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Everyone is portraying citizens as being unruly, undisciplined. None talks about leadership failures. The government creates citizens, and that is what we have seen of those societies that have made it. Then government plans and lays out the structure; the citizens fall into a pattern and flow. Let’s take few examples. The government decreed an interstate lockdown, nothing wrong with the measure given the threat at hand. It has the enforcing instrument, security agents, handsomely paid by state.
It deploys its agents yet miscreants fill trailers and successfully traverse over 1000 kilometres, to land in areas very alien to them. How did that come about? Failure of leadership of course, which results from a faulty recruitment process that throws up worse Nigerians into what should be a hallowed profession. With our eyes wide open, we shove aside men and women, who are well read and have the right attitude and perspective to do the job. We give vent to nepotism and quota system far above merit and competence. When we recruit dregs, we forget a dog must act like one. Our officers have made bribe taking a culture, and that’s why we feel the pinch of the seed we planted and resort to misplaced lamentations.
Chinese in centuries built a long and very high wall to protect themselves against external threat, but when the invaders came they knew what Chinese didn’t know or knew but neglected to take care of. The invaders knew you can build a defence but without dealing with the character of the people, every set up would amount to a wasted effort. When the enemies came, all they did was go straight to the gate and approach guards one-on-one, offering them tips. In the twinkle of an eye what was thought a defence collapsed like a pack of cards, and the enemy they felt were far way had become the enemy within.
We too, like the ancient Chinese, have built up what we consider a bulwark for our defense but from the look of things this wall can’t survive a mild push and the reason is simple: the foundation was laid on a sandy soil, it can’t stand strong winds or ferocious floods.
The flood came with the COVID-19 pandemic and everyone can see how vulnerable our country is. The above is not the citizens making. It is pure and simple a colossal leadership failure. In other societies, instead of blaming citizens and labelling them what they are not, officials pay a price for dereliction of duty and incompetence; but here they receive accolades for a job well done.
Then absence of rigorous process in decision making is another area of under-performance. Let’s take some current examples. You relax restrictions associated with lockdown of society with huge population, sign-posted by massive economic activities, you peg number of passengers each vehicle must carry per trip, but there is no corresponding statistics of transport vehicles available, capacity and routes. Nobody thought vehicles were never enough in normal times, how much more now they have to ferry fewer passengers. So we see social distancing torn to shreds at boarding points and those who should think out solutions begin to scream, Nigerians are undisciplined. Is that true?
Look at the banks, government instructions were clear: run services. Without courtesy of information to their customers they went off scene for a greater period of the lockdown. The automated cash machines offered as usual epileptic services, many times no cash and in other cases few machines were functional to serve huge population in times of national emergency as has been seen with the pandemic. It doesn’t require the gift of clairvoyance to predict the outcome which this kind of arrangement could throw up. Yet, so much fuss has been made of citizens’ rowdiness. That is Nigeria for you.
Lockdown is over and no one could foresee a run on financial institutions especially in the early days? Nobody anticipated a scenario where 95 per cent of citizens would pour in the streets and major highways? In the early days of the relaxation of restrictions many banks opened only few branches. None prepared to give citizens a little comfort since there was to be processes before one could access the premise. No extra security measures at bank offices and on the streets. There was a surge and officials whose fault it was, turned around to threaten further punishment in form of return to lockdown.
Citizens buy-in has been reduced by how officials have made their efforts look like a money making venture. I won’t dwell much on this, but let me say that serious, national societies do not approach complicated matters the way we do. Societies train citizens as we used to see in the recent years, but all that has gone to the dogs. We talk anyhow and surprisingly we all clap at what should be stupid ways of doing things. You see leaders talk, bark and howl, and you are lost wondering what kind of education they received. Our leadership style is predicated largely on rough tactics and general indiscipline. When mediocrity reigns supreme, naturally merit and competence are her victims.
The culture here is rat race; such races have no space for the rigours of rationalization. Preparation and planning are meat of scintillating and sustainable achievements; it takes in-depth rationalization, time and energy but once gotten through, the rest things are rollovers . This is a tiny secret that matters.
