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There are some good and bad sides to the recent three-day executive leadership retreat of Nigerian governors in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), which organised the programme in partnership with the Nigerian Governors’ Forum, aimed at offering the governors an opportunity to re-imagine Nigeria’s leadership to achieve transformation and nationwide sustainable development. Participants representing 19 Nigerian states reportedly attended the programme, held between August 24 and 26, 2023.
A communiqué from the retreat indicated that “Nigeria faces a complex web of interconnected development challenges stemming from a huge trust deficit, an economy highly dependent on oil exports, a job crisis and growing youth population, rising insecurity and separatist agitations, and a growing number of multi-dimensionally poor.”
The worst of it is that most Nigerian leaders are not known to repose any interest in public good. They travel outside Nigeria and see how things work elsewhere. But due to corruption and selfishness, they don’t bother replicating such success stories in Nigeria. Many of them are just after what they can grab from the public purse.
This is partly why some critics asserted that nothing good would come out of the Kigali retreat. They wondered why our governors embarked on the trip when we have some good places in Nigeria where they could have held the retreat. A former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Professor Bolaji Akinyemi, expressed disgust that our governors went to Kigali to learn how to govern, describing it as shameful and humiliating for Nigeria.
Obviously, Rwanda is not as endowed as Nigeria. That our governors went there to learn how to govern tells much about how low we have sunk as a nation. It is shameful that leadership deficit has continued to cripple Nigeria. Time was when Nigeria was a destination of choice for many citizens of Africa. Our universities harboured many foreign students. Then, oil money was flowing unceasingly. Not anymore.
Most of the leaders we have today emerged through a faulty electoral process. Hence, they are not accountable to the people. Some of the governors who embarked on this Kigali trip might have gone there to relax and stay away from the pressures at home. Having the genuine desire to work for the betterment of their states was secondary. We will be pleasantly surprised if they implement the lessons learnt from Kigali.
No doubt, the East African country is a success story by African standards. President Paul Kagame deserves commendation for what he has achieved for his country. In human development index, for instance, Rwanda has achieved far more than Nigeria and many other African countries. This is a country that fought a bitter civil war in 1994. Hundreds of thousands of the citizens died in that war. Today, the country has outgrown that episode. Kagame was able to rally his citizens together after the war such that the rate of development in that country can compare with that of any fast developing country in the world. Rwanda’s success stories in urban planning, socio-economic transformation and transformation in digital technology are worth studying and emulating. Its flag carrier, RwandAir, is doing well in the aviation industry. Unlike many Nigerian leaders who still play ethnic and religious cards, Kagame has also handled ethnicity in his country in a very commendable way. He has tackled insecurity such that the level of crime in Rwanda is at its lowest ebb.
The flip side to Kagame’s successes is that though Rwanda is a model for development, it is not a model for democracy. Kagame is one of the sit-tight African leaders who deploy authoritarian style to remain in power. He is known to have suppressed civil rights in Rwanda. Since he took over power in 2000, he has not deemed it necessary to organise election and hand over. In 2015, he influenced a controversial referendum where Rwandans voted to extend presidential term limits. With the extension, Kagame could rule until 2034.
This notwithstanding, it is better that our governors had their retreat in Africa than junketing to Europe, the United States or Dubai. We believe their experiences in Rwanda must have inspired and humbled them. We trust they were able to interact and compare notes so as to learn from the development model in Rwanda. We hope they will put what they learnt into practice. Let it not be like a similar meeting by the All Progressives Congress Governors in 2015. They promised to change Nigeria and embark on a peer review mechanism to replicate positive governance strategies and policies in all the party’s controlled states. They failed in this promise.
For Nigeria to move forward, all the governors should begin to see themselves as agents of development. They should think inwards and begin to de-emphasise the idea of running to Abuja for handouts. Their best retreat should be to understudy Chief Michael I. Okpara, Chief Obafemi Awolowo and Sir Ahmadu Bello, who were agents of development in the East, West and the North respectively, and replicate their development models in their various states.
