Opinion: Perhaps solving Nigeria’s problems is rocket science after all

by Wole Olabanji

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Scanning the headlines of even the least sensational dailies on any given day generally yields such a bumper harvest of inanities, courtesy of our leaders that, it is beginning to look like compared with what our leaders are grappling with, rocket science is rather like stacking Lego.

On a recent trip to the Yankari Game Reserve in Bauchi State, I was once again confronted with the symptoms that made the wise Chinua Achebe to conclude that the trouble with Nigeria is the failure of leadership. It does appear that whichever way you slice the country, whichever tiny part of the whole you examine, what you find is ample potential bestowed by providence and an acute dearth of diligence.

Many of us citizens who take even a passing interest in the affairs of our nation are often scandalized by the seeming invisibility of the obvious to those we have given the responsibility to lead at various levels. Scanning the headlines of even the least sensational dailies on any given day generally yields such a bumper harvest of inanities, courtesy of our leaders that, it is beginning to look like compared with what our leaders are grappling with, rocket science is rather like stacking Lego.

As if the management of the game reserve wanted to spice up my paper on Public Policy Articulation which I was scheduled to deliver at a workshop for Bauchi State legislative bureaucrats, we were welcomed (for lack of a better term) at the gate with a board notifying us that all adults wanting to enter the game reserve had to pay N5000 while children got a 50% rebate. I of course used this to illustrate the silliness of the pricing policy adopted by the management which is trying to encourage local tourism in a state where disposable income is almost none existent.

If designing a viable pricing policy seemed to be proving more difficult than rocket science for the management, our encounter with the General Manager (read big man) demonstrated that understanding the basics of customer service in a hospitality establishment ratchets up the difficulty level dramatically.

Upon discovering that the air-conditioner in the room was faulty, and deciding to take a shower, one of my colleagues soon found that the shower drain was blocked and the water wasn’t draining. While taking a walk after his shower, he chanced upon the GM whom we had met earlier at the gate and who had tried (without success) to insist that we paid the gate fee. So in the company of another colleague, they decided to complain to him about the broken AC and the shower that won’t drain. His response was shocking, yet typical of Nigerian ‘leaders’. “What if you didn’t meet me here?” was what he considered to be the most appropriate response to a paying customer who had been put in a room where everything was broken.

That response reminded me of Mr. President’s accusation that the broadcast of the Ikeja Police College rot was done to embarrass his government. The problem obviously is that people in leadership position in Nigeria tend to over-personalize the office they occupy such that any comment on gaps in the system that reflects on their office is taken as a personal attack on their person. Thus while effective leaders generally have a high level of self awareness, we find that leaders here tend to have an inordinately high level of self obsession.

Unlike the president though, the GM didn’t get away with what can only be described as insolence. My colleague reminded him in the nicest words that sarcasm will allow that we were the ones picking the bills. Mr GM in a conciliatory note then tried to excuse himself by claiming that they were only recently appointed. Again making the usual excuses that our leaders make about having only come into office recently and needing time to settle down to work. Of course they then turn around to want more time in the form of second and if possible third terms in office.

All of these experiences had primed me to such a point that by the time that I was delivering my paper on Public Policy Articulation to the members of the Bauchi State House of Assembly Service Commission, I was in no mood for slugging in kids gloves. So we had it bare-knuckled; we x-rayed the several policy inconsistencies in the education sector for instance that has achieved nothing but drag the relevant indices as far south as possible.

My thesis was that, the policy flip-flops in the education sector in the past 30 years have done nothing to improve the quality of education in the country. I made plain to them that nothing perhaps illustrates this more sharply than the scandalously glaring difference between the quality of leaders produced in the 60s and those we have today.

Take Sir, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa for example; and his state visit to the US on the invitation of President JFK in particular. A 30 minute video of the visit which can be found on YouTube shows how far indeed we have fallen as a people; from the pedestal of respect that had flag-waving Americans gleefully lining the street to welcome our prime minister (even at a time when black Americans had still not won the civil rights fight), to the basement of ignominy, where the state department routinely excoriates our leaders.

On that trip, Sir ATB often spoke extempore and listening to him; his dignified carriage, elocution and disquisition makes one truly sad at the sorry pass we have come to as a nation. My grouse is not merely that our leaders today do not know how to speak; that I can abide. The problem more often than not is that they have not developed the ability to think and therefore have nothing to say that is worth listening to.

Take out the details that we were at Yankari, our experience and our discussions could have been about Nigeria as a whole; huge potential that we have not harnessed because of the failure of leadership. This realization that right across the hierarchy and contexts, it’s the same problem that bedevils us has got me wondering that perhaps this leadership thing is rocket science after all.

Perhaps we over simplify what is required to move this nation or any nation forward. Leadership in reality is a tough job and it is the responsibility of all citizens to ensure by all means necessary that we don’t allow people whose abilities are more suited to stacking Lego to get into offices that require a certain level of mental acuity and moral rigidity.

Critically, I would like to think that if as we believe, our leaders do not need to be rocket scientists to solve the problems that confront us as people; it should also not be rocket science for us as followers to figure out how to ensure that only the right kind of people get into office. Or is it rocket science?

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Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.

Comments (3)

  1. LOL, it is rocket science to elect the right leaders. 90 percent of Nigerians are in rural areas and will readily vote for just anybody….You need to take your campaign for Lego or Rocket Science down to your village. Most of us who are “slightly enlightened” should do the same, instead of just complaining online.

  2. It seems Yuguda is in a rush to raise revenue in the state, but rather than encouraging more production and then taxing it, he is taxing the few struggling and surviving businesses. two years ago, he ordered banks in the state capital to either pay a sum of over a million for their signboards (which are attached to their buildings) or take them down. predictably, the banks took them down.
    The man has been nothing but disaster

  3. 5k? Wow. In bauchi? Cancelling my plans. Lol
    Asking if electing them is rocket science, it is. They come in sheep clothings when they are wilder than that. We thought GEJ was being deceived,but no. He has his VISION being clearly achieved. Understanding these guys,is rocket science.

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