Peace was in abundance all over the land. There was love, unity and sincere commitment to peaceful co-existence until the devils within deemed it necessary to puncture the balloon in 2021 under the watch of Joshua Dariye as the sitting governor. Crisis erupted in Jos, Plateau State capital between adherents of Islam labeled as settlers not indigenous Muslims and Pagan natives masquerading as Christians who believe Plateau State belongs to only them and no any other person, most especially Hausa/Fulani Muslims has the right to own land anywhere in the state. The project started as planned but met stiff resistance from those targeted for the cleansing. Since then, the situation remains tense.
At the beginning, it appeared to be an agenda against Hausa/Fulani Muslims, since there is virtually no part of Plateau State that never experienced the suspected ethnic cleansing. But that perception has changed to a claimed land grabbing targeted at Fulani herdsmen that has transformed to a more catastrophic dimension that can hardly be controlled as solution.
Other areas such as Southern Kaduna, parts of Taraba and Benue States copied the ethnic cleansing exercise from Plateau State and the situation seems to have defied applicable solutions.
We are today where we are. We have brought insecurity to our doorsteps. We are battling one crisis or the other. We are daily visitors to grave yards to bury those unfortunate. But how did we reach where we are? Was it from our religious ignorance and pretence, intolerance, impatient, provocation or what?
One can recall those memorable childhood days while growing up in the then peaceful, serene, friendly, loving and bubbling Tin city of Jos, the Plateau State capital which was then a paradise on planet earth blessed with humble people, several night clubs, decent eateries, assorted fruits, foods and other relaxation spots.
The city was thousands of miles away from ethno-religious sentiments, hatred, crisis or even suspicion amongst the inhabitants. At that time, satanic agents from the collection of devil were still in chains, hiding in caves and mountain tops away from the famous but loving Tin city.
Living in Jos was an experience exuding elation and excitement beyond description. The greener of the uplands adjoining the stretch of inter-town highways and roads was so alluring as well as adoring to be ignored.
Life was good in those days of yore as electricity supply outrage was seldom with direct supply from Kurra falls (Ex-land), and shorter in duration, if and when it occurred, as the then Electricity Corporation of Nigeria (ECN) was managed by good hands while the British-owned Nigeria Electricity Supply Company (NESCO) headquartered in Bukuru was in steady supply of electricity.
Tin ore mining companies on the Plateau such as; Amalgamated Tin Mines Nigeria (ATMN), Indo Mining, Gold &Base, DD Balang, AM Dung, DB Zang etc and other blue-chip companies and investments; Kingsway, Onigbinde, DL Akanji, Sulen Jebu, Sahara Merchants and Harmony Brothers fancy stores, Gottschalk, United Trading Company (UTC), Manufacturers Delivery Service (MDS), Vono Valiant, Rank Xerox, GB Ollivant, AJ Seward, Liver Brothers, Nigeria Breweries, Leventis motors, SCOA, Jos Steel Rolling Mill, Juladaco, Plateau Tannery Zawan, Madara Limited Vom, Dunlop Nigeria Limited, SG Bonomi, NASCO, Nigeria Bottling Company etc stationed in Jos were always handy for service and jobs opportunities to the needy without discrimination or sentiments.
Today, due to poor state policies and a hidden agenda, almost of all those companies mentioned have relocated to safer climes away from the troubled Plateau. No responsible investor thinks of Plateau State. The state has been abandoned to ethno-religious jingoists and bigots thereby creating more misery due to idleness and insecurity. What flourishes more in parts of the state is the commercialization of religions, banditry and other criminal activities. Very Sad!
Pipe-borne water supply in Jos was superb and very reliable from Liberty dam. Notably, and of significance to this essay, was the information platforms of those days of yore. The radio, television and few newspapers— nothing of digital social media as we enjoy today! In addition, there were very educative and entertaining magazines and novels for grab at newspaper stands around the General Post Office along Ahmadu Bello Way, Jos and few other locations within the city.
Honestly, can one wish, albeit regrettably or inopportunely, a reverting to that time as in the early 70s and 80s? Is Plateau State truly nearing the dream of its founding fathers, in colour, content and context with the vagaries of the plethora of problems pillorying the state presently that could apparently dim the hope of incurable optimists imagining a beautiful, better and brighter Plateau in Nigeria?
Until leadership of the state sees reason to deploy wisdom and embrace all ethnic nationalities as family members irrespective of sentiments and introduce accommodation policies beneficial to all, the state may not know peace. I repeat, it may not enjoy peace. One cannot sow violence and expect to reap peace. One cannot forcefully displace legitimate owner of landed property under any claim and expect to have peace on same commandeered land. That’s the truth!
There is no gainsaying that our general political landscape lacks real and rugged transformational or servant leaders that Nigeria is in dire need at this time to usher us in our dream New Nigeria that our forefathers envisioned. There are many transactional leaders or dealers in political garments on the scene for pecuniary cum partisan gains, not really about the betterment of the people. It is high time many of our aspiring political leaders lined up to learn leadership processes, philosophies and practices. The true heart of leadership is altruistic —-selfless service. In addition, leadership is about vision. Moreover, leadership is not only influence but the ability to embark on a journey carrying along other participants–followers–focusing on a mutually agreed destination.
In essence, leadership is a journey; if undertaken without committed followers, such a leader would just be on a walk! In the private sector, globally, leaders are trained within organizations and even sent to certain high grade institutions like Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge, etc. It is unsettling and naïve for aspiring political and public leaders to think that they can lead successfully without the requisite training to prepare and package them.
It was Harvard University, Kennedy School of Government Professor, Barbara Kellerman, author of “Bad Leadership: What It Is, How It Happens, Why It Matters?”, that once curiously posited: “Why is it that we educate and train our medical and veterinary doctors, security personnel, engineers, journalists, lawyers with great care and competence, but not our leaders.” Not done, she submitted succinctly and saliently: “The American military…….recognizes that to be effective it must educate leaders, train leaders, and develop leaders.” Anyone still wondering why American soldiers can hold their own anywhere, anytime or anyhow when duty beckons?
If Nigeria can stop stagnancy and steer the ship of state towards a better rather than a battered Nigeria, it is high time our aspiring leaders deemed it fit to learn leading ethos not just within the four walls of schools but in organizations and public offices, whether they are aspiring to be voted as local government councilors, chairmen, state or national assembly members, governors or president! It should be as sacrosanct as that in order to nip in the bud the emergence of upstarts that can down Nigeria into a leadership abyss drenched and drowned in tears and throes!
As the country wobbles in daily transition, it is imperative for Nigerians to wake up to their functional roles and responsibilities in the polity and politicking process even as the process is not completed until a desired leadership at the national and state assemblies are put-in-place.
If leaders need education, courage and enlightenment, to become fitting and functional, those members of the national assembly need patriotic political education and engineering to elect their leaders not the anointed and imposed the likes of Gods-Will Obot Akpabio that are ridiculing and abusing the reputation of the 10th National Assembly as clowns.
To have a bubbling and focused National Assembly in future, Nigeria desires patriots with sound education and clean records for the Senate Presidency and Speakership of the House of Representatives which remains the only option for better legislation and improved welfare of all because the time has passed when national lawmakers are forced to play into the whims and caprices of dealers in leaders’ garb by accepting overtures thrown at them as under an Akpabio senate presidency enmeshed in several scandals.
It is upsetting and unsettling to see some analysts siding with those set party anointed national assembly members pandering to those transactional leaders (dealers) citing ethnicity, religion or geo-political zone as the raison d’etre for such indecorous and odious mannerism.
In essence, it is not just those seeking for leadership that need to be trained and equipped, other members also need enlightenment and education that will empower and embolden them to become fitting and functional voters and lawmakers that cannot be induced or coerced to elect dealers as leaders or principal officers in parliament, though some may be wealthy, but lacking and lackadaisical in competence, intelligence, character, capacity, capability and charisma.
In order for Nigeria to accomplish and achieve the dream of a “New Nigeria” from 2027, functional and fitting governors and national lawmakers must arise to be active in the campaign for a more credible leadership of the states and the national assemblies, by interfacing, interacting and interrogating those presently imposed and jostling to please the presidency irrespective of political parties and ideology.
Who are they? Where are they coming from? What have they got to offer for good governance and legislation? Do they have professions or careers? Have they served in organizations or public/private offices meritoriously or creditably before? Do they have mentees or protégés they had worked upon in the past, and presently are working upon? Where are those mentees or protégés now? What are their vision statements, core values and strategies? What are their seeming trajectories in the ladder or lattice of leadership hitherto?
In the emerging field of Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL), students and scholars have professional lens depicting developmental deliverables in terms of policies, plans, programmes and projects.
These are otherwise referred to as interventions. Invariably, these are visible to lawmakers and citizens as there are key performance indicators culminating in outputs, outcomes and impacts in tracking or monitoring these interventions. MEL practitioners and scholars, in going through the cycle and closing the loop, adopted a terminology referred to as “Lessons Learnt (LL)”. In essence, LL contextualizes the content of: What works? What does not work? Why it works? Why it does not work? The bottom line tinkering, if our case in Nigeria will not be as a barber’s chair often engaged in motion without movement, then we should be asking retrospective or reflective questions in line with LL.
Truth be told, as it is said that combination of sagacity of the gray headed as well as that of the toddlers culminated in the founding of our ancient cities. It is high time altruistic aspiring leaders and functional followers come to real terms in collaborating to move Nigeria forward and upward. The more we the citizens tolerate bad leaders and respect and ‘worship’ them to hoodwink us, the more we seemingly and surreptitiously sink Nigeria into the abyss.
Reading the lips of the richest man in Africa, Aliko Dangote who posited thus “if bad and inexperienced politicians control power in Nigeria, my wealth may turn into poverty, and I am not ready to become a poor man”, one would have thought that so even the wealthy worry!
However, the wealthy in the likes of the Dantatas, Atikus, Dangotes, Alakijas, Otedolas, Adenugas, AbdulSamads, Peter Obis, Petersides, Coscharis, Elumelus, Ranos, Lulu Briggs, Tinubus, Arthur Ezes, Ibetos, Azmans, Shagayas, Mangals, Jack Richs etc, should be more wary in waddling through the world of wild wilderness of politics and politicking in Nigeria.
My tinkering is that Dangote and his club members should be more concerned about our common patrimony rather than their personal possessions. If they all reason to tow this line of thought, which is not too late anyway, then, they would be more fixated on educating, enlightening, emboldening, empowering and ennobling more followers to become fittingly functional so that in the process of time, some citizens will aspire to core and crucial leadership positions.
Through studies, I could see Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore’s instinct in inculcating and institutionalizing leadership development programmes with a view to raising many leaders within the public service and going further in enrolling certain cerebral citizens in their youth, into such high-grade schools to groom them for future leadership roles. If such policies are adopted and applied in the context of Nigeria with all sincerity, there will surely be a great path to a better, brighter and more prosperous Nigeria; a New Nigeria, possibly with more progressive, prosperous and positive prospects than the prime perception of our present leaders.
Those frontline wealthy men and women who made it through dint of hard work in trade and commerce not through stealing of public funds or beneficiaries of sleaze funds can champion the crucial and core course of action that can enhance our common trajectory towards a glorious New Nigeria! It can be better than one can imagine!!
Whenever we talk of wealthy individuals, reference is not made of those in public service or served in public office in possession of wealth. In most cases, such wealth is suspected to be stolen from the commonwealth because it hardly goes into physical industrialization or other credible investments for fear of exposure and subsequent confiscation. It always goes into ostentatious living and extravagance. Sleaze funds are deployed to agriculture as a cover, estate development and purchase of shares in flourishing companies, transport and haulage businesses for deceit which has little economic impact on the populace.
For instance, even through magic Ahmed Idris the itchy-fingered sacked and humiliated former Accountant-General of the Federation lacks the confidence to openly establish a cement manufacturing or any manufacturing company with the over N109 billion he stole from Nigerians or any of our national lawmakers surviving on bribes, diversions and swindles or judges that have commercialized judgments? What of Diezani Alli-Son Madueke the mother of fraud and tricksters or any of the other crooks that stole Nigerians blind while in leadership and brought misery to their doorsteps?
Revolution is becoming a must option to bad governance in Nigeria and all those rogues who mismanaged Nigeria must be brought to justice when it happens. The Jerry Rawlings example is reaching our shores soon!
Muhammad is a commentator on national issues.
