As a social scientist whose business is in the field of applied research, my fidelity to my craft and to the truth as I see them comes first before any other affiliation.

Leadership, scholars will tell you, is all about inspiring people. Leadership is not to be confused with management. An authentic leader’s only job will perhaps be to inspire a people, identify the right set of people to man the different agencies of state, set expectations and demand for accountability.

President Goodluck Jonathan is deficient in about three out of four of these areas. I will also add that in third world countries such as Nigeria, the leader though while not being a dictator ought to be firm and decisive. The President is glaringly deficient in this area as well.

In one of my interventions two plus years ago, I had warned the President’s handlers to think of former American President Harry Truman who came to power in similar circumstances but rose up to the responsibilities of his office. I understand that some of Jonathan’s closest aides read the piece but I guess they rolled their eyes. Now, the truth has come back to stare them in the face.

President Jonathan in addition ought to have studied the life and times of former American President Lyndon Johnson who also came to office in similar circumstances. By reading the tea leaves, Lyndon Johnson declined further participation in the Presidential race of 1968. Even though President Johnson was sure of clinching the Democratic Party nomination, at a most crucial stage in the Presidential race on March 31, 1968, Lyndon Johnson declared “What we have won when all our people were united must not be lost in partisanship. I have concluded that I should not permit the Presidency to become involved in partisan decisions”..accordingly, I shall not seek, and I will not accept the nomination of my party for another term as your President.

Lyndon Johnson was no less ambitious than Goodluck Jonathan; the difference is that unlike Jonathan, Johnson did not live in denial of existing realities. After Johnson signed the voting rights act of 1965 and desegregated the schools allowing white and black kids to mix together, he knew that he has lost the democratic coalition that can guarantee him a victory in white America. He knew that those decisions were going to cost the Democratic Party the loss of the Presidency for at least a generation. After Johnson declined to run, the republicans controlled the Presidency for about 8 years before Jimmy carter came to office on the backs of Nixon’s integrity issues.

President Jonathan also ought to have read the tea leaves. After the collapse of the PDP ruling coalition on the 31st of August, 2013, his chances of being reelected became very low. If the President was well advised, he ought to have found a Young Turk with no political baggage to run instead. But his handlers wouldn’t tell him the truth. We will revisit this point later.

On the subject of outsourcing leadership; President Goodluck Jonathan presents a classic case of passive leadership to those of us in leadership studies. In 2011, he came to office on the goodwill of the Nigerian people but while exercising the mandate that was freely given to him, he outsourced not delegate his responsibilities.I will give a few examples.

The very first sign of President Jonathan’s passive leadership came to fore when he outsourced the leadership of the nation’s economic policy to Ms. Iweala. The lady played a fast one on the President and went for a power grab a new title; the coordinating Minister of the economy came into our political lexicon. A nation without a constitutional Prime Minister got one through the backdoor.

Former Senate President Anyim Pius Anyim is another one of those power grabbers in the corridor of power. Anyim knew that the President is a passive leader and hence grabbed as much power as he could.

Ms Madueke presided over the rot at the national oil company, NNPC, and became so powerful that despite reports indicting her ministry she was never fired. There are rumours that she hardly goes to the NNPC towers to conduct official business. I learnt from reliable sources that her official duties are mostly conducted from the comfort of her private residence.

Senator Mark is a deft power player. He also sensed the President’s passive leadership and grabbed as much power as he could to himself. The only reason why Abba Moro was not fired after the immigration disaster was because the President couldn’t move against Mark.

The low intensity conflict that the Boko Haram elements waged against the Nigerian state and the inability of the President to rise up to the occasion fully showed his passive nature. When the Chibok girls were kidnapped, the President ought to fly immediately to Chibok and assess the situation personally, he didn’t. It took him many months before he finally made the trip.

There are many instances of these kinds of behavior that have come to define his Presidency. He outsourced his leadership to his closest aides and failed in the singular task of inspiring the Nigerian people and rallying them towards a common cause. His meteoric rise from obscurity in 1999 as a deputy Governor in the backwaters of the Niger Delta to the Presidency a decade later will be a story to be told for generations to come; yet in spite of his electoral defeat, he has presided over a period of significant economic growth with annual GDP growth of 7 percent and above making Nigeria one of the fastest growing economies in the world. He has also allowed freedom of expression and opened up the democratic space. He invested heavily in infrastructure, laid the groundwork for sustainable energy, invested heavily in agriculture and brought back manufacturing as an important part of our GDP growth, his undoing however is his lack of understanding of the essentials of leadership.

By graciously conceding defeat, President Goodluck Jonathan may have invariably redeemed himself. Posterity will remember him as having deepened our democracy.

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– Abdulmumin Ajia wrote from abdulajia@yahoo.com