Posted on my e-mail by a Ghanaian friend sometime ago was this damning statement: “Nigerians, a people who are so forward in looking backward (e.g. they cherish celebrating anniversaries and memorials) but so backward in looking forward (they lack focus and vision).”
I felt really unsettled throughout that day while ruminating on this over and over.
But what has Ghana got that we don’t have and have even more in abundance. However, I grudgingly agree and accept that Ghana has purposeful, visionary leadership that we are yet to have. The big question is, “Can’t we have it”? The answer is, “Yes we can have it if we desire and demand it with appropriate will-power and actions to match”.
Alas! Now, Nigerians know what they want and it seems this time around, they really want what they know they want, if only to deliver themselves from shackles of abject poverty and despair.
In the modern day Human-Resource-Management-Concepts, effective leadership is defined as a function of character and competence. When you have a leader possessing one, to the neglect of the other, he or she will end up being ineffective because there will be no trustworthiness for such a leader from the led. Where and when there is no trustworthiness, there cannot be shared-vision and lack of share-vision results in division (and diversion/disruption) and where division reigns, purpose can hardly be fulfilled. It is said that any human setting (Nations inclusive) is a relationship with a purpose. Really, the purpose of life is to live a life of purpose.
For instance a practicing surgeon with good character but lacking requisite competence, is nothing better than a cow-butcher, neither is a competent surgeon, lacking good character equally better. Imagine him deciding to abandon you on the operating table, to attend to his female lover not minding wasting your precious life, just because he has no conscience whatsoever.
In Nigeria, we have been having leaders who lack either or both of these virtues. However, providence is presenting a big opportunity to us into having a leader in possession of these two virtues.
His name is General Muhammadu Buhari, He is tested and trusted and these are attested to, by both the low and the mighty, in fact, the attestation by friends and foes alike, is that Buhari is the main issue in our prevailing National discourse. I watched him delivering that Chatham-House lecture and I saw a charismatic, cool, calm, and collected Nigerian president-in-waiting. Honestly!
The consensus believe is that, the level of corruption in this country is too awesome and seems irredeemable, but my simple answer is in the case of Malaysia or better still, China (with a population of over 1.3 billion as compared to Nigeria’s 170million) where corruption is being effectively curtailed, in spite of her size and complexities.
The secret of the solution to this riddle is premised on the fact that effective life and living operate on universal principles. The 80/20 Prireto Optimality Principle readily comes to mind in this regard.
The truth is that, it is about 20% of the high level executive-corruption that is accounting for 80% of the plethora of plague of corruptions bedeviling this country. If the 20% can be religiously tackled by a very able leadership, 80% of the menace of corruption will vamoose in no distant future. Which will, in effect generate surplus fund in the Nation’s coffers, to robustly tackle the issue of infrastructural resuscitation, power-generation and other enablers that can woo investors (both local and foreign) into boosting economic activities that could enhance job creation/employment opportunities for our teeming youth. But we will need that leader with the strength of character and the matching competence in concept, in context, and in content to apply the working knowledge of a team-player via this 80/20 principle.
Devoid of any sentimentality, the Buhari-Osinbajo ticket appears the most serious combinations for this task, in the present circumstance.
Perusing a section of the paper presented by the erstwhile C.B.N. Governor, Alh. Sanusi Lamido Sanusi (now HRH Emir of Kano Emirate) on the 22nd July 2002 in Lagos tagged “BUHARISM: Economic Theory and Political Economy” it will be obvious to all and sundry that, the main thrust of the economic – policy of a Buhari-administration will be founded on utilitarianism (- the philosophy of the greatest benefits for the greatest numbers of people) which is in sync with that of the APC party manifesto.
Finally, this auspicious time, in the democratic experience of their potentially great nation, is not time for rhetorics, because if we miss it again, we can as well forget it.
SUN
END
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