Effective Leadership is What is Needed to Get Nigeria Back on Track

Taking a sober reflection on the spate of insecurity currently pervading the country, where kidnappings, killings and bloodlettings of horrifyingly unimaginable proportions becoming standard daily occurrences of our communities; the ravaging hunger and high level of poverty amongst the vast majority of our people; the state of lawlessness, unconstitutionalities and corruption in public service, etc., Nigeria does now, more than ever before, need effective leadership to halt and reverse these ugly narratives. No society can prosper without good and effective leadership. A positive vision for the society and the commitment geared towards translating that vision into reality are cardinal attributes of sound leadership in all societies the world over. After holding onto power for about 60 years since independence without developing this country to an appreciable level commensurate to our real status in the global comity of nations, in spite of all our vast human and material endowments, but ending up getting Nigeria drifting inexorably into a complete failed state, with internecine genocide, communal killings and banditry going on in villages and towns unabated, highways been taken over by armed robbers and kidnappers, the Nigerian political centre should per forcefully shift to a younger, more educated, more versatile, more dynamic and more well-grounded leadership. Let the current President Bola Tinubu’s regime be truly the end of an era of seeking our leaders from among the old breed politicians of the First, Second or Third Republics, or from retired generals, with half a century of unchallenged dominance of the political field.

2. The dire need for economic and political development has always necessitated for a leadership powered by purposefulness and determination to move a society forward in all fronts. And today, within the context of Nigeria’s transitional or emerging economies, this very legitimate expectation becomes even more ardent. The fact that for nearly 60 years since independence we have failed to live up to this rightful expectation has today become the defining challenge to our people. Heedfully, a new topography of political power must take place in our country. The rules of our national political game must be rewritten, but not by the older politicians or the military brass; for them, their flat world has broken!

3. To me, the battle now in the country should be but a pungent struggle for a generational change for the hold of national leadership. Nigeria is today out of kilter, and is inexorably adrift; a glide which the older politicians and the military brass have plunged the country into. But the lesson here is that it challenges us as patriotic members of the LND to take political action to halt this drift. To correct a bad situation begins with the ability to recognize reality. The goal of the LND patriots is to help make this recognition possible.

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4. Presently, there is anarchy on the political landscape as the old contending forces are fighting hard to retain power within themselves and against determined younger and truly patriotic elites. The former’s most times primitive form of politics, with its destructive tendencies, should now be frontally challenged by patriotic LND elements who should form the emergent political power bloc. Such LND patriots are to carefully assemble themselves so as to represent the political power bloc to drive the new initiative.

5. No doubt, in today’s Nigeria, opinions and perceptions of political issues are all over the place, but the lament that our contemporary political life lacks skillful leaders is also more commonplace. It is now obvious that President Tinubu and most of our current elected leaders are models neither of effective leadership nor basic organizational skills. Nobody can operate anything without knowing its basics; and that includes politics and governance. And given that these public officers confront large competing and shifting priorities, requiring extremely high level of knowledge of the society and its constituency politics, good judgment, vision and persuasive talents, it is the duty of each and every citizen therefore to ensure henceforth that our elected politicians possess basic knowledge of politics and leadership skills. To posit that it is because very few people in politics today possess these skills in sufficient measure that we rarely laud politicians with the exalted term of proficient leaders is to state the obvious. It also explains why today the political pitch of the nation is disorderly, inefficient, ineffective, uncoordinated and even ungovernable.

6. It is therefore critical as the 2027 general elections approach, if our country must come out of the current collapsed state and compete favourably with the rest of the world, that we revive or create to a high level interest in politics and leadership skills as basic standards for achieving rapid development for our people. To this end, we must intensify the search amongst ourselves for persons with ‘strategic insights’ to elect into positions of leadership. This has become imperative because the world today has come to see ever more clearly the essential role of personal forces in shaping destinies of nations and societies. Modern social science has proven Frederick Taylor wrong that impersonal forces of matter, rather than personal forces of individuals, are key determinants of shaping and directing societal progress. Our present experience with President Tinubu’s leadership style in the governance of the country, and especially in his economicteam, lay bare the false assumption that the assemblage of persons with ‘superb knowledge of systems analysis and quantitative abstractions’, in which the major players, often completely detached from the actual socio-cultural process, would turn around the socio-economic and political fortunes of the country solely according to spun quantitative models. The result, as being seen today, is a colossal disaster; both our economy and our politics are worst off for it. Quantitative analysis no doubt has its place in developmental designs, but it is no substitute for personal leadership.

7. In leadership, there’s personal integrity and there’s professional integrity. Those leaders who lack the former cannot possess the latter. Let our leaders first possess the former before the led can vouch for them on the latter. Our citizens must then hesitate from vouching for the integrity of our public office seekers until they can ascertain their personal integrity. That is the best way of avoiding mistakes of electing the wrong people into office, as we did lately, and wreck untold hardships on our country.

8. To attain this, and especially given the current uncertainty pervading the polity on account of the poor performance of the president and his team, we need to immediately call intelligent LND members of good standing to a serious round table discourse so that the issues raised, including the approach to adopting political platform, can be practically decoded and encoded into a well thought out workable detailed strategic blueprint defining its operations and activities, formulating it’s modus operandi, identifying its operators and setting out realistic goals, timelines and monitoring mechanism. Then we should immediately sell the idea to the country through such LND members by means of the mass media, LND public rallies and general mobilization. It won’t take time LND will gain the people’s buy-in and regain public support. It’s very easy to attain. All we need is the strategic insight and the resolve to drive it through. I hope we succeed.

God help Nigeria.