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The Buhari campaign for the presidential election in 2015 was a most aggressive one. It attracted a lot of following principally because of the feeling that the candidate would offer better and more purposeful leadership. Many believed he would lead from the front not because they have had previous experience of his leadership but because of the message weaved around his person. He did not disagree with them. One of such messages that dotted giant billboards read: “If anything goes wrong, I will take responsibility, and I will fix it. This is what it means to lead.” That message trended under the hashtag #thisisbuhari. On December 30, 2014, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, as he then was, tweeted this same message, designed as an advert for the newspaper, on his verified Twitter handle @Mbuhari, with an accompanying message that read: “Good afternoon, my friends. This is my message to you in today’s papers.” He followed it with the hashtag #thisisbuhari and #thingsmustchange and then signed off as “GMB.” In essence, he promised to lead from the front.
Following that, his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), published a barrage of messages that gave hope of purposeful leadership to Nigerians, as further promises made by candidate Buhari. In some of those messages, he promised “a country that you can be proud of at anytime and anywhere; where corruption is tackled, where your leaders are disciplined and lead with vision and clarity; where the stories that emerge to the world from us are full of hope and progress.” He also promised “a Nigeria in which neither yourselves nor your parents, families or friends will have to fear for your safety or theirs” and, “a Nigeria where citizens get the basics that any country should provide: infrastructure that works, healthcare that is affordable, even free; respect for the environment and sustainable development, education that is competitive and outcome-oriented in a knowledge-economy,” among others. He ended the promise series with a question: “Are these things truly possible?”
The answer also came from him and the party. It said: “Of course. That is the essence and outcome of leadership and that is what my party and I promise you as we get into 2015.”
This is 2020. In the next 59 days, approximately, the government that made those promises will mark five years in the leadership of Nigeria. Sadly, these past five years have been characterized by leadership fiasco. The leadership has been totally absent with regard to connecting with the people during troubling times. It has largely been unconcerned about the lack of direction and focus, which it birthed. It is also unperturbed by the total lack of responsibility in addressing those promises that made it the ready alternative to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), at the time. Five years down the line, the leadership has neither led from the front nor taken responsibility for any of its failings. When terrorists kill Nigerians and decimate the military, against the promise of total security for all, rather than take responsibility, Nigerians are blamed for making themselves available to be killed by not providing intelligence to security agencies. When bandits ransack villages and kill as many as they want without a challenge from the security agencies, the victims get the blame. When kidnappers have a field day and pick their victims as freely as they want, their government goes missing. When natural and unnatural disasters wreak havoc on citizens, government activates the recluse mode. Virtually nothing aligns Nigerians to their government.
And with the present Covid-19 challenge, Nigerians found themselves in a box where they neither saw nor felt leadership. They stretched their ears to hear from their elected leaders at the centre. They got tired of waiting. But assistance came from a certain Iranian Muslim cleric, Imam Mohammad Tawhidi, better known as @imamofpeace. He kicked and hit the Nigerian leader and soon enjoyed the support of so many Nigerians who had become weary of their leadership. With Tawhidi leading, #whereisbuhari trended on Twitter. Within a few days, the hashtag hit the top scales and left the Nigerian leadership with very negative mentions. The comments that followed were a very negative appraisal of leadership in Nigeria. There was an obvious gap. It was made worse by the comment credited to the presidential spokesman to the effect that it was not their President’s style to address Nigerians in times of national crisis. That response was sour. It was made in bad faith. But, it was classic Adesina. That comment unleashed the rumour mill.
No one would imagine a leader, who a few years ago had almost everything going for him, now leading from behind when the need arose. Personally, I felt a sense of shame reading an update from Kenyangi Bale, a Ugandan who is on Twitter as @BaleKenyangi, who said: “I know Ugandans deserve better. But, our President, Museveni, has addressed this nation the 5th time in 2 weeks on the Covid-19 pandemic. You guys need to visit Nigerian Twitter. They are looking for their president. He is nowhere to be found.”
Such negative perception for the country and the President. Besides, when eventually the President rose to the occasion and roused the nation with an address, @imamofpeace had a sweet laugh. He made a tweet to say “finally, we forced him to speak.”
Students of leadership will always remember that type of leadership called laissez-faire leadership. Kendra Cherry and Stevens Gan, in “The Pros and Cons of Laissez-Faire Leadership,” define it as “a type of leadership style in which leaders are hands-off and allow group members to make decisions.” They note that “researchers have found that this is generally the leadership style that leads to the lowest productivity.” One of the drawbacks of this sort of leadership, according to Cherry and Gan, is that the leader is always uninvolved and this results in confusion over roles. It also leads to negative outcomes, including poor job performance, low leader effectiveness, low accountability, passivity and avoidance. This is certainly not an ideal in a situation of national uncertainty, panic and fear over the coronavirus pandemic.
At times like this, what is needed most is transformational leadership, which motivates and rouses the people to positive action. The lack of this, I believe, is majorly instrumental to the thinking that coro is a ‘big man disease’, a thinking that resonates among many in the lower rungs of the social ladder who live on less than $1 per day.
Also, the absence of that sort of leadership at the centre is what the amazing Babajide Sanwo-Olu has stepped up to fill in Lagos State. He is leading the charge against Covid-19 with uncommon dedication and conviction. He is the leader-fantastic in this fight whose actions are enough to convince the people. His counterparts in Imo, Hope Uzodinma, and Oyo, Seyi Makinde, are exhibiting same sort of leadership and rousing their people to the consciousness of the virus and to take action.
Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna State, Bala Mohammed of Bauchi State, Comptroller-General of Nigeria Immigration Service, Mohammad Babandede, President Buhari’s Chief of Staff, Abba Kyari, have been exceptional in their leadership of the fight against Covid-19. By publicly admitting that they have contracted the virus, they have done more to create the necessary awareness and also raised the bar in the understanding and management of the situation than the Presidency had done with its deafening silence prior to the nationwide address.
The President failed to lead from the front as promised. He also failed to take responsibility. Remember, #thisisbuhari.
