talked about the lack of strong stance taken on strike which has in turn led to a proliferation of sometimes illegal and generally disruptive and absolutely ruinous strikes embarked upon by all manners of organised workers in this country who have become more of ‘’permanent strikers’’ than the patriotic, rational and diligent workers they were employed to be. As we speak, the nation is facing a rash of crippling strikes in key sectors of the national economy.
It should be noted that one of the key rules of engagement of employment in the public service is that of ‘’no work, no pay’’. This means that if a group of workers are sufficiently aggrieved enough to go on strike for any reason, they should be ready to make sacrifices by depending on their check-off dues to sustain them for the duration of the strike. If our leaders have over the years insisted on the observance of this simple rule, not mindful of short-term political gains, strikes would have become a rarity in our polity. But not so. The powerful unions have set the pace. Whenever they choose to hold the nation by the balls, they complete the oppression and humiliation by insisting that all the salaries and allowances for the days, weeks and months they never worked should be paid them in full or else they will hold the country by the jugular vein.
Due to pressure necessitated by the short-term political need of not being hated and therefore risking election or re-election, our political leaders have succumbed so cheaply to such naked blackmail. That is why strikes are so frequent and so frivolous and some last for an eternity in our country. For many, it pays better to be on strike for long periods than to work and offer useful service to the nation. Meanwhile, no government in Nigeria ever enquires into what the labour aristocracy does with workers’ check-off dues. The incentive to go on frequent and whimsical strike by labour leaders and workers is so powerful that it is much wonder that this nation has not yet been totally crippled by strikes.
The law also forbids some workers who offer what is considered essential services from embarking on strike for any reason. Such people are required to use other approaches to get what they want. But in Nigeria, the dictum is that strike is the only language our governments understand, so even doctors and nurses often abandon patients admitted into their hospital wards to bleed to death because they want to pressure government for better pay packages or working conditions.
Many people who ought to have been hanged or to have served several years behind bars are today free men because no leader has had the guts to insist that certain laws should be obeyed. But what does the Bible say about those who violate the rules of conduct for the orderly running of society? It observes in Ecclesiastes 8: 11 that, “Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil”. In our dear country, we do not even dare to pass a sentence on evil conduct not to talk of executing them speedily to send an unmistakable message to all that certain unseeming conducts will not be tolerated.
In the course of my wide reading, I stumbled on the information that the first leader of Israel, Saul, lost his kingship, among other reasons, because of his mildness. This surprised me but it helped shape my perspective on leadership. We have been led to believe that a good leader is one who is tame, mild and so accommodating that he bends over backwards to accept whatever nonsense it enters the mind of the people to do. It is not so. Even God expects a leader to be, well, a leader: he should act forcefully and forcibly when the occasion demands. Do not tell God that you did the wrong thing because the people pressured you to do so. God will not accept such an excuse from you. Indeed, such an excuse will be an admission before God that you are either unsuitable or incapable or both and therefore most deserving of dethronement.
While a political leader should not act like a military general or an emperor or a dictator, but when the time comes to bang his fists on the table and say “enough is enough”, he should not fail to do so. By his calling, a leader is also meant to whip people into line when the occasion demands it. He should not be afraid to be described as iron-fisted, dictatorial or a violator of human rights. His job schedule is to reward good behaviour and punish bad one.
 In the column before last week’s, we handled  Governor Oshiomhole’s poor example which focused on Edo State Governor Adams Oshiomhole’s reinstatement of teachers who were earlier sacked for incompetence because of the fear of stepping on the toes of teachers who are among powerful voting blocs a politician or one whose party wants to win election should not antagonize. This flowed from the shocking governorship election in Ekiti State a month earlier.
There are some who argue that Governor Kayode Fayemi failed re-election in the Ekiti guber race because he approaches governance with a certain intel-lectual aloofness and that at this level of our development, a leader should try to be in touch with the people and pander to some of their base needs or risk rejection by the people as was done Fayemi. My contention is that a political leader should try to serve his people with the best of his ability and be in touch with them but he should not always do what the people want. Rather, he is called upon to do what is good for the entire society. The work of a leader is to lift the people above where they are now to a loftier height. He should not pamper them to remain where they are so that he can remain in power to govern them. That is not leadership. That is self-centeredness, political chicanery and cruelty.
With these two columns and this one following, the reader would have realized that we tend to be irresistibly drawn to issues of political leadership. This is because we are aware of the big role political leadership plays in the uplifting or debasing of society. I have often argued that political leadership can rubbish whatever good other arms of society are capable of doing by enunciating wrong policies or not insisting that the right things be done by all in the polity for the good of that society.
A society where its political leaders are only concerned about election victory and personal survival in office and not bothered at all about matters of principles, that the right things should be done at all times, is doomed to failure. A leader should not concern himself with doing what will appease the powerful people of the moment; he should also have an eye for the future and insist on what will bring lasting solution to the nagging problems of his society.