The Leadership Nigeria Badly Needs

Let’s just say I have not been in the best of spirits for a while. Many things about our dearly beloved country have been weighing on my mind. This was compounded on Monday evening at the photography exhibition by ‘Fisayo Soyombo, whom I call “Nigeria’s No. 1 Daredevil Journalist”. He had gone undercover, posing as an aspiring migrant who desired to reach Italy via the Libya route. He spent 47 days on the road, from the take-off point in Kano, Nigeria, onward to Tripoli, Libya, where the traffickers usually dump their “clients”. He told the agonising story of dehumanisation, rape and death. He terminated his trip at Tripoli, having taken a trove of images that vividly tell the sad story.

Soyombo made a number of profound points. One, the migrants themselves are victims. Many are melting under the economic heat in Nigeria. We cannot blame them for seeking greener pastures. They are promised heaven and earth by the traffickers. Even internally, many Nigerians daily leave their villages for Lagos and Abuja because of the promise of a better life. You can, therefore, hardly blame Nigerians for looking to Europe for a better life. Migration, if done properly, is not an iniquity. From creation, humans have always relocated from their homelands for economic reasons. The problem is not the desire to leave; it is the deadly, illegal route and the traffickers who profit from it.

Two, Soyombo said would-be irregular migrants are not unaware of the dangers, but they always hope their own stories will be different. To them, staying back in Nigeria is not an option. Their resolve is akin to that of the four men with leprosy who sat outside the gates of Samaria after the city was besieged by Syrian soldiers, as told in the Bible. Facing certain death from starvation, they asked themselves, “Why should we sit here waiting to die? If we say, ‘Let us go into the city,’ we will die there from the famine in the city; but if we sit here, we will also die.” They decided to surrender to the Syrians, saying: “If they kill us, then we die.” It was also similar to Esther’s “if I perish, I perish”.

Really, it would be easy for me to sit here and castigate those running abroad by any means in search of pastures new, but I am not in their shoes. I am relatively comfortable. I am an employer. I can feed myself and my family. I can travel abroad for vacation. But there are millions of Nigerians living from hand to mouth. Their own realities are markedly different. They wake up every day hoping that life will be better, but many go to bed hungry and hopeless. They are very vulnerable to the promise of El Dorado and would do anything possible to get there. We may question the judgment of these irregular migrants, but we cannot minimise their despair and desperation. Who feels it knows it.

After we had viewed 47 images from his 47-day clandestine voyage, Soyombo took questions from guests. He said since the publication of his three-part report on his experience, no government agency had got in touch with him, not even to seek his assistance with information that could help track the human traffickers. The take-off point was in Kano. There is a physical address. There are human agents and facilitators. There are bank account details involved. There are at least five government agencies whose responsibilities include tackling human trafficking, one way or another. Maybe they are investigating on their own, but what does it hurt to talk to a “participant-observer”?

I went to bed feeling disheartened that a journalistic work of this significance did not get the needed attention of the authorities concerned. Apart from helping to track the traffickers, it would be potent material to warn those who are hell-bent on the trans-Saharan route to Europe. Soyombo revealed that many of those who embark on the journey end up with regrets. I instantly thought that this would be useful for enlightenment and orientation purposes. Could it be that the authorities are tired of chasing leads? Could it be that they did not see anything of value in Soyombo’s report? Or maybe they missed the report, although they all have public comms units that do media monitoring?

So many things trouble me about the quality of leadership in Nigeria, and this did not help matters. I have been downcast over the reported circumstances surrounding the death of Mr Olayemi Bayonile Bolaji, the gospel singer better known as Toluwanisings. He had a medical emergency but was rejected by “seven or eight hospitals”, according to his aide. In Nigeria, many emergency patients are callously denied life-saving care and die in dire circumstances. It happens all the time. Mind you, we have a law that forbids rejecting emergency patients, not to mention medical ethics and the spirit of the Hippocratic Oath. But this is what Nigeria has become. This is one reason many have lost hope.

I have also been downcast about the power situation, which has been pathetic in many places, despite the outlandish claim by Mr Joseph Tegbe, minister of power, that some electricity consumers asked him to “slow down” with the “remarkable improvement in power supply” because items in their freezers were freezing. If that was meant to be a joke, it was in exceptionally bad taste. Utterly insensitive. Businesses are burning billions on petrol and diesel and this is a joke to a minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria? I wouldn’t recommend kidding with something that is ruining the livelihoods of Nigerians. It further exposes the character of leadership in Nigeria. We can do better.

There is something about leadership in Nigeria that displays a lack of focus and empathy. We are used to it. Look at the power situation again since 1999, when we transitioned to democracy. With serious leadership, the whole country could be enjoying uninterrupted power supply by now — even if we had started from zero, with no cables or transformers whatsoever. It is all about singleness of mind and tenacity of purpose. Nothing and no-one in this world can convince me that it is impossible to resolve the power crisis in 27 years. We can give all the excuses the world has to offer, but the bleeding truth is that we are just not a bunch of serious people. There is no nicer way of putting it.

When you view everything together — the shocking situation of power supply, the inhospitable state of health care, the economic situation of the people in the same country where a jobless youth leader brazenly gives brand-new SUVs as gifts — you cannot but marvel at the level of leadership sensitivity in Nigeria. What does leadership actually mean to us? Seeing thousands of Nigerians leaving the country out of despondency and not doing much to give them hope? Seeing poor people being turned back at hospitals and forced to go home and die because “there is no bed space”? Seeing refuse heaps everywhere and flying to Dubai to celebrate the 60th birthday of a politician?

Leadership is about responsiveness, but there is too much indifference in the land. Sometimes, I wonder how our leaders sleep at night in a society where health care centres do not function optimally, where emergency services hardly exist, where thousands of students are being taught chemistry without chemicals, and where many schools do not have libraries or laboratories. How can you be a council chair or a governor and not be touched by the sight of potholes and bad roads? How can you not be moved by the sight of communities without water? All these leadership failures are stripping ordinary citizens of hope and driving many of them into seeking trans-Saharan solutions.

My conclusion has always been that we badly need a new kind of leadership — at every tier of government and in every agency. We need a new culture. We need a leadership culture that is focussed, responsible, sensitive and responsive. We discuss leadership issues all the time, but we often focus on competence. That is fundamental. But competence must come with compassion and concentration. We have to keep appealing to the collective consciences of our leaders at every opportunity. We have to keep reminding them of their responsibilities to the citizens. Making the lives of the people better must be the central focus of leadership, no matter who is in power.

In truth, Nigerians are not asking for too much. All they want are leaders who truly care about them. The connection is just not there. The emotional gap between the leaders and the citizens is too wide. The president bears an enormous responsibility, but so do governors, council chairs, ministers and the heads of public agencies. Each must answer for the duties of their office. Our appeals to their consciences must be backed by a determination to hold them accountable. Nigerians deserve leaders who care enough to get things done. No Nigerian should feel so hopeless as to see the Sahara as the only way out. Giving people a reason to believe in their own country is the first duty of leadership.

AND FOUR OTHER THINGS…

PAYING TO SERVE

Mr Alwan Hassan, a spokesperson for the APC presidential campaign council, has claimed in an interview with ARISE that ministers paid billions of naira to secure appointments. I would be lying if I said I was hearing this allegation for the first time. I was still amazed, though, that this allegation was coming from a top member of the ruling party. Mr Felix Morka, the APC national publicity secretary, quickly moved to do some damage control. He said Hassan was talking about ministers in past administrations, not the ones serving under President Tinubu. Hmmm. Wouldn’t it be nice for ministers who served under Presidents Buhari, Jonathan and Obasanjo to speak up? Damning.

AI VOTERS

The voter registration conducted by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has run into a storm with the discovery of suspected AI-generated images. I am not a tech expert, so I may be limited in the comment I can make in this regard. But if a voter comes for physical capture, how could the image be AI-generated unless something funny is going on? I had thought some of those who registered online uploaded AI-generated images, but INEC said it had identified the officers behind it. INEC has a big job on its hands cleaning up the register. The commission usually displays the register for comments. It is now our duty to watch closely when the final register is made public. Vigilance.

CAMPAIGN CO-ORDINATOR

Does the opposition have a bigger campaign manager than “Professor” Taiwo Oyedele, the minister of finance? Almost every day, the tax expert provides campaign materials against President Tinubu for the opposition. He recently said fuel tax would be introduced “when the economy stabilises”, then tried to be too clever by half, tagging the reports “fake news” — yet the video he himself posted confirmed he said it. He has struck again, saying some households spend 120 percent of their income on food. He always puts his foot in his mouth but I had thought being a minister would help him. He sure enjoys the sound of his own voice. It is hard to save such people from themselves. Incurable.

NO COMMENT

In what I consider a counter to Alhaji Atiku Abubakar’s economic hardship-focussed campaign strategy, the Tinubu administration has approved a N70,000 monthly transport allowance for civil servants for six months. But the Trade Union Congress of Nigeria (TUC) has described the relief package as inadequate and instead demanded an immediate baseline salary increase to N300,000 for the lowest-paid workers. In fact, the union has rejected the N70,000 relief package. I was wondering why TUC would reject a bonus it did not negotiate for. In any case, if I were earning N70,000 and were offered an extra N70,000 as transport support, why should I reject it? Wonderful.