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Coping with Leadership Meltdown in Nigeria By Maxwell James Why are Nigerians talking about economic recession today? If The United States and other western nations are debating on this present calamity, is because they are experiencing an economic crisis that is as awful as the days of the Great Depression. In America today, millions of jobs, investments and homes are gone. According to President Barack Obama, the American economy may lose five million more jobs; unemployment will approach double digits if nothing urgent is done. The newly inaugurated administration said the recovery plan it initiated seeks to create or save more than three million jobs, provide immediate tax relief to 95 percent of American workers, ignite spending by businesses and consumers alike in order to strengthen the economy for years to come. The administration is also not resting on its oars to concretize a strategy for America’s long term growth and opportunity in areas such as renewable energy, health care and education. Americans are been extolled for their vision, strength of character, and the clarity of purpose in analyzing and coming up with far reaching measures and innovations in addressing their economic meltdown. Nigeria is still groping in the dark as she squanders her leaders of tomorrow, wallows in deep groans of unemployment and sobs in silent tears of homelessness occasioned by apparent leadership collapse at all level of our national life. What the global community is witnessing today has been with us for decades. Have successive Nigerian governments not been recycling poverty, unemployment and homelessness? Millions of jobs that Nigerians relied on are gone decades ago and nothing is being done; millions of family investments have since disappeared; Nigerians are hopeless as nobody knows what tomorrow will bring; our children are worst hit considering the fact that they study in schools that put them at disadvantage to use Obama’s words. Nigeria is enmeshed in a muffled, garbled, bewildered and clearly frail leadership ever experienced in her history. Though we have not been subjugated, cowed or overwhelmed by any other nation on the African continent, it is sadly clear that we are not the true giant of Africa in all sense of the word. Frail leadership has never constructed the greatness of any human society. The human and societal development of every nation is hinged on, and guaranteed by responsible and visionary leadership which pilots the affairs of the state. Leaders like Augustus Caesar of Rome, Franklyn Delano Roosevelt of America (FDR), Winston Churchill of Britain, and Friedrich Ebert of Germany are role models in this regard. They inspired their nations to greatness. FDR was reputed for his New Deal package which placed America at the peak of global socio-economic dominance, Churchill led Great Britain during its darkest hour crushing the Nazi annihilation carnage, Adenauer was instrumental to the monumental German Post-War economic recovery effort. The giant of the third world today, China, was led by men to attain her present global ranking. In Nigeria, a blurry and fuzzy Presidency meets an egocentric National Assembly. Government business has been reduced to nothing in our clime. Nigerians are witnessing an agonizing hard times because of near zero effort by government to address matters relating to their wellbeing. The presidency under Yar’Adua has become a great epicenter of confusion with no clear agenda or path to follow despite the hubris that greeted the emergence of the administration’s 7 point agenda. News from Aso Rock, Nigeria’s seat of power is rather becoming increasingly cacophonous and contradictory. Basic information takes the back stage even as rumors and speculation reign supreme. It is apparent that Mr. President needs regular medical attention due to the state of his health but his media handlers prefer to sell a dummy to Nigerians. If today Nigeria is feeling or witnessing the impact of any global crisis, meltdown or crunch–it is simply leadership. The inability of successive governments to translate our huge oil revenue into meaningful use is the chief reason why Nigeria as a nation cannot survive a world that is spiritedly searching for alternative energy. The huge foreign reserve and soaring oil price this present administration inherited are meaningless to Nigerians as practical darkness, death traps as roads, labor unrest, lull in governance, insecurity, kidnappings in the Niger Delta, police brutality and outright hunger are common phenomena in our country . The institutional instrument in the mould of Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) that was instituted and supported by the previous administration and the international community to check official and privileged roguery was dismantled with immediate effect. This administration found friends in some former governors who are apostles of hermeneutic bias with penchant and uncanny ability to apostatize against simple application of reason and logic. Today, the greatest friends of the administration are Nigerians who are captive of sentiment and those who feasted on their state public purse with reckless abandon. While the newly ‘reformed’ EFCC has been chasing shadows without tangible result, the anti corruption, due process and transparency postures of the present government are doubly doubtful. Nigerians barely know the monthly allocation of their various states in this regime. After experiencing alien and archaic politics of retrogression and reversals of the previous government efforts – both good and bad, this administration is still looking for where and how to start almost two years after. Too sad! It is this leadership recession that gets our economy messier – and time for a remedy that puts Nigerians back to work after decades of joblessness is not in sight. Nobody is talking about health care system anymore because government doctors prefer to divert public drugs for private use and nobody is crying foul. It is this same leadership recession that made President Yar’Adua to sum up his rescue package in pay cut for political office holders while transparency and accountability in governance are jettisoned. With our abundant natural resources, the government should be thinking of how to diversify the economy within three years to meet up with America’s alternative sources of energy target. Also if the government is still awake, it must invest in tomorrow. Technical schools must be upgraded with state-of-the-art classrooms, libraries and laboratories with decent take home pay for teachers to boost their efforts. We must invest our huge foreign reserve in infrastructures and power instead of debating on who gets what between the three tiers of government. All strategy adopted must be implemented with unprecedented transparency and accountability, so Nigerians know where their petrodollars are going and how they are being spent. Maxwell James Yenagoa, Bayelsa State
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