Despite the purported Transformation Agenda of the incumbent president Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, Nigeria is slipping into failure. Home-grown political pundits no longer dismiss as fairy tale the submission by their foreign counterparts that the Nigerian nation is on the brink of collapse.
Wanton destruction of lives and properties, infrastructural rot, faltering economy, corruption and others are threatening to bring the country on her knees. Does Dr. Goodluck have the will power and effrontery to combat them headlong?
At a lecture organised by the Nigerian Institute of Management (NIM) in Lagos last year, Professor Bolaji Akinyemi, CFR, former Foreign Affairs Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and a renowned diplomat, bares his soul on the leadership lacuna in Nigeria.
The Transformation Agenda Of The President
The term “transformation” of course became the leitmotif of the Jonathan Administration when in his inaugural speech on May 29, 2011 he said that he and other elected officials “must demonstrate the leadership, statesmanship, vision, capacity, and sacrifice to transform our nation…This is the era of transformation…” But lest I open myself to a charge of inadequate research, the phraseology actually belongs to the famous Accra Obama speech in 2009 when he said: “But the true sign of success is not whether we are a source of aid that help people scrape by – it is whether we are partners in building the capacity for a transformational change”.
Initially, it serves as a powerful signpost of where one intends to head to. Secondly, it serves as a powerful encapsulation of the totality of the programmes, visions and values of an entity, be that entity an individual, an organization, a government or a state.
And yet, when a word or a phrase is used parrot-wise, where every statement made by a minister or government apparatchik no matter how high or low, includes the phrase “the President’s transformational agenda”, the power of the word or phrase risks being enveloped in ridicule and cynicism. This becomes even more so when people look for evidence of transformation and what they get is: “trust us we are working on it”.
Leadership Vis-A-Vis Strong Institutions In Transforming Africa
The alternative view, at least it looks like an alternative on the surface, is that put forward by President Barack Obama in his famous Accra speech, on his first trip to Africa. In that speech, Obama stated clearly that “Africa doesn’t need strong men, it needs strong institutions”. That statement was the headline that led all the stories on the international media, thereby creating a developmental paradigm that may come to dominate the debate on African development for years to come.
President Obama also played games with historical facts. For example, when in the course of the speech, Obama said “countries like Kenya, which had a per capita economy larger than South Korea’s when I was born, had been badly outpaced” was he aware that the phenomenal growth of Korea was under the regimes of strongmen midwifed by the military? When he said “But history offers a clear verdict: governments that respect the will of their own people are more prosperous, more stable, and more successful than governments that do not” was President Obama aware of the economic and political histories of Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and China? India seems to be the only example of what Obama had in mind and even that has a long history of one-party rule and one family rule.
In his advocacy of strong institutions, Obama’s elaboration was “in the 21st century, capable, reliable and transparent institutions are the key to success – strong parliaments, and honest police forces; independent judges and journalists; a vibrant private sector and civil society…”
I myself in 2008, in the course of a lecture celebrating the first Chairman of the EFCC, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, said that a tree does make a forest. I quoted examples of Churchill (Holmes 2005, Gilbert 2001) during the second World War, Franklin Roosevelt, (Hamby 2004, Norton, et al.,2009), Stalin, (Anton, 1983), Hitler (Bullock 1962, Kershaw 2008) and Nasser (Alexander 2005, Dekmejian 1971) as leaders who massively turned the fortunes of their countries around. You would recall the mood of defeatism in the United Kingdom under Chamberlain who became known as the apostle of appeasement. Making concessions upon concessions to Hitler only wetted the appetite of the German dictator for more military adventurism. When Winston Churchill took over as Prime Minister, he breathed so much defiance that he totally changed the British outlook on the war. When Franklin Roosevelt took over as President of the United States, he met a country on the verge of a revolution borne out of a massive economic collapse. In fact, as of that time, a lot of Americans were already looking at the Nazi system in Germany as a possible solution to the American collapse. Yet Roosevelt who as President became famous for “we have nothing to fear but fear itself” turned things around so dramatically that the United States ended up rescuing Europe during the following war. Hitler inherited a broken and prostrate Germany and yet within two years, he had built up Germany into a fearsome nation. Let me state quite clearly that I am not passing any value judgement on the policies of these leaders. My point is that each one of these leaders inherited a hopeless situation with institutions but with sheer force of personality combined with the right policies, hopelessness gave birth to hope and success.
On our home front, we can draw parallels with General Murtala Mohammed and Assistant Inspector General Nuhu Ribadu. As of the time of the 1975 coup d’etat, the public perception of the Gowon regime was that it was rudderless, dysfunctional and indisciplined. General Mohammed’s terrible reputation for zero tolerance towards indiscipline had preceded him to his assumption of office that the whole country went on alert on hearing that he was the new Head of State. Of course Nigerians still look back with nostalgia to the discipline that the Buhari regime imposed on Nigeria. Anecdotes abound on how the name Nuhu Rubadu struck terror in the hearts of public officials when he held fort at the EFCC. My favourite was the one involving a Local Government where the Chairman and Councillors were sharing the money that had been brought from the bank. In the meantime, the bank had discovered that the Local Government was shortchanged and decided to send the balance through one of its officers called Nuhu Sule. On getting to the premises of the LG, the bank official identified himself as Nuhu from the bank. All the councillors heard was Nuhu as they fled through the windows. When you also cast your minds back on how the judiciary treated those charged to court when Ribadu was in charge of EFCC and how they are now treated, then you will realise how far removed we have gone in the anti-corruption struggle.
The Judiciary As A Veritable Transformational Tool
A more current example is Barrack Obama, himself. He ventured into a field that had eluded the great Roosevelt, Johnson, Clinton etc in proposing a program that overhauled the United States health care programme. He invested a whole year into getting Congress to pass the legislation, only to have its constitutionality challenged by some of the states at the Supreme Court where five of its nine members were appointed by his Republican predecessors. By a vote of 5-4, the Supreme Court ruled that the Obama Health Care was constitutional. The winning vote was provided by Chief Justice Roberts who was an appointee of President George Bush, a Republican.
There are three points that I would like to emphasize. The first was the role of the individual rather than the institution. In this particular case, President Obama matched in where others have tried and failed, the last attempt being that made by Bill Clinton. Secondly, Chief Justice Roberts rising to the occasion, realising the historical importance of the occasion, broke rank with not only his conservative constituency in the court but his own in-bred conservatism. Thirdly, is the ingenuity in the rationale of the Supreme Court in upholding the legislation. The Supreme Court rejected the argument of the Obama administration that the legislation was constitutional because Congress has the power to regulate inter-state business, but upheld the legislation under the powers of Congress to effect taxation, an argument that the Obama administration had declined to adopt before the court. In spite of that, the Court upheld the legislation on that score.
This brings into question, the role of the Nigerian Supreme Court. In only two cases, the EFCC case and the Rotimi Amaechi case, can I doff my hat to the Nigerian Supreme Court for rising to great occasions in the decisions handed down. In the EFCC case, however, in spite of the fact that the Supreme Court had held that all its provisions are constitutional, including the provision which said there would be no interlocutory appeal in EFCC cases, the courts, including the Supreme Court itself had continued to allow such interlocutory appeals thus rendering the fight against corruption an uphill task.
In the offshore-onshore case, the judgement of the Supreme Court had created more political problems for the country. The point being made is that the Nigerian Supreme Court, unlike its American counterpart had shown a penchant for an elementary rather than an ingenious constructive propensity in interpreting the constitution. This is the way Prof. Chidi Odinkalu, Head of the Nigerian Human Rights Commission, put it: “the Constitution as it is does not preclude judicial imagination or the evolution of sensible docket management practice and doctrine. On the contrary, it allows it. The court has hamstrung itself from doing this through evangelical kind of over-literalised jurisprudence” (The Nation, June 26, 2012). Over-literalised jurisprudence --- that is the problem with the Nigerian Supreme Court. It is the failure of an institution.
The Place Of The Executive
I think we can safely come to the conclusion that irrespective of whether a nation is a developing country or not, irrespective of the stage of development, where there are strong internal fissures threatening the very existence of the state, where there is an absence of a grand consensus among the elite, where that grand consensus is based on the greatest good for the greatest number, or where the existing social contract is under severe threat, a strong leadership is called for. That leadership for the grand vision and grand initiative can only be located in the Executive. This is not to deny the need for strong leadership at the head of the Legislative and Judicial branches but it is only the President that has a national constituency and national agencies of mobilisation at its beck and call.
Nigeria, A Failed State?
Moving away from general propositions, we can then consider the problems facing Nigeria and whether these problems can best be tackled by effective executive leadership. There is national and international consensus that Nigeria is beset by problems of security, corruption, power, heath, education and infrastructure.
Reports by Human Rights Watch, Transparency International, Fund for Peace are very damning. The Fund for Peace, in its 2012 Failed States Index ranks Nigeria as no. 14 out of 177 states, the no. 1 position being the worst possible position. African states ranked better than Nigeria include Guinea Bissau, Kenya, Ethiopia, Burundi, Niger, Uganda, Eritrea, Liberia, Cameroun, Togo, Burkina Faso and Congo to mention a few.
Because of time and space constraints, let me concentrate on The Fund for Peace Report. It came to its ominous conclusion based on certain parameters which I will share with you. On Leadership, Nigeria is scored weak; on military, Nigeria is scored weak; on police, Nigeria is scored weak; on the Judiciary, Nigeria is scored poor; the civil service, Nigeria is scored weak; on civil society, Nigeria is scored moderate; the media, Nigeria is scored weak.
Another set of parameters scores Nigeria as the second worst performer in terms of Group Grievance, second worst performer in the category of Uneven Economic Development, and second worst performer in the category of Factionalised elite.
The total score of 101.1 out of a possible score of 120 is what ranks us as 14th on the Failed State Index with Somalia with a score of 114.9 ranked in the 1st position as definitely a failed state.
Corruption thrives in Nigeria because there is really no one occupying a leadership position in Nigeria who actually believes that Nigeria will survive. Therefore, a leadership position in Nigeria has become just an avenue for crude accumulation of wealth. We need not dwell on this issue of corruption as the blind can see it and the deaf can hear it---such is the magnitude.
The Way Forward
A divided leadership is no leadership. We must arrive at a grand consensus that will allow us to pull in the same direction. The present system is an imposition by sectional elite that exploited its temporary occupation of the levers of power to seek an arrangement that would be an advantage to it. It is obvious to all that the centre can no longer hold. The longer we pretend that all is well and that all the system needs is a bit of panel-beating, the more we would creep up on the Failed State Index, until we become a thoroughly failed state.
Source:hialtitudecapitalconsult
