Nigeria’s Blind Leaders and Poor-Sighted Followers

Having read my column of two weeks ago on how we as a people have endlessly endured the fate of having always to look back to acknowledge that yesterday was better than today, my university classmate and friend, John-Bell Okoye, made an important observation which he suggested I treat in a future writeup. He observed that the greatest problem with our nation has been absence of character among those that head our public institutions – leaders both in the political and other realms.

He wrote: “I want to add one more area that deserves critical reflection: absence of character in public institutions. We are witnessing the apogee of this malaise with the present administration, in which case people we once hold in high esteem by virtue of their characters have sold-out for the vanity of materialism.”

John-Bell, however, noted that we followers have not helped matters either as the rot is two-way, affecting both the leaders and the led. According to him, “While this [absence of character] might appear so much evident in our political leadership, entrepreneurial leadership and cultural leadership, the virus, unfortunately, has infected us as a people, us as electorates, so much so that we gladly endorse this emptiness of characters in our leaders and sit back to muse ‘all will be well even in the well.’

“Which serious nations in the world develop without a commitment to leadership and national characters elevated in some nations into the ethos of their national life? I am happy you mentioned places like the US and so on. They have their challenges, including corruption, but there are things they can never endorse or compromise on regardless of the political divide and divisiveness that have become the order of the day over there.”

Looking at the profundity of the above observation, one can easily submit that there’s nothing more to add to better reflect our problem as a people. Therefore, I will simply supply a few footnotes to only buttress what my friend has observed.

Regular readers will easily recall that this subject is one I have repeatedly dealt with in this column. I have consistently espoused this thesis: that the foundation of our problem is institutional atrophy which has normalised what otherwise should be despised as depravity of character among those that steer our public institutions. Furthermore, this moral ferment is transactional as it is encouraged and nurtured by a citizenry that too easily acquiesced in the decay either through tolerance or active connivance.

An example of this acquiescence is when voters accept monetary gratification from politicians to vote for them. Another instance is when citizens seek to secure government jobs and school admissions through their persons in leadership positions, thus circumventing the due process of the law. The latter example is quite significant given that here citizens rarely notice, or deliberately fail to notice, that they’re, by their actions, vicariously guilty of furthering corruption and destroying our institutions.

Clearly the nature of demands Nigerians make of their leaders contributes immensely to the illegal and immoral trajectory of leadership in our land. Writing in a recent article about the thievery which our national legislature has been historically associated with, I did point out citizens’ vicarious liability here. By expecting and demanding for bags of rice, cash gifts and other forms of “empowerment” from these people whose sole duty should be to make laws and check the executive, we are merely encouraging them to keep looking for resources to keep meeting these expectations. But where else do they get this money if not from the common wealth that has been placed in their custody?

But ironically, after receiving all these gifts, we turn around to accuse the same legislators of greed. Exactly the same scenario obtains when we put pressure on our people who are ministers, commissioners, perm secs, directors and other public officials to grant us material favour; are we really expecting them to do so using their monthly pay? Why do we continue to complain of our public recruitment being based on favouritism (“man-know-man”) when we always seek to take the same advantage whenever it’s at our disposal?

We often hear people complain that someone from their town or family held a powerful public position without doing anything for them by way of private favours, monetary or otherwise. These people may not like to face the reality that what they’re encouraging is simply abuse of office by leaders.

In countries that are progressing, leaders don’t brazenly use their positions for granting personal favours. We’ve heard numerous cases of leaders resigning once such instances of abuse of office were made public. One case that immediately comes to my mind happened about 20 years ago when the UK Minister of Home Affairs resigned after it emerged that he used his position to facilitate acquisition of visa for his mother-in-law. In Nigeria, where we have normalised abuse of office, nobody would likely have seen anything wrong with what he did. In fact, he would have been adjudged as having merely rendered a help he ought to render to his relative and called wicked and selfish if he had chosen to conduct himself within the bounds of ethics of public office.

My point in essence is that in Nigeria, absence of character among those who occupy various categories and levels of leadership cannot be disputed, but then this absence cannot be fully understood if we do not view it side-by-side with the contributory conduct of the rest of the population. It’s a transactional depravity which inevitably ensures that we have always got the kind of leaders that we deserve.

In many instances, ethnic sentiment is what leads us into becoming collaborators in nurturing corruption and inefficiency in leadership. Once a leader is from our own part of the country, we may frown at attempts to criticize him. We are wont to adjudge such criticism as an attack on our ethnic group. This explains the many instances where citizens have been seen complaining that a leader facing investigation or prosecution for corruption is merely being victimized due to his ethnicity.

One very unfortunate thing is that politicians have always been aware of this pattern of thinking among the populace and never failed to exploit it. It’s not uncommon to see leaders invoke ethnic sentiment once they’re being called upon to face the legal consequences of their corrupt act. And sometimes they easily get the sympathy they seek from us.

Unfortunately, everyone of us appears content with being an armchair critic while conveniently discountenancing our complicity in the rot. The bad news is that things will never change if we stick to that way of expressing our citizenship; we will continue to live with the reality we invent for ourselves.

Lastly, John-Bell lamented how people we trusted their character as leaders have ended up betraying us. Suffice it to say that this too is as a result of our acquiscence in unprincipled leadership. For example, how come our people, having known Wike’s antecedents, continued to hail him as the voice of truth when he was making his vituperations against the Buhari government? When we now express surprise that Wike has “sold out”, it merely sounds hypocritical. Many people who had praised Atiku’s leadership “virtues” when he ran against Buhari in 2019 suddenly began to sing the litany of his sins once he was up against Obi in 2023; does that mean that they never knew the man well before now?

The answer is simply that we have never been resolute in principles as far as character expectation from our leaders is concerned. It has always been a case of momentary gale of emotions that blows and ends once its season is over. And in the next season, the same gale again blows but to an opposite direction. There’s no consistency in citizens’ expectations, hence leaders will never be consistent.

We have another glaring example in the actor Kenneth Okonkwo who received merciless public chastening when he joined the APC presidential campaign in 2019 and only to become a hero when he changed camp to join the LP electioneering in 2023. Just within a space of four years, the once vilified devil became a cherished saint. I recall how some persons who in a virtual forum we shared noted in anger that Okonkwo, by joining the devil called APC and Buhari, had ruined his public image gained through years of labour in Nollywood. I laughed at such naivety born of sheer emotions and clearly told them that they would be the same people to canonise him when he changes camp in future. The rest is history. Our people ought to have known that Okonkwo, who descended into the political arena in 2015, was not the actor we know but a politician. Politics, being what it is – and especially as it is practised in Nigeria, interest would become the most important consideration. So, let no one stake his money that Okonkwo.and other politicians that championed the ambitions of the various candidates will not change allegiance sooner or later! We must learn from history.

In progressive climes, leaders will never play such cards with the citizenry. Given the consistency of expectations of the citizens regarding their leaders’ character, leaders have no choice than to embrace consistency of character. But on the contrary, leaders in Nigeria have realised that what works here is the chameleonic tactic of changing one’s colour according to the colour of the environment. This is why blind leaders have continued to lead poor-sighted followers.

Henry Chigozie Duru, PhD, teaches journalism and mass communication at Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Nigeria.