‘’Economic growth isn’t very meaningful if half the country that you’re growing is left behind in poverty.’’
-Ashok Khosla
‘’When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor , they call me a Communist.’’
-Archbishop Dom Helder Pessoa Camara
Stripped of all its financial wealth, prestige, and honour, Nigeria is today the world’s biggest laughing stock, viewed with ignominy, contempt and scorn. A country with neither desire nor drive for greatness, it has frittered away trillions of dollars since crude oil was discovered at Oloibiri in 1956, and squandered, according to estimates, some $600billion in nothing tangible between 1999 and 2011.
The 32nd largest country on earth, and the 10th most populous in the world, its citizens eke out a living on a meager $2 per day while its ‘’politicians’’ systematically nibble away at the foundations of its corporate existence. Thoroughly despised by serious minded nations, barely tolerated in the ranks of the mediocre, but globally envied for its stupendous natural wealth, the question in the minds of an agitated world is not whether it will unravel, but when.
Signs of Nigeria’s economic rot abound everywhere. They assail your eyes and nose, and tug at your heart wherever you turn. Employing a scorch-earth policy, the powers that be have systematically destroyed its educational, health, and research services. Today the country boasts no public institution of global note. Its infrastructure ranks amongst the most dilapidated in the world. Roads, airports, seaports, you name it. A country bigger than Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Netherlands, and Ireland put together, Nigeria generates a meager 3,898 mega watts of electricity, while it requires some 35,650 megawatts. Any wonder Ghana, its proud neighbour, once chided the giant with clay feet as ‘’big for nothing’’?
The extent of Nigeria’s all round decline is underscored by the fact that Nigeria won no medal during the just concluded IAAF World Championships in Athletics in Daegu, South Korea, where Kenya made an impressive 17-medal haul, including 7 Gold. Nigeria’s national football teams qualified neither for the 28th edition of Africa Cup of Nations taking off January 21st in Gabon & Equatorial Guinea nor the 2012 Olympic Soccer Event scheduled to take off on July 25 at the Millennium Stadium, Cardiff. Other than the corruption ridden Oil & Gas, the country owns no key industries. The prominent key industries or companies in the country are owned by foreigners: Nigerian Breweries by Holland, Guinness by Ireland, WAPCO by France, MTN by South Africa, Coca Cola, PEPSICO, ExxonMobil and Chevron all by USA, and Total by France, PZ and Unilever by UK and Greek interests.
While the country has produced a few world beaters in the corporate world: Alhaji Aliko Dangote, Pascal Dozie, Tony Elumelu, Dr. Mike Adenuga, Aig Imokhuede, and Jim Ovia, it has not been blessed with a single visionary leader in the socio-political arena. A wise man once said, without a vision the people perish. It should have been, without a visionary leader, the people perish.
A leader rallies people to the future. According to Marcus Buckingham, ‘’Leaders are fascinated by the future. You are a leader if, and only if, you are restless for change, impatient for progress, and deeply dissatisfied with the status quo.’’ ‘’As a leader’’ Buckingham asserts, ‘’you are never satisfied with the present, because in your head you can see a better future, and the friction between ‘what is’ and ‘what could be’ burns you, stirs you up, propels you forward. This is leadership.’’
Jolted by Soviet’s Sputnik launch of 1957, unprecedented in technological implications, John F. Kennedy would proclaim on May 25 1961, barely five months after assuming office as the 35th President of the United States, that ‘’I believe this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon, and returning him safely to the Earth.’’ On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong stepped on the Lunar surface, proclaiming with sublime humility the immortal words, ‘’one small step for man, a giant leap for mankind’’, restoring America’s closely guarded honour and pride. It didn’t matter that President Kennedy had been gone for six years, having been assassinated in 1963.
Leadership is about trust. A leader understands that a promise is sacrosanct, it cannot be broken. As Martin Luther King Jr. once said, "ultimately a genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus, but a moulder of consensus." How many Nigerian leaders have strived to mould consensus, point the nation in the direction of prosperity, growth and happiness? From independence in 1960 to date, a period of over 51 years, how many Nigerian leaders can genuinely claim to have exhibited the trait of a true visionary leader restless for change?
Any fool can embezzle, steal, and misappropriate public funds, but only a leader can make a difference. Until those who aspire to lead subscribe to the ideals of the Athenian Oath ‘’….We will strive unceasingly to quicken the public sense of public duty, that thus, in all these ways, we will transmit this city, not only, not less, but greater, better, and more beautiful than it was transmitted to us’’, the search for Nigeria’s messiah continues. It’s not about the man in the saddle, it’s about us.
