The Trouble with Nigeria
Chinua Achebe, notwithstanding that he
never won the Nobel Prize for literature, remains, for me, the most significant
African writer of the 20th century. The power of his pen sprang not
so much from his mastery of traditional folklore or for his simple prose always
dipped generously in the fragrance of Ibo proverbs, but more from the visionary
essence of his prose and poetry.
Achebe
was much more than a writer who loved to manufacture beautiful cadences of
words. He was an engaged social critic who constantly summoned his creative
muse to help decrypt the puzzle that is his country, Nigeria. And in doing
that, Achebe facilitated in no small measure an insightful crystallization and
comprehension of the real challenges that confronts Nigeria. This visionary
and problem framing attribute of Achebe was most compellingly demonstrated
about 30 years ago when he penned his evergreen masterpiece, titled: The
Trouble with Nigeria.
The trouble with Nigeria, Achebe
remonstrated is leadership. This postulation is as profound and true today as
it was about 30 years ago when it was first made. Nonetheless, ever since
Achebe made this decisive determination that Nigeria's problem is really one of
leadership, efforts have been made at different times by different individuals
and institutions to discountenance Achebe's inference and push a new theory
that locates Nigeria's problem as mainly that of corruption.
The problem with these new age theories
that attempt to locate corruption as the primary pathology plaguing Nigeria is
that it fails to recognize that corruption is actually only an attribute of a
valueless leadership. In other words, fix the leadership challenge and you find
out that you have also simultaneously addressed the problem of corruption. This
brings us back to Achebe's original thesis, which avers that the real trouble
with Nigeria is a lack of leadership. Put properly, the real challenge with
Nigeria is a dearth of values-based leadership.
The Solution with Nigeria
Interestingly, the solution with
Nigeria lies also in integrating, recognizing and celebrating a culture of values-based
leadership in our institutions, leaders, systems and processes. A dearth of
leaders with values of integrity, faith, honor, compassion and duty, etc has
opened and continues to expand the floodgates of mindless and brazen corruption
at all levels and strata of society. In this sense, corruption is only an outcome
of valueless leadership. Corruption is not the main issue. It is only a by-product.
Fix the character of leadership and the incidence of corruption will be reduced
to a negligible level.
So we can rightly infer that solution
with Nigeria invariably lies in the development and enthronement of
values-based leaders and values-based leadership in our polity. Men and women
whose reference point goes beyond pecuniary concerns; men and women who embrace
a higher nobility of purpose and conduct their affairs and provide service with
an attitude of integrity, honesty, compassion and godliness that infuses and
elevates their thought process, actions and words.
So what is Values-Based Leadership?
In a world in which ruthless
exploitation and competition, self serving behaviours, instability, treachery,
lies, deceit, dishonesty, cheating, stealing of national resources, bootlicking
and immoral compromises, etc seem to be the norm rather than the exception and
indeed the fastest route to success, values and values-based leadership hold a
number of extraordinary promises that any serious nation should embrace. But
first what are values and what is values based-leadership?
Values, according to the Oxford
Dictionary, “are Principles or standards of behaviour; one’s judgement of what
is important in life.” The
Business Dictionary.com defines Values as
“important
and lasting beliefs or ideals shared by the members of a culture about what is good or bad and desirable
or undesirable. Values have major influence on a person's behavior and attitude and serve as broad guidelines in all situations.” And Wikipedia states that “values provide an internal reference for what is good, beneficial,
important, useful, beautiful, desirable, constructive, etc. Values generate
behaviour and help solve common human problems for survival by
comparative rankings of value, the results of which provide answers to
questions of why people do what they do and in what order they choose to do
them. values relate to the norms of a culture, but they are more global and
abstract than norms. Norms provide rules for behavior in specific situations,
while values identify what should be judged as good or evil. While norms are standards,
patterns, rules and guides of expected behavior, values are abstract concepts
of what is important and worthwhile.”
Values-based based leadership means
different things to different people and organisations. Not surprisingly
therefore, there are also an ubiquitous array of definitions of the term. But, for
the purpose of this article, there are four definitions of the term that distil
and clearly illustrate the fundamentals of values-based leadership. Of the
four, the fourth definition is the punch line: “Values-based
leadership (VBL) is the exercise of influence in relationships, teams,
organizations and communities through choices and decisions guided by explicit
and consistently practiced values that balance healthy self-interest
and the common good”(Royal Roads university Canada).
“The essence of leadership
in any polity is the recognition of real need, the uncovering and exploiting of
contradictions among values and between values and practice, the realigning of
values…The leader’s fundamental act is to induce people to be aware or
conscious of what they feel – to feel their true needs so strongly, to define
their values so meaningfully, that they can be moved to purposeful action.”
(MacGregor Burns, 1978, p. 43). “Values-based leadership is about creating a
values-based umbrella large enough to accommodate the various interests of
followers, but focused enough to direct their energies in pursuit of a common
good. In practical business terms, it's about creating the conditions under
which all followers can perform independently and effectively toward a single
objective." (O’Toole, 1996, p. xi). "Values-based leadership is
leading by example, doing the right thing for the right reasons and not
compromising core principles." (Dean, 2008, p. 61).
And why Value-Based Leadership?
By
unpacking the meaning of values-based leadership above, we can see clearly the
vital importance and role of values and values-based leadership in the effort
to build a good Nigerian society. Where leadership is premised on values,
corruption will disappear and other common systemic pathologies that are
currently responsible for arrested development in Nigeria will become historic
relics. Values-based leadership holds the key to unlock the potential of
Nigeria; to unleash the latent energies of a slumbering nation; to enthrone the
forces of good governance; to engender exemplary leadership and enthrone efficient
management of national resources.
Why
values-based leadership? Indeed, it will banish the celebration of mediocrity
and propagation of dishonest enterprise in our polity; it will leapfrog
Nigeria’s progress and development by throwing up men and women who have the
leadership capacity that will provide a sense of direction towards achieving
national goals as well as harness and effectively oversee the utilization and
allocation of scarce national resources for the provision of the basic needs of
the citizenry; it will stop the
preponderance of rent- seeking-traders, looters and impostors who populate the
recesses of power at all levels of our polity and parade themselves as leaders
of a free nation; it will give voice to the many who cry for freedom from lack
in the land of plenty and give choice to the millions whose stubborn hope for a
good Nigerian society refuse to die.
Why
values-based leadership? It will
dramatically change the global and domestic image of Nigeria and Nigerians for
the better. It will galvanize the citizenry and generate in them greater enthusiasm and patriotism for the task
of nation building; it will midwife a culture of social responsibility and a
reputation of integrity, fairness, equity, honesty and reliability, openness,
accountability, transparency and trust between the citizenry and those leading
them; it will essentially ensure that Nigeria, like the mythical Phoenix, rises
from the ashes of self immolation, reborn and renewed to lead Africa to take
its rightful place in this new global order.
Final Thoughts
The proclivity to celebrate rather than
question ill gotten wealth, fame and status is one of the principal pathologies
that erode the foundations of value-based leadership in Nigeria. An unabashed attitude
of praise singing and cheering of failed public officials rather than holding
them accountable to their mandates makes citizens complicit in frustrating the
emergence of values-based leadership.
These pathologies and many others not
mentioned here can be easily addressed by refocusing our education system and
institutions to begin to focus more on values and ethics. A conscious and
deliberate effort made by government, civil society organizations, private
sector based entities and citizens today to invest more in the development of values-based
future Nigerian leaders is the only practical and effective way of arresting
the drift and securing the future of Nigeria.
To move from thought to action in the
conceptualization of a good Nigerian society, there also must be a fundamental
recognition and comprehension that the good Nigerian society that is envisaged
must be one that is deeply rooted on the foundations of the rule of law. For
this to happen, again, we are compelled to accept that a generation of
values-based leaders must emerge because the current decay and chaos in the
system suits the operators of the status quo. Since it is remiss to assume that
those who currently benefit from the corruption, disorderliness and tardiness
in the system will work effectively to change it, it is inevitable therefore that
well meaning civil society organizations, private sector entities and
individuals have to coalesce and actively initiate a program and process of
reclaiming the heart, soul and future of Nigeria so that the promise of a good
Nigerian society can remain alive.
For the immediate time, Nigeria sorely
needs values-based citizens who can stand up and take responsibility for their
lives, circumstance and country. Leaders, whether elected, appointed or
selected will always respond to citizens' voices and demands. Therefore, it behoves
Nigerian citizens to reject the farcical theory of “stomach infrastructure “and act patriotically at all times to
ensure that they vote values-based leaders and hold them accountable to deliver
values-based leadership. The good news is that we can all, in our different
capacities as citizens, play a positive role towards the emergence of a good
Nigeria society.
The author, Anthony Ubani, is a Fellow
of the Chartered Institute of Administration, Nigeria and currently serves as
the Director of Programs at the Nigeria Leadership Initiative (NLI), Lagos,
Nigeria.