Pride is concerned with who is right. Humility is concerned with what is right
At the core of political leadership problems in Nigeria are the twin issues of pride and humility. As for humility, (the hub of all virtues), once this intrinsic worth is missing, you find in a leader the ugly side that centres on self.
If President Muhammadu Buhari were humble in leadership, his concern all the while would have been about what is right for Nigeria and Nigerians, not who is right among the critics of his style and government. He ought not to have been mulish about issues such as restructuring just because of who is asking for it. Restructuring is surely a better alternative to the breakup that is staring Nigeria in the face right now.
It will take longer for the dust raised by the President’s June interviews to settle. This is because the interview unearthed a lot about the much-talked-about body language of the President. The interviews aired by Arise News and NTA bared all about the so-called body language. It was captured well and taken beyond feelings as the President undressed his mind frankly on several issues including those in the department of too-little-too-late. The interview dusted so many theories about the person and politics of the real Muhammadu Buhari.
The Buhari interviews also put a lie to the reading of some political watchers that President Buhari will be indifferent or apathetic about who succeeds him in 2023. Also, the raging story that the President was not in charge of his government, that Garba Shehu was indeed dishing out what he releases in the name of the invisible Presidency was discountenanced by the interviews.
These TV outings reestablished an existing notion that the President is too sentimentally attached to his Fulani kinsmen as shown in his bid to exhume an antiquated open grazing law just to appease them. To an extent, the interviews also brought out the President as one not given to pretensions and who does not mince words about his likes or dislikes. This was copiously demonstrated in his attitude to the South-East and his dot in a circle theory which he sought to propound before a beleaguered nation.
As of June 2020, virtually all parts of this country were under siege, one way or another. The geo-political North was blistering with terrorism, banditry, and abductions; the South West was simmering with the Sunday Igboho revolution occasioned by the herdsman menace, but the Commander-in-Chief’s focus was on the South-East and the intractable Indigenous Peoples of Biafra, IPOB, and the militant wing, the Eastern Security Network, ESN.
Bookmakers believe that his looking away from the challenges from other trouble hotbeds and focusing on the South-East region is a strategy to isolate the region for a targeted annihilation. His voiced gratitude to unnamed South-South elders, who visited the Aso Rock Villa on a mission to disown the Biafra struggle, clearly explains the strategy. Other soft-touch approaches from the regime concerning the South-South go further to underscore this.
The usually tough stance of the President wanes when the other regions, particularly the South-South are concerned. The General looks tame and visibly restrained when the South-South is at issue. He is always ready to dance to their tune even when the drumming is not so melodious. Critical minds see this apparent affection for the South-South more as a ploy to distance from the recalcitrant South-East, IPOB, and ESN.
First came a threat and an ultimatum from the iconic militant leader Tompolo to the President to raise the governing board of the Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC, or get set for a showdown.
Major-Gen Buhari has always given an image of not succumbing to subversive threats from “bloody” civilians. But when the Tompolo threat came the government did not only buckle but hurriedly dispatch the Niger Delta Minister, Senator Godswill Akpabio, to beg. Akpabio had to locate Tompolo’s house to push through the presidential plea.
Again last weekend when the dreaded Niger Delta Avengers, NDA, resurrected to join the army of militants across the country, the federal government swallowed its pride and again went on its knees.
The NDA statement, “Operation Humble”, announced the intention to resume hostilities in the oil-rich region, the type aimed at humbling and bringing down the nation. The hitherto combatant presidential spokesman Femi Adesina was very much unlike himself in his response. Adesina’s arrogance was missing; he did not see them as wailers and a bellyaching bunch this time.
Not even the provocative statement portraying Buhari’s Nigeria as a failed state could raise Adesina’s adrenaline.
“There is no gainsaying that the failed country called Nigeria which has fed fat on our God-given wealth is at the brink of total disintegration, owing to the security and related challenges…ranging from terrorism and banditry in the North to the secessionist gongs of the Oduduwa people of the South-west and IPOB of the South-East.”
Instead of the usual abuse, threats, and dispatching of either the Chief of Army Staff or the Inspector-General Police to give them either the Operation Python Dance or Crocodile Smile, the almighty Presidency’s pride was nowhere to be found. Rather, it was on its knees, pleading that the listed demands were already being attended to and the threat unnecessary.
The Presidency took time, humbly too, to explain the actions already afoot to address the concerns of NDA.
Government watchers are seeing the new, congenial spirit from two perspectives, either the government is faking and devising a new means to reduce the tension in the land and avoid battling on many fronts or is overwhelmed by the security situation and would not want to pour fuel into an inferno and therefore very willing to choose humility at the expense of pride.
But this is the road to have followed from inception to avoid the situation that has brought us to this level.
If the regime governance style according to the World Bank has sent over seven million Nigerians to poverty, it’s because service to the people has received little attention. Rather, attention was given to mundane and primordial matters that combined to reduce governance and create divisions among the people.
If this government had approached IPOB as it has just done to the Avengers, and treated Mazi Nnamdi Kanu the way it handled Tompolo, there would not have been any need for ESN, but they wouldn’t do that because of the dot in the circle.
Given where we are in Nigeria today almost at the valley of the hill could have been averted with a better disposition from leaders realizing the importance of humility in service. The public may not be privy to the intelligence available to the government to make it swallow their pride. But such a boxed situation could have been avoided ab initio if leaders had been servants, not bosses. If leaders had seen themselves really as belonging to nobody but serving everybody, our society would have been a better place. All the lives lost would have been spared, all the resources deployed to security challenges would have gone to development, the environment would have been conducive for the industry to flourish and jobs would have been there for the youths and crime would have been reduced drastically.
If democracy says rightly that the real power belongs to the people (voters), all that is needed to make governance smooth and easy is for the leaders to see themselves as servants of the people.
A boss creates fear instead of confidence and he makes work drudgery and uninteresting.
When we fail in leadership and start looking for excuses instead of looking inwards at ourselves, we are dodging the issue and ignoring Napoleon Bonaparte’s advisory: “Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.”
May God hear both hailers and wailers.
POSTSCRIPT:
Now that MNK is nabbed…
Several times, we have said in this column that the only thing that provokes this government into action is when IPOB or Nnamdi Kanu is mentioned. Now that he is arrested and the regime is glaringly pampering other regions, can the South-East now enjoy peace?
Recall we warned that the surge in violence in the South-East is a function of many theories possibly designed to convince the international community that IPOB is a terror group but herdsmen who provoke them are not. To get Interpol into supporting the manhunt for Kanu, a convincing picture needed to be painted.
The obvious romance with South-South and the virtual begging of their militants are all part of a grand design to weaken the people’s agitation for justice and fairness in governance.
