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The literature on leadership failure in Nigeria doesn’t just leave us feeling queasy. A lot of people do feel a measure of horror at how Nigeria has not been able to get it right on the leadership scale despite the abundance of human resource. It’s saddening. It also raises some pertinent questions: Is Nigeria jinxed on the leadership index? Why is it that every incumbent President appears worse than his predecessor? Or is our leadership recruitment process to blame? If in doubt, check the successor process since 1999. Wasn’t late President Umaru Yar’adua worse than Chief Olusegun Obasanjo on performance index? Hasn’t President Muhammadu Buhari turned out to be far worse than Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, or indeed, all the former Presidents put together? The facts are there. The president’s report card is public knowledge. And 2023 will be critical.
As history teaches, is President Buhari aware that how a leader handles himself during his final months in office will have a big impact on how he will be remembered? In fact, research by Daniel Kahneman, co-recipient of the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2002 reveals that what a leader does in the closing months and weeks of his tenure will have what he calls a “determinative impact” on the country. According to the Nobel laureate, for a president, the only remaining shot at affecting how he will be judged by history is to create a favourable impression before his exit. But not this President. With nine months to exit the presidency, Buhari continues to make things worse for Nigerians rather than better.Never in the history of the present dispensation have we experienced a president, a government that is far away from the people and utterly uncompassionate, as the current administration. Our collective experience bears that out. This is made worse by the fact that this is a President, even when the writing is on the wall, has refused to admit his limitations. Rather, he and his aides often resort to outright denials, delusions, exaggerated achievements and antics to deflate abysmal failure. That’s why stepping down gracefully has never been one of his virtues. It is his vice. This is an accident in our democracy that should not be allowed to repeat itself next year. That should be a campaign issue. That’s also the reason why 2023 election should be seen and taken as a make-or- break for Nigeria. It will repair or ruin Nigeria. Anger is eating deep in the people like acid. That anger must be taken to the ballot, especially for the election of the President. It’s about leadership, competence and effectiveness.
We need a thinking man as next President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, one who has the talent to clean up the mess left in every sector by the current government. As the Presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Mr. Peter Obi said last week while addressing Nigerians in Diaspora, our next president must not be someone who “speaks through proxies or be carried on a wheelchair”. He must be somebody capable of proffering solutions to the numerous challenges of immediate sort that confront Nigeria and the citizens. It’s no longer time for platitudes. It’s time for specifics. The truth is that hope is fast fading in Nigeria. Frustration and disillusionment have set in. Everywhere you look, things have become grim and despairing. It’s a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul of our national will. The erosion of confidence in the future of our country is unprecedented today. It threatens to destroy the social and political fabric of the nation. As another election draws nearer, there is a growing disrespect to government, a government that promised ‘Change’ but has delivered calamity and unparalleled misery and insecurity. This disillusionment and cynicism of the present order cut across the entire country, ethnic and religious lines. Today, most Nigerians feel they were ‘tricked’ by the present administration in 2015 and 2019. In the last seven years, millions of Nigerians have realised they made avoidable mistake by putting their trust in a president and his party that have repeatedly lied to them. It’s a clear-eyed realisation that cannot be endured for another four years. The pain is too much.
It all comes down to this conclusion: if voters are to take the trouble to cast their ballots next February (if elections will hold), they expect something from the President they choose. At a minimum, a president with a programme that will address the central problems that confront them, not necessarily one with all the answers, but at least one with a philosophy and an approach that give promise to succeed. Every sector of our national life is bleeding. Insecurity has reached a frightening point, the economy is on the brink of collapse, unemployment, hunger, poverty have reached new highs. We are having a jobless growth, while corruption is booming. Undoubtedly, Nigeria needs a new direction, a president with character, who can meet the definition of competence, integrity and trust.
As former United States Bill Clinton once cautioned those aspiring to be the President and Commander in Chief of their nations, “ambition”, he said, “is a powerful force, and the ambition to be President, has led many a candidate to ignore his own limitations and the responsibilities of the office he currently holds”. I find Clinton’s advice timely for the candidates jostling to be Nigeria’s next President in 2023. Today, Nigeria is in acute crisis that strikes at our heart and souls. It can be likened to what former U.S President Jimmy Carter called the “malaise of the spirit”. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives, and in the loss of a unity of purpose for the nation. It’s not in doubt at all that the erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and political fabric of the country. That’s what happens when responsibilities abandoned today return as a more acute crisis tomorrow.
The assessment of our political leadership is grim and despairing. The citizens are traumatized, they are disillusioned and cynical about the performance of its political leaders. The truth is that a nation runs aground when its President confuses his own destiny with that of the country. What, in particular, should we be looking for in the next president ? Character and competence are crucial attributes. But we must not ignore other essential virtues such as ability to lead the country and rescue it from the myriad problems inflicted by poor leadership. The lesson in all of this for 2023 presidency is not to repeat the mistakes of the past. Trust is the key of competence. A definition of trust includes not having to guess what a presidential candidate means. It means leveling with the people about what he’s going to do after election. Trust is not being all things to all people, but being the same thing to all people.
It’s not about shading words so that each separate audience can hear. It means saying plainly and simply what a candidate means, and meaning what he says. In fact, desiring to be president is more nuanced than having a heavy war chest. That feeling of entitlement is over. Nigeria needs a formidable candidate for the office of the presidency, someone with an appeal that can reach beyond his immediate natural constituency, someone larger than the sum of his parts, a president who can bring us together, a uniter, not a divider, someone who can end insecurity, bring our economy back to life, create jobs, reduce insecurity and poverty. These are existential threats. In all, we need a transference President, one who can communicate and connect with the people and shape their aspirations, a president who seeks power not as an entitlement, but to achieve great purposes. Indeed, success in government requires diligence, decisive action and adjusting course when errors are made.
