Politics, vocation for looting in Nigeria •Experts submit at Obafemi Awolowo Foundation Special Dialogue •Say Nigerian leaders lack ideas •Call…

FOR the nation’s quest for transformation to be realised, the political leadership will need to do away with profligacy, ensure true federalism, re-engineer the economy to emphasise wealth creation rather than sharing and consumerism, with a view to correcting the perception of the public

that politics has become a vocation for looting the country’s treasuries.

This counsel was contained in a communique issued at the end of a two-day special dialogue entitled “Transformational Leadership and Good Goverance: Lessons from the Awolowo Example,” organised by the Obafemi Awolowo Foundation and held at the Ikenne-Remo  home of Chief Awolowo.

The nation’s leadership was also urged to take a cue from the template of the transformational leadership of ideas, vision and service set by Chief Awolowo to lead the country out of the woods, since many of today’s leaders cannot navigate the ship of state, because of lack of focus.

The Dialogue noted that all the countries with which Nigeria was on a par within the quest for development 50 years ago, had left the nation behind. (Full text of the communique on page 50)

The successive political leadership of the country, including the current political class, came under scrutiny, with a submission that the nation  had been in the throes of toxic and autocratic leaders and that politics remained a vocation for looting.

This came as a legal titan, Sir Olaniwun Ajayi, described the country as a failed state, where citizens continued to get less value from the political class, in spite of huge resources from natural endowments.

All the experts who spoke on the second day of the Obafemi Awolowo Foundation Special Dialogue maintained that quality leadership had fled Nigeria and corrupt and inept leaders had taken over.

Assessing the leadership under the microscope in a paper entitled, Leadership and Governance in Nigeria: A Critique, Professor W.A. Fawole, of the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, said after more than half a century of independence, the country had been far from progress and prosperity, because of toxic leadership  style.

The don described toxic leadership style as one in which the leader deployed to abuse the leader – follower relationship for self-benefit and personal aggrandisement, leaving the nation in worse condition than the leader met it.

“Fifty years after, Nigeria ….. is still held in thralldom, its people pine away in the vice-like grip of political intolerance, unbridled but violent outbursts of ethno-religious and primordial sentiment across the country and for which the security forces remain clueless, unsolved politically motivated serial murders, general lawlessness and banditry, unbridled official corruption and outright state robbery…,” he said.

The professor noted that the prediction of an American intelligence report that the country might vanish from the world map soon had been confirmed by the “grim indicators of the sad situation in the country,” despite the downplaying of the warning by the political class.

“Nigeria, regrettably, degenerated from Third World to Fourth whilst Singapore, Malaysia, China and South Korea graduated from Third World to First.
“The current state of anomie has made Nigeria a virtual joyless society, especially for its teeming unemployed and lumpenised youths, who cannot see any real future for themselves in a country so abundantly blessed, no matter the sanctimonious preachments of the rulers that the country is better off today than it was under military dictatorship,” Fawole said.

He added that the gravely gloomy situation, especially in the build-up to the last election in the nation, had made it a truly “Hobbesian society where life is brutish, nasty and short.”

He traced the origin of the malaise to the character of the Nigerian-state and the quality of leaders it had produced, advising that only a proper interrogation of this could lead to the drawing of modalities for effective leadership for the country in the 21st century.

In another seminal paper, entitled Recruitment into Political Leadership in Nigeria and presented by Professor David Oke, also of OAU, Ile-Ife, the university lecturer pointed out that the political class had departed from the ideal process of recruiting leaders for offices, adding that men of violence had taken over the country.

“…When the chosen person, overwhelmed by the situation, hesitated or refused to accept the new burden, the elders of the community begged and cajoled and pledged their loyalty to him before their gods, just to persuade their unwilling recruit.

“That was the ideal process of recruitment. We have long departed from that. In these days, it is, as if – to parody the words of the Holy Bible — “the kingdom of man suffers (permits) violence, ‘and men of violence take it by force’!”

The university lecturer periodised the election and selection of leaders in the country since the colonial era and stated that the Western Region chose the right leader in Chief Obafemi Awolowo and was still reaping the benefits.

He condemned the current practice of moneybags and godfathers sponsoring candidates for political positions to reap financial rewards as unhealthy for the development of what he called “Enterprise Nigeria.”

Sir Olaniwun in a remark, said the indications that the country was a failed state were evident in all the institutions and machinery of government in the country.

The lawyer lambasted the judiciary for its nosedive into a bastion of hopelessness from that of hope for the common man, in view of the can of worms currently being examined by the National Judicial Council probe committee.

He called for the sack of those fingered in the probe as a step towards restoring sanity and people’s confidence in the judiciary.

According to him, the cabinet of President Goodluck Jonathan could not provide the solutions to the nation’s myriad of problem, saying that the cabinet lacks the “fire” to drive the economy from its present dire strait.

He chided the splitting of ministries to create new ones for what he called a bloated cabinet, the jumbo-size salaries and allowances of National Assembly members, in defiance of calls for a drastic reduction in recurrent expenditure in favour of capital projects.

The Knight of John Wesley, as well as the paper presenters, advocated, as road map out of the wilderness, the strengthening of leadership recruitment process, institution-building, fiscal federalism, youth empowerment and the need for the political class to take public office as an opportunity for service and sacrifice.

Leadership, they counselled, was a sacred trust on which the destinies of the followers were tied, and, as such, urged the citizens, especially the youth, to “bake their own cake” and not rely solely on “sharing the national cake.”