By Oseloka H. Obaze
Nigerians rarely take pride in their incumbent leaders. They have good reasons not. As a sixty-five years old nation, Nigeria has never been blessed with a leader, who Nigerians freely elected and loved for his charisma, ideology, vision or disruptive thinking; or for being an unrepentant patriot who imbues a deep sense of patriotism. Nigerians never had a Nelson Mandela, Jerry Rawlings, Julius Nyerere, or Thomas Sankara. We covet being like Singapore, but have never produced a Lee Kuan Yew. The fault is not in the nation’s God endowed destiny, but in those who choose third-rate leaders and their acolytes, who follow such bad leaders blindly.
Our national bane remains bad leadership. We continue to pay for it. Still there’s plentiful evidence that Nigerians are resigned to electing compromise candidates to public offices. In return, they have infinitely paid the high price of such poor leadership. Thus, Nigeria’s perverse politics and associated comeuppance is not so much the fault of the leaders as it is of the followers. Because Nigerians never elect seminal leaders, inefficient governance becomes the norm, as they opt for sectionally preferred leaders, who though they meet the compromise criteria, are hobbled by partisan clientelism.
Nigerian leaders become heroes only after they die. Being leadership heroes and legends in their lifetime is a rarity and that reality is toxic to good governance. These facts impact on our national development and good governance credentials. Also, our poor governance statecraft has domestic and international implications. Domestically, our youths are being radicalized nationwide. Traveling abroad with a Nigerian passport tells the pathetic story.
As a nation, Nigeria has carved a niche of providing new indices of underdevelopment. Recently, as the Economist magazine was disclosing that “Nigeria has more people without electricity than any other country” and that “fixing that will be fiendishly difficult,” Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, National Chairman of the ruling All Progressives Alliance (APC), brazenly avowed that there was nothing wrong with Nigeria being a one-party state, since China a one-party state was developmentally well off. Well, what percentage of the people in China has electricity? 100%. Conversely, our non-salutary story is that the presidency is going off the national electricity grid and resorting to solar power. Was the announcement supposed to be a confidence-building measure? What electricity fate awaits Nigerians? Such dubious and contentious comparison coming from a prominent political leader overlooked a notable corollary: in China corrupt politicians and public officials are executed. Same should be true for Nigeria in order for Ganduje’s comparison to be valid.
The consequences of Nigeria’s poor governance are sorely felt, when bad leaders make frivolous and tactless comments aimed at blanking out or justifying prevailing ineptitudes. The political opposition has enough arsenals to rubbish the APC government as being apathetic and incompetent. Take for instance our budgetary accounting. There is nothing more emblematic of fuzzy math and corruption, than when we don’t know the barrels of oil we produce daily or quarterly; or how much oil is stolen. On both counts, the figures emanating from the CBN, the Ministry of Finance and NNPC are frequently at variance. Concerning our national deficit, at the close of 2024, the Ministry of Finance had it pegged at N6.6 trillion; the World Bank at N10.5 trillion and the CBN at N14.7 trillion. DMO figures were astronomically higher. The only commonsensical deduction is that as a nation, we are badly leveraged and criminally indebted. Still, we continue borrowing for non-regenerative ventures.
The bucket list of what constitutes good governance is short. Benchmarks of good governance are also few and easily achievable to provide an elongated value chain of dividends of democracy. Regrettably, as Nigerians, we play politics for the sake of politics, not for the sake of good governance or entrenching true democracy. Our leadership elite do not play politics as the grounding norm for good governance. They play politics to belong, to be in the corridors of power and to cash in.
Good governance is not rocket science. It will never be. But like democracy, good governance is hard work fostered by discipline. Good governance demands strict respect for the rule of law. So we have to work hard at it in order to fix our politics. In a presidential system like ours, the separation of powers is imperative. As such, we must resolve to entrust our national interest chores to those with the capacity and commitment to serve. We must also grasp that the enablers of good governance consists of the leaders, the people and the national institutions. These are the pivotal operatives. Each has a critical, consistent and resolute role to play. Weak leaders, weak institutions and weak people cannot produce a robust government, society or sustainable development. To wit, they cannot produce a vibrant democracy. Yet, working together they can be adaptive and transformative. They can orchestrate an orderly and productive society.
Nigerians are not blind to their leadership challenges. Oddly enough, they are also not averse to holding on doggedly to “blind hope,” which according to the tragedian Aeschylus translates to “we are living and partly living.” The manifestation of “blind hope” is now a national curse. To paraphrase a public policy interlocutor, “blind hope is a curse to every human, and every nation.” Most Nigerians are living dead or walking dead; thanks to our political rut and rot. Food and physical insecurity are rife. Healthcare delivery is a disaster. To paraphrase Pope Leo XIV, most Nigerians are “fed up with scandals, misused powers,” so much so “they no longer believe, no longer hope, and no longer pray because they think God has left.” Indeed, most Nigerians believe God already left Nigeria to her own proclivities and detriment; considering the Pandemonium’s Paradise that Nigeria has become.
When Obu Udeozo avers in a poem in his seminal 2021 anthology titled, GOD–Selected Poems, that “…Ministers, governors, and senators of earthly pleasure, harvest copious dividends of unforgiving flames..;” he unfurls the insidiousness of statecraft that our present leaders serve, invest or bequeath on their constituents. Nigerian leaders rank high in the realm, where rhetoric, “prejudiced and loud communication” of failed policies and governance modalities drown out free speech and the aspirations of the “gathering of the voices of the weak who that have no voice.” Nigerian leaders contrive poverty, hunger, insecurity and death as choice dividends of a presumed democracy. We now also attribute evident maladministration in INEC elections results and JAMB results to “glitches,” despite the respective institutional commitment to “free, fair, and credible electoral process,” and “service and integrity.”
Nigeria ambled into the status of a lawless nation long ago; not because there are no laws, but because there are no consequences for those who break the law regardless of their status. The alarming adjunct is that our law enforcement institutions -judiciary, police, state security and paramilitary agencies- are all weak. We can now even add the military to that cadre. In its proper context, our unlawful inclinations and becoming a nation of scofflaws can be explained by the epigram in Khalil Gibran’s book, The Prophet, wherein a question was asked: “But what of our laws master? And he answered: You delight in laying down laws. Yet you delight more in breaking them.”
We have other fault lines. Canvassing for full adherence to the rule of law and due process in a democracy does not consist of rhetoric, sound bites and propaganda. Good governance advocacy must speak to commitment and core values of democracy, complete with the checks and balances and total respect for constitutional dictates. These are anchored by the state’s unfettered service delivery and equal protection for every citizen. Sadly, our leaders gloss over these values. Nepotism has reached a new high. Preferential and discriminatory policies now induce cancel culture.
As we approach the 2027 general elections, we have entered a season of anomy. Defectors and defections are the norm. Non-subliminal APC Presidential Campaign billboards now glut the nation. President Bola Tinubu’s second term campaign is visibly on. All these violate the extant Electoral Law. But what does it matter? Financial profligacy is also on the rise. What galls the most is that the present leadership has appropriated the rights of approbation and reprobation. That is not a benchmark of good governance. Years back, when Nigerians were perceptibly bedeviled by severe austerity due to poor governance, Nigerians protested under the rubric of “Occupy Nigeria.” Now that the economic and security conditions have worsened, all forms of protestation, which ought to be routine, has been muted. Courage is on high demand. Yet courage has a deserted Nigerians as repression and reprisals manifest. The disunited political opposition seems cowed. Their complacency abets APC’s impunity.
Some suggest that it’s no longer worth writing; protesting or speaking up o the ills of Nigeria as those in power neither read nor listen. I disagree. We must continue to harp on key national interest issues and challenges. We must also continue to offer possible, probable and plausible solutions. We must continue underlining that good governance is not rocket science. As such, those who can’t lead should get the hell out of the way in the national interest. Let those who can do the job lead for the common good and in the national interest.
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Obaze is MD/CEO, Selonnes Consult – a policy, governance and management consulting firm in Awka.
The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine.
