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Category: Non Fiction / Politics
Year of Publication: 2018
BUY THIS BOOKLeadership Is Under Threat Worldwide
Around the world today, the very idea of leadership confronts big challenges, big opportunities, and big possibilities. From corporate leaders in advanced industrial countries who have to worry about the implications of disruptive innovation, the demands of corporate citizenship on business models, and the rising political risk to bottom lines from the surge in populism in western democracies, to entrepreneurs in Nigeria faced with unstable macroeconomic environments, absent infrastructure, policy inconsistency, and weak institutions, leadership is stressed and challenged.
From the political ferment in the United States in the era of Donald Trump to the stunning victory of Emmanuel Macron in response to the yearnings of French citizens for bold, new leadership. From the electoral shifts in the recent elections in the United Kingdom in the era of Brexit to the political crisis in Brazil over allegations of corruption against its elected leaders, leadership is the big issue. For good or ill, we live in its shadow.
We can understand why: in all its manifestations – political, corporate and entrepreneurial, science and innovation, academia, healthcare and public policy – leadership is the main determinant of social and economic progress.
It should be clear that the consequences of leadership failure, while not good for any society, developed or developing, are far more profound for developing countries such as Nigeria. Developed countries have strong institutions that can mitigate the effects of bad or weak political leadership. But our country, saddled as it has been with fledgling or undeveloped institutions, cannot achieve transformational progress without effective domestic political leadership. ​
What Real Leadership Means
We must confront and overcome the critical challenge of leadership in Nigeria if our democracy is to yield good governance, if the entrepreneurial talent expressed in the narrative of an Emerging Africa is to yield true economic transformation, and if the dynamism and ingenuity of Nigerians is to translate into an explosion of innovation that can make us competitive in a globalised world.
How can we get leadership to make Nigeria prosper and matter? We have seen impressive leadership by Nigerian entrepreneurs. These businessmen and women are altering our national narrative from one of poverty and foreign aid to one of creativity and wealth creation. Nigerian entrepreneurs are making progress against all odds. But they remain outliers in a sea of poverty, successful not because of good leadership and governance in our country but rather in spite of bad leadership and governance.
Our country’s leadership problem is rooted mainly in our venal politics. But it is precisely this space that determines what kind of society, economy, education and health system that we have.
The first order of business is that of our minds. We must reinvent the Nigerian mindset. Our minds determine whether or how we understand what leadership means or does not mean. Our minds determine what kind of worldview we bring to the task and responsibility of leadership. And our minds determine whether we have, or can acquire, the character and competence of leadership.
Great leadership must be transformational. I always approach the subject of leadership with the end in mind: what, for example, would be said about my service after I have completed a specific leadership task or responsibility? Indeed, to envision more radically, what will be said at my funeral? (One should hope that that event will hold somewhere north of my 100th birthday!)
I have applied this understanding to every leadership role in which I have had the privilege to serve. From national reconciliation and nation-building work by the United Nations in New York, Cambodia, Croatia, and Rwanda to institutional and management reform in the UN; from building global partnerships and raising billions of dollars for social investments in developing countries by The Global Fund in Geneva to structuring and facilitating investments in emerging markets; from leadership roles in monetary policymaking and banking sector reform in Nigeria in the wake of the global financial crisis to serving as a professor in one of America’s premier universities, my vision has always been to leave the situation, institution, or assignment I was tasked to handle much transformed from where I met it.
Leadership is about utilising appointive, elective or situational authority to envision, to inspire, and to take calculated risks. A leader’s task is to take societies, family units, organisations or institutions from A to Z or whatever point in the 26 alphabets is relevant, necessary, and possible. It is not, as we often misunderstand it in Nigeria, about merely holding positions of power or deploying authority mainly for self-serving purposes. This is why many career politicians in Nigeria that consider themselves “leaders” are in fact – and despite the veneer of democratic processes – more accurately “rulers”, or minions and accomplices of despotic power.
Leadership requires a certain kind of character that emphasises and upholds core values, a sense of abnegation to consciously forgo opportunities to advance self or other narrow interests, and the competence to bring these values to bear in a manner that creates change and sustains social progress.
In an illuminating article by Sunnie Giles that was published in the Harvard Business Review (“The Most Important Leadership Competencies”, According to Leaders around the World, HBR, March 15, 2016), the author’s research found that the top 10 leadership competences, based on the percentage of respondents from 200 global leaders asked to rate 74 qualities, were:
(1) Has high ethical and moral standards (67%);
(2) Provides goals and objectives with loose guidelines/direction (59%);
(3) Clearly communicates expectations (56%);
(4) Has the flexibility to change opinions (52%);
(5) Is committed to my ongoing training (43%);
(6) Communicates often and openly (42%);
(7) Is open to new ideas and approaches (39%);
(8) Creates a feeling of succeeding or failing together (38%);
(9) Helps me grow into a next-generation leader (38%);
(10) Provides safety for trial and error (37%).
As Giles explained, neuroscience confirms that a leader that possesses high standards based on core values and acting consistent with it, when combined with the ability to communicate expectations clearly, creates a safe and trusting environment and heightens brain activity related to creativity, social engagement, and a drive to excellence.
Leadership for Nigeria requires a worldview that can build a real nation-state out of the hodge-podge of ethnic nationalities lumped together by Britain as colonial power. For this to happen, a Nigerian leader must be able to rally his or her countrymen and women around a common goal and destiny that is higher than what divides us. It is around this goal that we must thrive together for progress. This is different from the narrow views that fuel the ethnic and religious identity irredentism that have dominated the domestic political space in Nigeria.
We are trapped in these ethnic tensions and strife because our rulers have exploited these divisions in the past instead of liberating and educating their citizens. But in order to liberate and educate citizens, the leader, must have the substance with which to educate and liberate. As the legal maxim puts it, nemo dat quad non habeat (you cannot give what you don’t have). Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, the late Nigerian musical maestro, had little time for elegant Latin maxims. He put it bluntly in one of his songs: “Teacher, don’t teach me nonsense”!
Nigeria’s Leadership Jinx
In the quest for good leadership and governance in Africa, few if any countries are more important than Nigeria, Africa’s largest economy and most populous country with 180 million people. Nigeria, like many African countries, has made some progress, but far too little. We are a far distance in our stage of development from where we could have been after 57 years of independence. Nigeria’s case is especially disappointing when we consider the country’s vast reservoir of human capital and the dynamic nature of its enterprising people.
As the great African writer Chinua Achebe wrote, “Nigeria’s problem is simply and squarely that of leadership”. This leadership failure has led to slow progress (and many outright reversals) in the quest to build a united nation, and a dependence on raw mineral and commodity exports (crude oil) for foreign exchange earnings that has prevented real economic transformation.
Nigeria’s leadership jinx flows out of three conundrums. These are the “us versus them”, the “power versus responsibility”, and the “loyalty versus competence” syndromes.
“Us” v “Them”. This is the problem of ethnic religious or other atomistic identity that defines the acquisition or exercise of political power in African countries. An extreme attachment to these primordial identities creates factions. This problem exists even in mature democracies and economically advanced countries such as the United States, Belgium and Spain, but because these countries have already achieved advanced economic progress,the problem is an imperfection or a characteristic in their democracies, and is better managed in the wider national interest. In Nigeria it manifests as ethnic or religious identity politics in which politicians feel they can only trust persons of their tribe or faith. This narrow worldview is a foundational problem that has prevented the development of exceptional leadership.
The effect of these divisions on leadership selection and practice is that contests for political power in Nigeria are based not on ideology or clearly articulated leadership goals, but are in reality contests for ethnic or religious dominance. Political power obtained on this basis can hardly be exercised as transformational leadership. This breeds a “governance” culture of patronage based on divisive identities.
Authority v Service/ Power v Responsibility. In Nigeria, as in many other African cultures pre-colonial rule, the power of traditional Kings was absolute. This cultural reality has not adapted well to concepts of modern statehood, democracy, and the checks and balances offered by the separation of executive, judicial and legislative power. Political leadership is thus often perceived in Nigeria more as authority than service, as raw power rather than responsibility. In this context, electoral accountability for the performance of leadership is often weak. This cultural reality, however, is beginning to change in a gradual but irreversible direction as democratic practice matures toward substance rather than the mere formality of holding elections.
This power/responsibility conundrum is also reflected in a prevalent culture of sycophancy in political leadership. Few aides or government officials can provide independent minded and objective advice to a superior at any level of authority and leadership. This culture of prioritising a place in the good graces of a leader’s ego over actual work performance creates a strong incentive for leadership failure. (“L’elat c’est moi”)(“I am the State”), as the French King Louis XVI famously stated. Many Nigerian political leaders have this mindset.
Loyalty v Competence. The “Us versus Them” instinct combined with that of power versus responsibility creates an exaggerated need for Nigerian leaders to surround themselves with “loyal” aides. Often, personal loyalty is reified above competence because our career politicians want to feel secure in the loyalty of subordinates with whom the leader is personally acquainted. This tendency often excludes competence from a leader’s immediate orbit, precisely because transformation is not the leader’s real priority. On the contrary, African leaders who have placed a strong accent on technocratic competence in countries like Rwanda and Nigeria during the presidency of Olusegun Obansanjo from 1999 to 2007, have been able to achieve transformational or at least significant progress, in particular in economic management which is Africa’s real contemporary challenge.
Citizen-solutions
How can Nigeria overcome its leadership capital deficit?
Fortunately, democracy offers a great opportunity for an improved process of leadership selection. This brings to my mind the role of the citizen. In a normal scheme of things, it is leaders that shape the destinies of nations, but in functioning democracies citizens act as a check on leadership performance. In a country such as ours, then, where so-called leaders have performed so poorly, it is time for citizens to stand up for their own future.
Our citizens must exercise their democratic rights more effectively and make choices informed by objective leadership selection criteria. That criteria needs to include character, competence, and relevant experience, as well as the track record of persons seeking positions of leadership. To do so, voters must understand what really is in their best interest. That “what” is frequently different from the primordial affiliations and the patronage systems that politicians exploit and build to continue ruling instead of leading us. When subjective factors such as ethnicity, religion and corrupt inducement determine who we vote for in elections instead of objective leadership competence in leadership selection, we become very active accomplices in their own poverty.
A paradigm shift in leadership selection will require voter education by civil society organisations. It calls for increased demands for democratic accountability by citizens and civil society, the institution of a real social contract between states and citizens as demanded by the latter, and an all-important emphasis on leadership training for the up and coming generation of youth who we should want to be real leaders, not rulers, of tomorrow.
Conclusion
The leaders of Nigeria must build a real nation-states out of what Count Clemens von Metternich, Europe’s leading statesman in the early 19th century, referring to Italy, called “a mere geographical expression” – in other words, countries that are artificially formed and are not nations in a real sense. Our leaders have the responsibility of building institutions that can create a level playing field for everyone and shield citizens from tyranny, to achieve economic transformation, and to reclaim our countries’ place in the world.
Citizens, for their part, have the responsibility to decide who should have the responsibility for their welfare. In many African countries, they have not taken this duty as seriously as they should. Professor Ameena Gurib-Fakim, the competent and erudite President of Mauritius – one of Africa’s most successful countries – put it so pithily: “But the onus is also on all Africans. People have to start asking the right questions. Politicians, leaders, policymakers in normal democracies are all accountable to the people. But, and I am sorry for saying this brutally, we get the government we deserve. The one we vote in. It’s your vote”.
Recommendations
The next president of Nigeria must take the following leadership actions beginning on Day 1 of his/her four-year term of office:
Communicate clear goals based on a unifying vision of Nigeria’s national destiny
Uphold high ethical and moral standards of governance
Lead by example based on the principles of transformative leadership
Ensure the execution of the appropriate training for the effective management that must support such transformative leadership across the length and breadth of Nigeria’s public service
Personally (not delegate ministers or other Government officials) hold regular town hall meetings across the country to communicate a new vision of leadership and governance in Nigeria and get a 360-degree “leadership audit” from the citizens of Nigeria
Support and empower the “Office of the Citizen” to hold the government and governance accountable to the citizens of Nigeria.