If all you do is to provide facilities and amenities and you don’t establish the culture to use them, you will only be wasting your time. If you like, place public dustbins at every 100 yards but if you don’t train people’s minds to see them as something to be used for their benefit, they will ignore them and continue to drop trash wherever and whenever. Lee Kuan Yew discovered this soon enough when he built beautiful modern high rise apartments and placed rural Singaporeans in them so to improve their standard and condition of living. He was shocked to learn that many brought their pigs along with them and continued rearing them right there…in the beautiful modern apartments! There is a saying that you can take the man out of the gutter but you can’t take the gutter out of the man. Well, this is not entirely true. You just need to realize that it takes a very deliberate process and a bit of time. It’s certainly not instant. You can’t expect an area boy to change his way of thinking just because winning the lotto has changed his circumstances. You only need to look at all the beautiful pedestrian bridges erected for the benefit of Lagosians that they refuse to use. Or the barbeb wire fences erected on medians to discourage pedestrians from crossing express ways because of the dangers, that have been pulled down or shoved to the side. I think it was Einstein who said you can’t use the same mindset that you used to create a problem to also provide a solution to it. This can be interpreted in several ways but each of them have one thing in common. A new mindset is required if you want to move forward.
There is no substitute to transforming the people’s mindset if you want to achieve enduring change. According to Plato, the objective of education is to inculcate the qualities of leadership and qualities required to be a good follower too. Both are necessary in equal measure to produce the ideal citizenry. Plato was wise and pragmatic enough to accept that we won’t all be “leaders” and even those who are leaders won’t occupy positions of leadership in all situations. There are moments when you won’t be the one calling the shots. Now, in such situations, will you still want to take charge, as if you’re still in your office, where you’re the main man? Or will you be humble enough to defer to others? Will you acknowledge the fact that you don’t know it all and follow when circumstances call on you to do so? Trump’s continuous squabble with Fauci and refusal to listen to the advice of experts readily comes to mind here. Ironically, it takes a man with true leadership qualities to know how to follow. I know. It sounds like a contradiction but let me explain. Actually, I’ll paint a scenario and put a question to you instead. If you find yourself in a position where you have the option of choosing from two types of people to lead you, which will you pick? Is it the type that believes rules are only there to be broken and before you can say “Jack Robinson” he has pulled out a massive pair of pliers to cut out a big hole in the median barbed wire on the express way? He then forces his vehicle through it and faces oncoming traffic because he doesn’t have the patience to sit in traffic on the right side. Or will you rather be led by the individual who believes rules are there for the benefit of the people, including himself. As should be expected of any model citizen, he follows the rules even though he is a big “Oga” himself; thereby setting a good example for those watching him to do the same. Before you rush to answer, try to remember if there was a time when you thought it expedient to bend the rules just a little or you brandished your title as a license to normalize wrong. Perhaps you sat quietly at the back of your car while your koboko wielding security men dehumanized your fellow human beings because they didn’t get out of the way on time? Or as a “big man”, you turned up at a event two hours late and thought nothing of keeping everybody else waiting for you? Naturally, some people at the function will grumble about this lack of respect for others, which frankly is what tardiness indicates, while others equally inconvenienced by being kept waiting, will surprisingly make excuses for the leader’s behaviour. The Brazilian educator and philosopher, Paulo Freire, was kind enough to coin a term for this strange behaviour. He called it Oppressor Consciousness. So already, by your actions you have normalized this bad behaviour in the mind of some others. Before you tell me who you will choose to follow out of the two individuals mentioned, do keep in mind that the answer you give will speak volumes of who you are.
I opened my first book, The Last Flight, with a quote I love by the prominent Chinese artist and social activist, Ai Wei Wei. It says, “your own acts and behaviour tell the world who you are and what sort of society you think it should be”. So contrary to the mindset of most of our so called leaders and I daresay many of our ordinary compatriots who would behave in the same way if fortune was to one day plonk them in a position of leadership, real leadership is about recognizing that you have been handed a unique opportunity to set a good example and to entrench a culture beneficial to your environment, organization or society. It should be viewed as a rare privilege to lead others aright and not be taken as a pass that entitles you to bad behaviour. Plato was right. A genuine leader must know how to follow. Leadership is not limited to those who hold titles and occupy exalted positions. Indeed, leading is something we have all been called to do.
Changing the nation…one mind at a time
Dapo Akande is a University of Surrey (UK) graduate with a Masters in Professional Ethics. An alumnus of the Institute for National Transformation; certificate holder in Leadership Through Emotional Intelligence from Case Western Reserve College, USA and author of two books, The Last Flight and Shifting Anchors. Both books form course material in Babcock University’s Literature department. Dapo is a public speaker, a content creator and a highly sought after ghostwriter.
Email – dapsakande25@gmail.com
Twitter – @Dapo_MINDS
