Desperate self-motivated leaders in Nigeria are yet to learn that cheerleaders of suffering do more harm than good. This will surely be the outcome of current efforts to drum up public support for Mr. Bola Tinubu’s adopted policy of fuel subsidy removal. Explaining the rationale for such policies is an onerous task even at the best of times. This time, the timing was imprudent, coming at the exact moment that people were preparing to heave a sigh of relief that eight years of oppression and suffering ended. There was nothing that forewarned citizens to brace for the shock of a sudden hike in the prices of everything. Not even from our representatives in the National Assembly who, instead, connived with the executive to remove subsidy as parting gift to people they shamed with poor administration for eight long years.
It seems obvious why the cheerleaders of suffering activated by the current leadership are attempting to browbeat the citizens. The problem is not with the cheerleaders but the leaders they cheer. Cheerleaders respond to motivations that cannot help the government to explain the sense in a sudden removal of subsidy. The new leadership simply ignored or failed to learn from past efforts to remove subsidy. They did not consider the untold suffering that was sure to break out of its restraining cage to deal a harsh blow to the cost of living for middle and low-income families.
Why didn’t they, one wonders?
One explanation may be that, on their campaign platforms, all major presidential contenders promised to remove fuel subsidy because it is good for citizens and the nation’s economic health. Beguiled by this common agreement, the one who found himself in the saddle thought it was a good idea to implement without warning. It is the same way that they are busy signing into law other bills that the predecessor refrained from approving after careful consideration of their wider implications. One such bill rushed into law by the new leadership is on Student Loans. We pray that this will not see hundreds of thousands of undergraduates drop out of university when implemented. Tuition fees are bound to rise, followed by discriminatory disbursement of student loans to the wards of party faithful. And followed by lack of jobs to pay back the loans when students graduate into debt.
The cheerleaders cannot explain how the new law addresses our fears because the leader is only interested in actions that endear him to the people. On subsidy, we are in an embarrassing situation because the leadership is yet to explain how long it will take for citizens to end the current round of economic misery. The leadership is also not explaining the practical steps being taken to re-arrest and cage this animal, to enable citizens regain their sudden loss of freedom and dignity. It now costs an average public servant N35,000 and more to go to work, in a country where the minimum wage is N30,000! It is not as if our leaders do not know that a hike in fuel price immediately delivers a devastating blow to citizen purchasing powers.
It is rather sad that government, at all levels, is not promoting communication that assuages the current anguish of citizens. Instead, they are encouraging cheerleaders to continue to feed the ambitions of desperate self-motivated politicians who want power (or have seized power) at all levels. Chinua Achebe once said that the problem of Nigeria is leadership. The problem is, however, not the absence of true leadership but the presence of desperate self-motivated leaders scrambling for power without knowledge or competence. We know them by their utterances, from threatening to spill the blood of baboons and monkeys to encouraging acolytes to ignore the votes of citizens and rather aim to grab, snatch and run away with the people’s mandate. Desperate self-motivated leaders are the trouble with Nigeria.
There is nothing intrinsically wrong with self-motivation per se, including its desperate version. The motivation to succeed is a powerful force that nature imbues in every man. When harnessed positively, it is a powerful force for good. When deployed otherwise, it becomes a force that resists the dictates of positive virtues. It seems to me, therefore, that Nigeria will succeed when it is possible for citizens to not only recognize but also prevent desperate self-motivated politicians with negative bent from ascending the thrones of power. These are the leaders who neither fear God nor respect the rules that protect man from being his beastly self. They are the leaders that invariably encourage and empower the groups of cheerleaders to whitewash their tainted image.
In business and politics, desperate self-motivated leaders proceed with their gamble to claim victory at the expense of individual, group, business and work relationships. Their achievements become pyrrhic victories that leave the truth wounded and bleeding in the fields of battle. The desperate self-motivated have no qualms about stealing business ideas, employing unorthodox methods to degrade business competition, obtaining advantages through patronage and, when these fail, securing victories through foul play. At the negative end of the continuum, desperate self-motivation is injustice unbound. The management of negative self-motivation is one of the key reasons for having a government. So, what happens when the sole business of government is to perpetuate the negative self-motivated class in power?
Government exists, or should exist, to encourage healthy competition even as it strives to contain the excesses of desperate self-motivated individuals among society’s achieving citizens. Note, however, that desperate self-motivation does not always procure negative consequences. We can illustrate from this story told by the self-described “big man” of basketball, Shaquille O’Neal. Shaq once told this story of how he tried to appease his Los Angeles Lakers’ teammates who were complaining that Kobe Bryant was not passing the ball. He went to remonstrate with his friend Kobe, but it turned out to be a short, two-sentence encounter.
“There is no ‘I’ in T-E-A-M, Kobe,” Shaq began his pitch. But he was brusquely cut off.
“Yes, but there is an ‘M’ and ‘E’ in there, mother-f…” was Kobe’s irreverent comeback.
Shaq, a positively self-motivated team player, understood that a desperate self-motivated player could use their selfish behaviour to alter a lethargic spirit in a team. Kobe’s selfishness activated a team motivation and eventual success – once they recognized that lethargy was team’s only hurdle to achieving championship glory. On occasion, desperate self-motivation can, therefore, be harnessed as a virtue to inspire citizens, by leaders who bite the bullet on public policies guaranteed to promote the public good. All 2023 presidential candidates were desperate self-motivated leaders. We saw desperate self-motivation in the one who dumped his party to encourage citizens to hope for new possibilities that await when we move from consumption to production. And we saw desperate self-motivation in the other who sought to rule because it was his turn.
Both approached from different motivations, none of which can be deemed superior or inferior. Access to power and history will judge from the outcome. What is important is that the outcomes meet the minimum expectations of those who voted, for and against.
We frequently see companies and teams transformed and their members become achieving players from the excellence that desperate self-motivated managers display through their integrity, work ethic, creativity and the tough love they bring to people management. Unfortunately, the world does not boast of many desperately self-motivated managers who use their “selfishness” to rouse citizens and propel them towards prosperity. Additionally, and continuing with the Shaq basketball analogy, such a leader cannot succeed where both fans and teammates – the citizens and the managers – are required to make sacrifices without motivation and commensurate remuneration.
This, my friends, is the reality that we live. It is worse when the managers are the ones telling us, through cheerleaders of suffering, that all is well if we only adjust and make sacrifices. We have heard these admonitions before and they never ring true, reasonable, and commonsensical. Late Umaru Dikko, as Minister of Transport, once said that Nigerians were not poor because he did not see them eating from dustbins. Col. David Mark, as Communications Minister, proposed that telephones were not for the poor. Today, we hear from cheerleaders that “fuel subsidy hurts but is good because it forces citizens to make adjustments.” They do not say what sort of adjustments can be made by a hungry, homeless, sick, and naked citizen whose purchasing power is eroded by a policy with knock on effects on the costs of food, transport, shelter, medicine, and clothing?
Political cheerleading does not only hurt citizens. It also proves more devastating to desperate self-motivated power seekers. Ask Buhari. It was political cheerleading that brought Mr. Buhari into office – and cheerleaders of suffering that sustained him for eight long years. Shortly before his 29 May handover, the gang of cheerleaders moved on to the new kid on the block. They will sustain the new leader with noise that drowns people’s misery, up to the point of exit where, like Buhari, he will also be abandoned to travel the harsh lonely road to reality, and the harsher verdict of history. It is at that point that he will learn that political cheerleading, like public relations, is effective only when it trumpets beneficial actions rather than mere rhetoric. The echoes we hear today from the clatter of keyboards that promote ill-digested or adopted policies are mere hollow rituals to protect the kin in power or to perform the tasks that shield the unscrupulous from the misery that surrounds the nation.
Desperate self-motivated leaders in Nigeria are yet to learn that cheerleaders of suffering do more harm than good.