Nigeria Content Online

Like a recurring
bad dream, one of the violence prone fault lines running across the
country erupted again on Tuesday, sending residents of Bauchi running
helter skelter and causing the death of some officers of the Nigerian
security apparatus and some civilians.

The people behind
this latest outrage, members of the so-called Boko Haram (literally:
western education is a sin) are well known to Nigerians. Last year, the
group embarked on an orgy of violence and destruction that affected
several states in Northeastern Nigeria and led to the deaths of
hundreds of people as security forces reacted with violence to curb
violence. Incidentally, one of the outcomes of that incident, and the
ham-fisted way in which security agencies responded was encapsulated by
the cold blooded murder of the then leader of the group – which a
member of the police force, most likely, helpfully leaked on the
Internet.

There is little
doubt that this group has reorganised under a new leader and its
members are now doubly embittered against the state. Last year’s bloody
crackdown must have added to their social antipathy on top of the
existing conditions that had fed their protest in the first place.
Going by Tuesday’s attack on the prison – reminiscent of their attack
on police stations last year, it appears this group is still wedded to
its beliefs in violence and has learnt nothing from the killing of its
members last year.

More surprising is
the reality that our security forces have also not learnt much from the
other time. Despite lengthy investigation and an even lengthier report
– some 17 reports to the Presidency by some counts – the group was
still able to plan and launch a major attack in a cosmopolitan state
capital such as Bauchi, and was able to shut the town down for hours.

The presidency has
acted robustly by firing the head of the police and that of the State
Security Services and new men put in their place. But this is hardly
the solution to the issue, as one of those reports must have pointed
out.

One place to look
is the criminal justice system. Hundreds of people arrested over last
year’s violence are still being processed without any likelihood that
they will receive justice anytime soon. Matter of fact, there is some
sense to the attack launched on the prison, as the Boko Haram were able
to forceful free all prisoners – including some of their own members
detained within the facility.

It is easy to see
how the disgust with ‘westernisation’ spreads, especially if this is
represented by an unresponsive federal judicial and security system and
clueless state political leadership. It is likely another bout of
arrests will be carried out after Tuesday’s rampage and the suspects
will simply disappear into the maws of the judicial system. They will
be an addition to hundreds of thousands of suspects from various other
disturbances in the country.

The Ministry of
Justice would do well to hasten the trials of these detainees and
release those found innocent. This would serve to strengthen the
people’s confidence in the system and reduce their default reaction to
take the law into their own hands.

Government should
also use this opportunity to reorganise the intelligence gathering and
civil law enforcement agencies. It is apt to punish the head of such
agencies, but the rot surely goes beyond the two men. Their
replacements would do well to look into this.

But beyond this is the now tiresome call for our political leaders
to do the job for which they were actually elected. Groups such as Boko
Haram thrive on the misery and poverty of the people and a functional
society should reduce their allure. All arms of government need to
rebuild Nigeria’s infrastructure and nurse the economy back on track.
Failure to do that will ensure that the fault lines continue to erupt
into violence – and at a growing cost to society.

Plagued by endless
corruption accusations, vast overspending claims and huge construction
delays, you would be forgiven for thinking none of Delhi’s inhabitants
were overjoyed about the city’s upcoming Commonwealth Games.

But you’d be mistaken, at least according to India’s health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad.

A few weeks ago he
said that the construction sites for the Games, which kick off in just
over 24 days, were providing perfect conditions for the city’s
mosquitoes, and laying the blame for the city’s record-breaking dengue
outbreak squarely with the organising committee.

“Dengue and water
is strongly related. Delhi is already dug up because of the Games and
it is also raining heavily. Since water remains accumulated in many
places, it becomes a breeding ground for mosquitoes, which are
contributing to diseases,” Azad told reporters.

Throwing salt in
the organisers’ wounds was his thinly veiled accusation that had the
work been completed on schedule, and the construction completed before
the monsoon weather arrived, this year’s outbreak of the deadly virus
could have been avoided.

The embarrassing issue for the much-maligned organising committee is that he may well have a point.

Across the city,
pits and troughs scattered around uncompleted Games venues have filled
with rainwater during the recent monsoon downpours, providing the
dengue-spreading Aedes mosquito with perfect breeding grounds.

This year’s count
of dengue victims in the city – currently totalling 434 – represents a
huge rise from 3 last year and 55 in 2008. But do two swallows make a
summer?

Indeed, a
spiralling dengue victim count needs a scapegoat, and what better
culprit than the Games, which is already disliked by many of the city’s
residents.

But Azad’s timing
is intriguing. Recently, his government has slowly become engulfed in
the Games’ bad publicity, with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh appearing
to step in, in an attempt to provide relief to Suresh Kalmadi, the
Chairman of the Organising Committee.

Whether or not his
comments are true, or indeed supported by his party, Delhi is anxious
to be rid of the outbreak before the high-profile event begins in
October.

City
administrators, who are hard at work with fogging machines to prevent
mosquito breeding in danger areas, said that week that none of their
employees would get time off until the monsoon season concludes, while
mobile vans have been laid on to rush victims to 24-hour dedicated
hospitals.

According to an
advertisement published by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi, 6,125
people have been prosecuted this season for allowing water stagnation
to occur on their property.

Following Azad’s comments, perhaps prosecutors will make a visit to
Kalmadi’s office in the coming weeks. Until then, Delhi’s love-hate
relationship with the Commonwealth Games rumbles on.

If you suddenly had
all the money you wanted to spend on anything you liked, would you take
it in your stride, calmly fulfilling all your material desires in a
businesslike manner or would the prospect drive you into a tizzy of
panic and indecision?

You might think
that this is a problem any one would give their eyeteeth to have, but
think carefully about it. Few human beings can handle the pressure of
spending responsibly and reasoning clearly when the sums involved
defeat the very powers of their own imaginations to count or to
conceive.

Of course we read
more stories about people coming into sudden wealth ending up even
poorer than they were before because they made such rash and
irresponsible decisions. They had no concept of the money running out
and went on a spending spree; there was so much they forgot to count
and so on and so forth. Since the boring stories about those who
buckled down and planned before they spent don’t make the same kind of
headlines, one might be forgiven for believing that they are truly in
the minority.

Faced with the
prospect of a material solution to all your problems what would be your
first priority, knowing that there is no end to wanting, (because even
if you did not know you will certainly find that out, since even the
very rich find the need to keep making more money)?

Do you think your
first task would be answering to your immediate needs? That sounds
obvious enough, but when the money at your disposal means that
absolutely everything you might want can be instantly available, the
concept of immediate starts getting really blurry. Everything is
possible, so where do you start?

Okay so you want a
state of the art, custom built, silent, clean,
environmentally-everything generator to make you completely independent
of PHCN’s foibles. You also want to be immune to any hiccups that might
occur on a so-called road map to power, the blueprint of which you have
not even bothered to peruse closely. In fact you might just consider
making the road map redundant and solving the issue of 150 million
neighbouring stone age generators disturbing your peace.

Mind you, you would
be really certifiable if you considered that act of philanthropy
because the wahala would be mind boggling, one that even your
gazillions would not be able to solve given that the country you would
be seeking to help, admittedly in a round about way, is called Nigeria.

Consider the red
tape: importation, registration and explaining why you want to be a
Samaritan to befuddled officials! Imagine fighting off politicians
determined to dabaru your game, whatever that is, since to them, it is
so patently counterintuitive for anyone desirous of wielding power,
political not electrical, to want to create anything even mildly
democratic as providing the greatest number with anything as basic as
light or water. The epitome of power in their minds is holding one
particular political office, to what end, no one has ever really been
able to fathom given the problems of development that still plague
Nigeria.

Given that then…
you would probably not even have the time to begin to reflect on what
you might do with your money before your street would be closed off by
hundreds of immediate family members, extended family members and their
friends and close and extended family members, with the friends of
those friends’ extended family members.

Different
townspeople groups, domestic staff, drivers, security guards and their
close and extended family members would flank all of these groups. I
don’t know why anybody needs ‘friends’ on Facebook in Nigeria. We have
absolutely no issues with social networking, if anything we define it
for the rest of the world, virally and otherwise, even without Internet
connectivity and generous broadband availability. On our shores your
brother is your only keeper. Your president? Don’t count on it.

At this point it
can truly be said that your problem would have bought itself a hat and
a walking stick. You would certainly have to set your house in order,
develop administrative capacity, sort out priorities, rules of
engagement, certification and accountability and get your self some
money managers to invest and keep resources going to settle that
endless chaos outside your front door. In all you would have an
effective cabinet to provide responsible governance of your gazillions.

A final word of advice, all hypothetical of course: don’t call
yourself a politician; don’t even think of running for president. That
one is a completely different ball game, with everything to do with
taking and bamboozling and nothing to do with service and creating.

We are told that successful people and successful nations play to their strengths.

They analyse what
they are good at, what resources they have, where they can add value
and direct their efforts and energy in that direction.

When they make
careers out of what they are good at and what they enjoy, they are
likely to be successful and happy doing that. They are likely to
relocate to the most suitable place to run that business or offer that
service; and by their cumulative or combined efforts, the industry
thrives.

I was conversing
with an architect friend just last week, enquiring about how profitable
it is to make a living from architecture; and remarking on how
fortunate I believe architects are to make a living from their passion,
very much like artists, musicians and so on. The conversation turned to
ways of starting a second or parallel career to supplement one’s
income. I suggested playing to one’s strengths and building an income
stream around it. I asked him what his strengths were and how they had
already assisted him in making a success of his occupation. To my
surprise, even though he was passionate about design and architecture,
he said he did not really know what his strengths are.

He said that most
of his peers don’t know what they are good at, or what their strengths
are. They just find work to earn money and put food on the table and
that is why there is so much job frustration and, basically, no job
satisfaction at all. What a revelation! How many of us know what our
strengths are, as they relate to our work and our occupation? For those
of us who do, how did we discover what our strengths are? Let’s take
this to the national level. I am quite sure that eight out of any 10
people I ask will know what Indians are good at, or what the strengths
of the Chinese are.

Ask what Nigerians
are good at; what our strengths are; and what we are known for. Other
than the immediate negative responses such as 419 scams and corruption,
people would have to take a moment to think about it. On reflection,
they would say that Nigerians are enterprising, but how has that
translated into a national strength?

Our traders and
markets are largely in the informal economy; and Dangote alone cannot
represent the spirit of enterprise in the nation. They would say that
we are excellent at problem-solving and coping, but has this talent
been directed by our policy makers to solving our national challenges?
They would say that we are known for our creativity. Yes, through
individual effort, writers such as Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka,
musicians like Fela, Asa, TuFace and so on have become internationally
acclaimed. How are other creative spirits nurtured and encouraged,
other than through private avenues such Terra Kulture and Nike’s
Gallery. Our unappreciated museums full of valuable artefacts have been
left to deteriorate.

Diversity as strength

A wonderful trend is that you can study almost any subject you can imagine.

Throughout your
education, starting in primary school, the teaching staff are
talent-spotting, busy identifying latent or developing skills, talents,
passions, or potential. It is rare for a child to reach age 16 and not
know what they are good at, both academically and vocationally and what
kinds of careers they can pursue.

Here, the majority
graduate from school having passed their exams, and that is all. The
fortunate minority would have engaged in formal music, arts, or sports
programmes in private schools. Even those who were award-winners in
extra-curricular activities never imagined making a career out of them
and are actively discouraged from playing to their strengths by their
advisers.

We are known for
being very intelligent and good at cramming facts to pass exams. So,
for many children, the subjects they get good grades in are not
subjects they have any interest in. What kind of career guidance do
school children get about how the subjects they take for SSCE will
affect their A’levels/JAMB and how their choice will affect their
careers?

How can we know
what our real strengths are? Without identifying them, how can we, as a
nation, harness our strengths? Natural resources are just that,
resources. Without people and functional systems to exploit and benefit
from them, they will not do us any good. To the contrary, we will be
left to live with all the disadvantages of extractive industries
without enjoying the beneficial effect they can have on a people, as we
have seen in the Middle East.

Let’s start at the beginning, with education and with the children.

Help those around
you in the workplace, who are square pegs in round holes, to find
square holes to thrive in. Employers should use personality profiling
to allocate their human capital where they can perform the best on
their own and as part of teams.

Oh yes, one of our strengths is our diversity. We haven’t yet
figured out how to play to it yet. All I have seen is pandering to
different groups instead of pulling the strengths of our diverse
ethnicities to propel us into G20 status and achieve our Millenium
Development Goals.

Olu Jacob

Obviously you read

about the president’s (unelected) wife and Nigeria’s first lady

publicly berating a constitutionally elected, federalism-protected and

a-NOT-even-answerable-to-the-president-himself governor on an executive

decision he had taken, which (mind you!) he is lawfully empowered to

do. Totally unscripted, it was just the type of news that makes for

compulsive viewing/reading!

So, is our brand of

democracy different from that practiced all over the world? We seem to

have re-written the rules to suit our whims. Are the spouses of our

political officers for example, also elected by proxy in our brand of

democracy? Is it like a bargain purchase: buy-one-get-one-free?

We do not seem to

be able to separate our elected persons from their spouses; and it may

be deliberate. Methinks nobody wants to criticise the overt, visible,

in-your-face spouse because nobody knows when it will be their turn to

enjoy such privileges. You know, they could also benefit from the same

office; who no wan shine?

Let’s imagine if

Chief A had bad-mouthed the office of first lady of his predecessor in

his domain, would Madam Chief A still be able to ‘reign’ as first lady

subsequently? We saw some political office-holders promise not to

unleash their wives on us to ‘reign’ as first ladies, but what did we

see? Presidents, bullied, out schemed and coerced by feminine wile,

turn the proverbial blind eye because ‘after all, madam is not the one

who bastardised the system’. Why will it be when it is now ‘madam’s

turn’ that the office will end? Abeggi!

For crying out

loud, are we not all guilty of sycophancy when in breach of established

international protocol for instance, we address unelected spouses as

‘your Excellency’? Who dey ‘dash’ the title ‘Excellency’?

With the jury still

out on whether or not we truly ‘elected’ them, we are further forced to

contend with a warped Bill/Hillary-Clinton-2-for-1 bargain? Must

spouses be in our faces, all the time? Is it cultural, because they

apparently intercede on behalf of all? When we encourage and/or imply

parallel powers, paraphernalia of office and so much visibility to any

spouse, then we must expect limits to be blurred.

When spouses of

elected persons are given offices, staff and full-fledged budgets, who

monitors things? Who would have the audacity to perform the oversight

function over such spending?

Aberrations are

what one gets when one ignores the law per se. Starting with simple

breaches, they are entrenched when we observe laws only in the breach.

The aberration here began with the decision of a state governor to

jettison essential state work to entertain the president’s wife, a

chore that should have been naturally and more appropriately left to

the governor’s wife.

If the governor

really appreciated the concept of true federalism as espoused in our

Constitution, he would have cherished, respected and protected his

space.

The rule of thumb

universally, is that he who comes to engage one in one’s territory,

shall play the game by one’s rules only. You come to me on my own

terms, period!

Of course, our

first lady has stepped up her brief since the ‘presidential campaign’

started. The danger therein is the perception that whatever she says,

positively or negatively, reflects the president’s thoughts and

feelings. So, when she endorses governors for a second term during her

visits, she enters the political arena.

One is left with

the impression that the possibility of someone else emerging in that

state as governor after election is foreclosed. So, could the governor

have been hoping perhaps to be endorsed as his counterpart in Delta was?

That incident has

reiterated the need for more training on matters of real protocol for

political office holders and those around them. As the president

prepares to finally formally (expressly) declare his interest in the

race, we must not allow mere norms of culture and tradition to color

the law, otherwise there will be a Gordon-Brown moment happening here.

The professional protocol coach must honestly tell people their

limitations, and there are many!

A country

bastardized by military rule has left elected officials thinking they

need to be dictatorial and unbending to show authority like the

military did.

They resent being questioned or queried by those who supposedly elected them.

Should a democratically elected person think in terms of being in power or in office?

Does their being in office mean they have all the answers? Therefore, must we accept their opinion just because?

That thought was what the first lady was trying to convey: that the

governor should not think that he has such a monopoly of knowledge, he

is not even willing to consider another opinion. The message was apt,

undoubtedly. Only thing is: these positive thoughts should have been

expressed privately!

Tolu Ogunlesi

On August 31, Nigeria’s ruling party, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) turned twelve.

As expected, the party pulled out all the stops in

its self-congratulatory mission. A press statement from the party’s

Chairman and National Publicity Secretary described it as, “the most

successful political party in Nigeria’s history.”

The statement listed the party’s many reasons for

celebrating: 29 state governors, 96 Senators, 260 members of the House

of Representatives, uninterrupted occupation of Aso Rock since 1999,

Nigeria’s first civilian-to-civilian transition, a telecoms revolution,

amongst many others.

The party however conveniently forgot to mention

many other achievements – the fact, for example, that the transition it

is boasting of was described by the head of the European Union observer

mission as having “fallen far short of basic international and regional

standards for democratic elections…”

Shortly after the murder of Bola Ige, Attorney

General and minister of justice, in his home in Ibadan in December

2001, Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka described the Peoples Democratic

Party as a “nest of killers.” Barely two years later, following the

sacking of the Anambra State government house and abduction of Governor

Chris Ngige by thugs loyal to Chris Uba, a powerful member of the PDP,

Soyinka restated his charge.

“I repeat indeed, insist that there is a nest of

killers within the PDP. From Ngige’s recent experience, the well-laid

plans for his ultimate fate, it is evident that the vipers in the nest

do not strike only outwards but inwards,” Soyinka was quoted as saying.

Shortly before then, Iyiola Omisore – principal

suspect in the murder of Ige – was elected from prison to the Senate,

on the platform of the PDP.

Has the party forgotten so quickly the unresolved

murders of high profile members: National Vice Chairman, A.K. Dikibo in

2004, and governorship aspirant Funsho Williams in Lagos in 2006; to

mention just two?

This is also the party that produced Lamidi

Adedibu, the man who ensured that Ibadan politics did not rise above a

crude, thuggish scramble for power and money. In 2007, Obasanjo said of

Adedibu: “Let it be known to all in the PDP that in Oyo State, the

southwest and all over the country, Baba Adedibu is the father of the

PDP, who cannot be looked down on, rather, we will continue to pray for

long life and good health for him so that he will always be there for

us.”

The PDP also did not remember to take credit for a

vocabulary of militancy introduced into the political space. Former

President Obasanjo famously described the 2007 governorship elections

in Lagos State as a “do-or-die” affair.

The party’s disgraced Deputy National Chairman, Bode George, announced that the party would “capture” Lagos.

In July, former governor of Cross River state,

Donald Duke, said of his former party: “PDP held a lot of hope for

Nigerians. It started off as a great party.

But today, it has ceased to be a party. It is now

a platform to win elections,” Mr. Duke said. Mr. Duke must know what

he’s talking about, having won two elections on the platform of the

party.

One of the first things that any observer will realise about the party is that it is a nest of delusions of grandeur.

In April 2008, the then Chairman of the party,

Vincent Ogbulafor, announced that the party would rule Nigeria for the

next sixty years. “I expect that every Nigerian will soon join the PDP.

I don’t care if Nigeria becomes a one-party state. If we succeed in

bringing all the states under the control of the PDP, we would have

achieved a lot.”

A few months later, Edet Nkpubre, National

Vice-Chairman of the South-South region of the PDP updated his boss’

declaration. “Ogbulafor said PDP will rule Nigeria for 50 years, but

I‘m saying that the party will rule for 100 years,” Nkpubre said.

This is clearly what forms the very kernel of

PDP’s philosophy. Here is a party that judges success by quantity, not

quality; to wit its oft-pronounced self-description as “the largest

political party in Africa.”

Here’s a party that has ruled Africa’s most

populous country for eleven years, yet failed to cobble together even

the mere outlines of a coherent manifesto.

It would however not be fair to deny the party

credit for the economic reforms of 2004 to 2006, and the isolated

successes of agencies like NAFDAC and the EFCC during the Obasanjo era,

and perhaps the Niger Delta peace plan. But in truth, those successes

are few and far between. On the whole the PDP has failed the country

woefully, and, just like the country it is in charge of, lacks any

justification for celebrations.

All the other parties themselves however also

deserve censure. Every one of them is a PDP-in-waiting – one only need

turn to the states ruled by these parties to see that they are not very

different from the PDP. Alien to them all is the idea of a manifesto.

The leading opposition parties at national level, the Action Congress

of Nigeria and the All Nigeria Peoples Party are perpetually in crisis,

consumed by internal wrangling while the PDP runs the country further

aground.

The truth is that Nigeria, as things stand now, is at the mercy of

all its political parties. Were the PDP to relinquish control of the

national government to another party today, there is no evidence that

Nigeria would fare any better. Might this realisation – that it is not

much worse than its alternatives – really be what the PDP is

celebrating?

Question 1a. Define Nigeria. Answer: A land where
the elders do nothing but sing of a glorious past and the youth are
leaders of a tomorrow that will never come.

Question 1b. Explain your answer in 1a. Answer: In
typical Nigerian fashion I will begin my answer with another question –
or series of questions:

“Why is our Society so afflicted with the virus of
corruption? Why does it appear that the average Nigerian is
congenitally corrupt? Why should people who do not want to exert
themselves enjoy the good things of life? Why should the indolent and
the mediocre prosper at the expense of the hardworking members of the
Community? Why do we place so much premium on wealth even when it is
known that such wealth is a product of unjust and corrupt enrichment?”
Who said this, and when?

Those words were spoken by a certain Mr. Ayo
Fasanmi in a speech delivered at the annual conference of the
Association of History Teachers in Nigeria in, wait for this, 1972.

Troubled by the questions above, Mr. Fasanmi and a
handful of young Nigerian men and women on May 29, 1971 formed an
“Anti-Bribery and Corruption Committee.” 1971. Good ol’ days indeed. I
could have sworn that those words above were uttered by Nuhu Ribadu
yesterday afternoon.

One keeps hearing all this talk about “when
Nigeria was good” – when angels roamed the streets and questionable
wealth was kept hidden far from public view, and one naira could buy
you a shipload of rice (apologies to Mr. B of Basi & Company fame).

Isn’t this one of the great myths of this age?

I insist that the starting point for the
transformation of Nigeria is the realisation that there’s no point
lamenting that Nigeria is “getting worse.” From all available evidence,
Nigeria has always been “worse”. Our problems in Nigeria have never
changed. At best, what they do is change name:

the “Problem Has Changed Name (PHCN)” phenomenon,
seen in the transformation of NEPA to PHCN, OMPADEC to NDDC, FEDECO to
NEC to INEC; “go-slow” to “bumper-to-bumper”; police-routing Anini to
EFCC-routing Ibori.

It is sad that Nigerians above a certain age spend
so much time living in the past, lamenting how things used to work,
such that there is no energy left to find any solutions.

Acknowledging once and for all that things have
never been good frees us up to focus on a more pressing task: that
much-needed debate on why we are the way we are, and how we can break
free from the insanity of doing things the same way and expecting
different results.

“Very poor leadership appears to me as the black
man’s greatest problem,” Areoye Oyebola wrote in his 1970s classic
‘Black Man’s Dilemma.’ “The trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely
a failure of leadership,” Chinua Achebe pronounced a few years later,
in ‘The Trouble with Nigeria’.

Thinking about Nigeria’s leadership challenges I
am reminded of the words of W.B. Yeats: “The best lack all conviction,
while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” That, in my opinion,
is the most fitting punch line to the joke called Nigeria.

Might Achebe and Oyebola be right?

Arise Magazine recently published a special
supplement on Nigeria’s 50th independence anniversary. It’s a slim but
well put together document, with fascinating photos and an informative
time-line of Nigerian history.

But the most interesting part of it is a piece
titled: “GENERATION NEXT”, with the intro: “As Nigeria celebrates its
golden jubilee, the torch is passed to a new generation; the Goodluck
Jonathan Generation. Here are 50 of the rising stars.” Those rising
stars included such distinguished young and promising Nigerians as
David Mark (“a bridge between the old and new generations”), Femi
Otedola, Aliko Dangote, Vice President Namadi Sambo, Bukola Saraki,
Bola Tinubu, Diezani Allison-Madueke, Donald Duke and Godswill Akpabio.

Awesome stuff. Those are the “rising stars” of
Nigeria, the future of this great country of good people. One wonders
what my generation is doing still hanging around. Clearly we arrived
far too early. We are the Premature Generation. We should blame God for
sending us well ahead of our time.

All of us should go and find stuff to do – sing
and dance and tweet and fall in love and pop champagne, until, say,
2040, when, hopefully,

the aforementioned “rising stars” would have
fulfilled their missions and stepped aside to give us, “the new youth”,
a chance to help ourselves to our own share of whatever’s left of
Nigeria by then.

In 2040, I will be a 58-year-old, well past the
life expectancy allotted to me by my country, my grey hairs nicely
suppressed by the finest of dyes. I will be ready to take my place as
the future of Nigeria.

And of course I will remember to tell my children, the leaders of a
tomorrow I know will never come, of the “good ol’ days” of my youth;
that innocent age long before Nigeria ‘spoilt finish’!

President Jonathan
has recently rolled out his ambitious roadmap for the power sector
ahead of the anticipated declaration of his candidacy in the coming
elections. The plan aims to place the private sector as the key driver
of the reforms and to attract an annual investment of US$3.5 billion
while delivering 7,000MW by April next year and 14,000MW by 2013. All
well and good. The devil, as the say, lies in the details.

The whole world
knows that Nigeria has never been short of great ideas. The gaping hole
in our national system is quite simply a lack of effective
implementation.

The failure to
deliver is not only a leadership problem; it has to do with the
systemic failure of bureaucracy, public policy and decision-making
systems. As a country, we have been largely bypassed by the New Public
Management revolution, which started in the United States about two
decades ago with its objective of reinventing government within the
paradigm of efficiency and results-based management.

According to the
Harvard neurologist and educationist Howard Gardner, “all leaders are
limited in what they can accomplish”. In rich as well as poor
democracies, leaderships require support systems that can help them
deliver on their mandates against the backdrop of increasingly critical
electorates. One of my most inspiring teachers has been the
distinguished Israeli policy scientist Yehezkel Dror. Several years ago
Dror called for a ‘new order of leadership’ — a new mindset anchored
on transformational leadership that is rigorous intellectually and
politically savvy and entrepreneurial.

Dror has been the
‘beautiful mind’ behind succeeding leaderships in Tel Aviv who have
managed to build a prosperous and secure democracy in a sea of
turbulence and hostility.

In a seminal 1986
essay, he developed the concept of the ‘central mind of government’ to
help enrich governance and decision-making at the highest levels of
leadership in a manner that promotes the collective interest while
providing overall strategic direction for government.

Britain under
former Prime Minister Tony Blair may have taken those lessons on board
in creating the Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit (PMDU). After his second
election victory in June 2001 in which the Labour Party won by a
landslide, Prime Minister Tony Blair solemnly told the great British
public that he interpreted his victory as “a mandate for reform…an
instruction to deliver.” Blair subsequently invited a noted academic,
Professor Michael Barber, to set up the PMDU which was located within a
few doors of the prime minister’s own office.

Several years
earlier Barber had been recruited to oversee policy implementation
within the treacherous British public school system which had, in some
parts, fallen to Third World levels. He seemed to possess the elixir
stone that changed things with remarkable speed. Exam results improved;
some of the inner city schools that had been largely Dickensian
hell-holes where pupils carried knives and guns were infused with a new
lease of life. Barber has serendipitously invented a new profession
that goes by the name of ‘deliverology’ — defined as a systematic
process through which system leaders can drive progress and deliver
results.

The PMDU’s brief
was to monitor the four core areas of the government’s strategic
priorities, namely health, education, transport and the Home Office.
With a staff of about 40, the PMDU operated as a ‘slim and mean’
outfit, with a proactive no-nonsense approach that held cabinet members
and senior mandarins personally accountable for performance.

While the focus was
on long-term strategic targets, the PMDU carefully cultivated
short-term wins considered crucial to gaining public confidence and
building momentum for greater success. Consideration was given to
setting clear goals design of a delivery map and delivery chain by
which all relevant stakeholders understand what they have to do,
trajectories mapping progress towards implementation, data and leading
indicators with real-time performance information, stocktaking with the
Prime Minister and the Cabinet and commitment to best practice through
continuous improvement of processes and systems to achieve success.

The PMDU has been a
remarkable success. Governments across the world have sought to imitate
its key features. The IMF has described the approach as a ‘frontier’ of
performance management in government.

Given the complex
challenges we face as a country, we need creative decision-making
systems that would enable leaderships deliver on their core mandates.
At the end of the day, Goodluck Jonathan will be judged on whether or
not he has delivered. The British PMDU model is as good a model as any
to consider.

The American
statesman Henry Kissinger famously remarked that political office taxes
intellectual capital. Many of our leaders seem patently ill prepared
for high office. Once in power, there is no time to engage in new
learning. But leadership does not require that one knows everything.
With regard to electricity and other critical sectors, leaderships must
be humble enough to defer to the talents who can cut through the
nonsense and get things done.

Destiny rarely provides such opportunities for statesmen to make a
difference. It would be tragic for our country if Mr. Jonathan ends up
just as another ‘cash and carry’ political prisoner to reptilian party
hacks and an increasingly imperious and rapacious governorate.