Society on the question of which is more apt for a country like Nigeria between government led and the parasite, sorry, private sector led development strategy. Of course, even though of right wing persuasions, all the leading economists at that time such as Aboyade, Okigbo, Kodlinye, Alison Ayida and so on, said Nigeria could only develop through a state led strategy. A manipulated version of the same debate instigated by the IBB regime in 1987 repeated the same outcome. The current decay in Nigeria is the direct outcome of the reversal of the popular direction in the IBB debate.
At the end of the day on Friday, May 28th, 2010 in Dutse, Jigawa State, any of Alhaji Sule Lamido whose brainchild the debate is or any of his commissioners could have erupted in justifiable ululation for bringing to be that particular debate under the rubric, “Contemporary Nigeria: Where is the Missing Link? In other words, what is wrong with us as a country? Is ours just a crisis of failure to manage ourselves well or is it a case of endemic catastrophe, something irredeemable?
Fortunately and unfortunately, the question of ‘where is the missing link’ was reduced to the phenomenon of leadership failure, a contradiction in itself since democracy is supposed to have solved the problem of qualitative leadership, democracy being a leadership recruitment process via the electoral process.
Professor Nur Alkali started with the very dialectical statement that the missing link is the ideology, not leadership, arguing correctly that quality leadership itself is a reflection of the contextual background of the leader. Nigerians, he said, should not make the mistake of taking such features as rampant conflicts, poverty, leadership, etc as the trouble with Nigeria because, for him, these are symptoms of a major disease which we must trace. The trouble with Nigeria is ideological aridity which explains why we cannot produce more of the Lamidos and that, for him, is the missing link.
Professor Sule Bello, another Historian took over from a completely opposite direction that leadership is the most fundamental explanation or the missing link. First, he insisted on a distinction between the leaders of the immediate post-Independence era and the current set of leaders. The leaders in the immediate post-Independence did not fail, he posited. His reasons are that they were nationalists, they achieved federalism and occasioned substantial developments both at the regional levels and at the centre. “So, we must not generalize. Leaders of the First Republic did not fail but subsequent ones did”.
Even in the current decay, he singled out the late Umaru Yar’adua and Governor Fashola as having done very well compared to where governors are caught abroad with cash or where the leaders were the ones provoking crisis, bringing under development instead of development.
The lesson of History, for him, is leadership must connect with History. This, he said, is why even though the poorest state in the country, Jigawa is also the only one running a social welfare scheme. He added that after going round Dutse and the environ, he too wondered where Governor Lamido was getting the money to accomplish the infrastructural intervention he had seen.
Chief Emeka Ejiofor, the little known other biographer of late Aminu Kano associated himself with Sule Bello’s analysis, listing so many examples of Malam Aminu Kano’s sacrifices and extreme acts of self-abnegation. He couldn’t help urging Lamido to “go for the Presidency. You are not too old.”
Professor Ahmadu Jalingo, Vice-Chancellor of Taraba State University stood in the middle of the argument. He agreed that leadership is the problem but saw a snag in the leadership-followership dialectics in Nigeria. Taking the case of Northern Nigeria, he sees a problem in the notion among the populace to see evil leadership as what God might have brought to be. This attitude must change, he insisted. Then the strain of lamention crept in. He is sad that after all that NEPU went through in the hands of the NPC in the first Republic to get the sons of the Talakawa to contest and win elections, the children of the Talakawa have turned out worse in political behaviour than even the aristocracy. And for him, this is the contradiction to stress, especially the present attitude where these same children of Talakawa no longer feel adequate unless and until they go and acquire traditional titles from the aristocracy. Professor Jalingo said military intervention in politics had changed leadership orientation whereby instead of seeing themselves as servants, the leaders only want to command every other person and want to be obeyed without question.
Three interventions from the floor added their own dimensions. First was Dr Mohammed Jummare who held that Nigerians were looking for social transformation, not reform. He put the leadership crisis on the wholesale importation of the American Constitution even as America is a country of immigrants. The constitutional arrangement, in his argument cannot produce a leader because nobody can really become a leader within just eight years in power. Chief Dubem Onyia who spoke next supported that intervention, saying a leader must have gone through tutelage. The answer, for him, is where the next Nigerian leader must be somebody with political education, organizational heritage and experience.
For Professor Jerry Gana who spoke on behalf of G-9, (the initial persons whose plumage led to the G-18 which expanded to G-34 and eventually the PDP and they are Dr. Alex Ekwueme, Chief Solomon Lar, Alhaji Adamu Ciroma, late Chief Bola Ige, late Alhaji Abubakar Rimi, late Senator Francis Ella, Prof Jerry Gana, Dr Iyorchia Ayu and Gov Sule Lamido), every other thing is right with Nigeria except the value system. The people are good, the country is even over endowed, the constitution is okay and the economic system is alright. The value system is such that we have education without character and leadership without vision and, according to him, the challenge is to restore values because it is from the values that leadership draws its hypodermic instructions. He too slipped into a momentary rally mood, saying that the progressives in this country were proud of Sule Lamido.
Cont’d on page 42
