In the entire history of the world, the world has never existed without challenges and it would never. At every phase of human history, leadership is required to change the world; authentic, visionary, assertive, creative, transformative, sincere and disruptive leaders are required to fix and forge their societies forward without bias or sentiments attached.
At the peak of public leadership in any country is the presidential leadership, either a president, prime minister, or a monarch, every nation looks up to the Head of State to provide hope, optimism and shared social possibilities. To lead a country in a time of chaos and complex crisis, the Head of a State requires more than just the desire to lead. It requires the trusted ability to simplify complex conversations; take tough decision, embody firm convictions of patriotism and set decisively in national interest; showcase the wisdom, of insights, the audacity of foresights and creative commitment to bold visions.
Our president should understand that majority of the Nigerians he struggled to govern are pretenders, hypocrites and parochial liars that can stand anywhere to swear with the Holy Books in their hands to deceive and establish a lie for believe as a fact.
It is only in Nigeria based on ethno-religious and regional sentiments domestic investors are denied possession of land for development purposes in place of foreign investors lobbied and preferred to have easy ownership of such lands.
The 36 states in Nigeria are in need of aggressive industrial development for the good of their economy and reduction of unemployment rate, but only Bauchi, Kano, Lagos, Katsina, Kaduna, Rivers, Jigawa, Niger, Taraba, Sokoto, Zamfara, Adamawa, Borno, Yobe, Nasarawa, Lagos, Akwa-Ibom and Kebbi welcome and support prospective domestic and foreign investors without strings to establish business with less stress. The rest, prefer to remain in abject poverty with ethno-religious sentiments as their sources of capital through violence.
If for instance, Dangote as a Muslim, Hausa-Fulani from Kano State had found Plateau State as the most suitable location for his proposed refinery not the liberal Lagos State, he could have since changed location before scratching the soil or dropped the idea entirely due to frustration and threats from the natives or better dragged to court by idling ethnic jingoists and day light ‘religious’ preachers parading the streets and their places of worship preaching hate and violence to the gullible at the detriment of anything called development. We can recall the frustration and humiliation Aliko Dangote passed through in Benue Cement Company when he acquired the company through due process.
Admiral Murtala Nyako had encountered same frustration and humiliation in the hands of idling natives when he acquired Brewery Agro Research Company (BARC) owned by Plateau State Government.
Admiral Nyako had the sincerity of developing the investment to full maturity and for the economic good of Plateau State and Nigeria, but, he faced threatening challenges from the natives of Plateau State for just being a Muslim and Hausa/Fulani. He had to dismantle the farm to safer location. The natives were abandoned to fate with what they know best, biting poverty and bleak future.
Then in 2023,
From 1960, Nigeria has had 11 general elections with each one in search of leaders to lead her out of the crisis of unity, underdevelopment and chain of bad governance; and is constitutionally expected to hold 10 general elections from 2023 to 2060 when Nigeria will be 100 years as an independent sovereign country.
As Nigeria held her seventh general election in 2023 since the advent of the Fourth Republic in 1999, the declared winner of the presidential election owes himself a duty to understand that with stroke of his pen every word of a president and every action or inaction of a president, a life is at stake, either to be bettered or marred.
To perform the premium duties and demands of the presidency, the disciplined leadership of the Commander-In-Chief is required to uphold and protect the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in engendering national security, galvanize our diverse peculiarities for nation building, build a productive economy and go for a foreign policy that advances our national interest.
With Nigeria’s fiscal crisis, debt profile, high unemployment rate, insecurity, climate and ethno-religious crisis, among other core challenges, certain questions resonated at every point of the presidential campaign in Nigeria, but the questioners had owed the electorate a duty to had firmly questioned the candidates on how they will diversify Nigeria’s economy and boost revenue earnings, reduce corrupt practices, secure Nigeria, reduce unemployment, develop critical socio-economic infrastructures, strengthen institutions, build local productivity capacity (including local refineries) and end fuel subsidy and crude oil theft.
To fix Nigeria’s current crisis will not be easy nor will it emanate from the barrel of cheap political proposals. Nigeria’s president must be assertive in the best interest of Nigeria by taking tough measures and decisions to ensure conclusive policy implementation in all sectors of the state.
Nigeria’s president has plethora of presidential leadership precedents to follow and there is nothing wrong in borrowing such good case studies of good governance from other political climes in order to advance our system to flourish. To pivot focus in our time of national uncertainty, our president must mould a mental model for shared state’s productivity and prosperity, clearly communicate national policy agenda for transformation and situate sustainable systems of good governance for enduring development legacies and growth.
At a point in the history of Singapore, it appeared change was impossible until the savior Lee Kuan Yew exercised presidential leadership to do the art of possibilities. He transformed Singapore from one of the poorest countries on planet earth in the 1960s to a global economic giant. He forged Singapore as a highly effective, anti-graft government with an efficient civil service.
Like Nigeria, Singapore faced severe unemployment and other socio-economic crisis when Lee Kuan Yew’s government embarked on a modernization programme that focused on establishing Singapore as a manufacturing hub, investing in public infrastructures, ensured political stability, transparent public institutions and low level corruption. Lee Kuan Yew led his country out of compelling and complex sovereign crisis. What stops our leaders from copying the style of Lee Kuan Yew if they are serious and sincere? Probably, we are yet to have the needed leader to navigate us from where we are today.
Given that countries undergo transformative development either through evolutionary or revolutionary trajectories, transformational presidential leadership is not achieved in a vacuum; it is usually anchored on known presidential leadership practices and realities. All the stages of development of any country; development as interaction, as action and as a process, can only be achieved when a constitutional democracy elects a president who has the mind as to run a development, productive and people-centred state.
No president, no matter how disciplined, nationalistic, patriotic, cultured, eloquent, educated or committed can create a functional country without efficient institutions, active citizens and committed civil society sector which must play complementary roles in nation building. This is why we exactly based our facts for, the best candidates to the 2023 10th Senate Presidency; Sen. AbdulAzeez Yari of Zamfara State, and Rt. Hon Ahmed Idris Wase for the Speakership House of Representatives, from Plateau State.
But the powers in the ruling party and their hangers-on, for whatever reason, preferred to load weaklings on the 10th National Assembly as principal officers definitely for an interest against national interest.
Unfortunately, campaign for Nigeria’s 2023 general elections was beclouded with populism, sentiments, particularly religious and misinformation. If those were the deciding factors that influenced, the outcome of the 2023 presidential election, the tendencies are high that Nigeria’s developmental and existential crisis will continue unresolved for decades to come. For development delayed in a generation is development denied of the generation.
Nigeria’s president must be grounded in the ongoing life of the people, as well as the realities of the society. It is ‘criminally’ irresponsible for our president to live in the luxury of Aso Rock Villa for the pleasure extracted from power and to maintain the interests of vested power brokers at the expenses of the people’s well-being.
Nigeria’s president should be that person that cannot subscribe to medical tourism and other shameful obsession for foreign luxuries. But we are already damn wrong in this hope from what we have at hand!
It is time to invest, build and secure Nigeria’s greatness and shared prosperity. The president of Nigeria must prioritize and focus on a robust development agenda on specific sectors such as security, power, industrialization and manufacturing, education, healthcare, agriculture, anti-corruption and public infrastructure. Such policy and development agenda will be measured on the president’s success in physical infrastructure, social well-being and accountability.
More importantly, our president must search for enduring solutions through the provisions of Chapter 2 of the 1999 Constitution (as amended). He should be optimistic, confident and self-assured that Nigeria is capable of changing and it can change within a specified timeframe with the required sincerity of purpose spiced with inbuilt determination.
There is sufficient legal frame work that must guide such a revolutionary president, including the Petroleum Industry Act, Start-up Act, among other local contents development, transparency and productivity laws.
Corruption must be fought with the zeal to crush it. Anti-corruption agencies should be overhauled and repositioned and special courts established to handle all corruption related cases.
Those serving as ministers should be properly monitored by security agencies and only those performing in their fields of endeavors should be retained not mere I chop, you chop political players the likes of Betta Edu.
Today, Nigeria needs the likes of Muhammed A Abubakar SAN who served as governor of Bauchi State (2015-2019), Dr Musa Babayo, Capt. Bala Jibir, Ibrahim Zailani all from Bauchi State and Prof Bernard Malau Matur from Plateau State should make the list presidential aides for optimum result not the likes of Prof Ali Pate or Simon Bako Lalong that add no value to the political system.
Lalong as a Governor had all the opportunities at his disposal to transform Plateau State to a safe industrial hub despite pockets of challenges from ethno-religious jingoists but he failed.
But, through cluelessness and insincerity of purpose, he brought shame to Plateau State through poor performance as a two-term governor. He left Plateau State worse than he met it. In some local government areas, for his eight years in power, no single state government project was put-in-place, Wase as a case in question.
A new Nigeria is possible if our president has an inbuilt sincerity of purpose and honesty in understanding the rudiments of the politics of the possibility. But definitely, Nigeria needs no Hard Drugs Baron or that with questionable credentials and without an authentic family history as a president. We are neither a bastard country nor an orphan in the comity of developing nations!
Ours for now is the usual prayer as loyal and law abiding citizens, and as one with part of his roots in Fombina Kingdom, we say in Fulfulde, “Hande E-Jango Sai Jonmirawo”
Muhammad is a commentator on national issues
