Dr. Ibraheem Dooba recently wrote on the Bida Forum WhatsApp platform that “policies are like macroeconomics; you never fully know what is wrong until they are implemented.” That statement is not only true; it is profound enough to demand reflection. It explains why I have never considered critics, by virtue of criticism alone, to be the most intelligent voices in the room or the most deserving of trust when it comes to leadership. Insight without responsibility is attractive. Responsibility without certainty is terrifying. Leadership lives in the latter.
Criticism, in many cases, is cheaper than decision-making. Most ideas come with alternatives and inevitable drawbacks. A critic can easily select the weakest link in any proposal and magnify it. That does not necessarily mean the critic can produce a better alternative. In political theory, Herbert Simon’s concept of bounded rationality reminds us that decision-makers operate under constraints of limited information, limited time, and limited capacity. The critic, however, enjoys the luxury of hindsight, distance, and often, immunity from consequence. It is far easier to diagnose than to operate.
Leadership decisions are not made in the comfort of abstraction. They are made in the heat of urgency, under pressure, and with incomplete data. Routine decisions may follow procedure, established guidelines, and familiar remedies. But the most consequential decisions are non-routine; they demand courage, trade-offs, and the willingness to accept blame for outcomes no one can fully predict. Ronald Heifetz, in his work on adaptive leadership, argues that real leadership requires stepping into uncertainty and managing competing values. Critics, by contrast, often manage impressions.
Take the example of fuel subsidy removal. When the policy was implemented, many critics shifted their positions. Yet the fiscal realities at the time left little room for comfort. It is easy to condemn a decision after it has produced pain; it is harder to confront a situation where the treasury is strained and the budget does not provide room for continuity. A new administration inheriting such constraints does not operate in a vacuum of theory but in the immediacy of economic survival. What appears cruel in implementation may have been unavoidable in calculation.
Consider also the debate over party primaries and electoral reforms. For years, indirect primaries were criticized as a playground for the highest bidder. When reforms sought to adjust the process, critics quickly discovered new faults in the alternatives. Direct primaries, they argued, would empower incumbents. Consensus arrangements were dismissed as manipulative. The same voices that condemned one model found fresh ammunition against another. It raises a fundamental question: is the objective to improve the system or simply to sustain the energy of opposition?
The debate over state police and regional governance reveals a similar pattern. Advocates present it as a cure for insecurity, while opponents fear it could inflame ethnic tensions. History offers caution. During the First Republic, regional policing was intertwined with political rivalry and mistrust. In a nation already strained by ethnic and religious suspicion, multiplying control over armed authority is not a purely theoretical experiment. Across federations, core security structures often remain centralized precisely to reduce fragmentation and abuse. The issue is not whether reform is desirable, but whether its consequences are fully understood before its adoption.
The controversy surrounding electronic transmission of election results tells the same story. Many insist on perfection in real-time systems without acknowledging infrastructural and technical vulnerabilities. Institutions must balance innovation with reliability. A gradual, flexible approach may lack the dramatic appeal of absolutism, yet governance is rarely served by rigidity. Technology, like policy, is not immune to failure, and when failure occurs at a national scale, the consequences are not academic, they are combustible.
Criticism often thrives on idealism; leadership operates within realism. Idealism imagines a world of pure options. Realism confronts trade-offs. Citizens sometimes reverse positions without acknowledging their earlier convictions. A policy once dismissed as fraudulent suddenly becomes indispensable. A leader once hailed as a savior becomes the subject of mockery. This oscillation reveals how sentiment, misinformation, and groupthink shape public discourse more than consistent principles.
The irony is that many opposition figures who condemn certain policies might have adopted similar measures if confronted with identical constraints. When applause is loud, promises are bold. When responsibility arrives, arithmetic replaces rhetoric. As Max Weber observed in his lecture “Politics as a Vocation,” the ethic of responsibility differs from the ethic of conviction. The former weighs consequences; the latter clings to ideals. Effective leadership demands the burden of responsibility.
No government operates with entirely new options. Borrowing, taxation, subsidy reform, electoral systems, local government autonomy: these are recurring dilemmas in political economy. What changes is the context, the urgency, and the scale of risk. Yet public discourse often treats each decision as though a flawless solution must exist somewhere, hidden only by incompetence or malice. In reality, most available options are imperfect. Leaders choose not between good and bad, but between competing costs.
Personal interest, bias, and misinformation make criticism even easier. It is comfortable to focus on the negative when one is outside power, and to rediscover complexity once inside. Many who assume office, believing they will effortlessly outperform their predecessors, soon discover structural constraints that were invisible from the outside. The treasury they imagined overflowing may be strained. The reforms they once demanded may prove more intricate than expected. Suddenly, the language of certainty gives way to the language of caution.
This is not to dismiss criticism. On the contrary, constructive criticism is essential in any democracy. But criticism alone does not equate to capacity. The ability to point out flaws is not the same as the ability to manage competing interests, absorb shocks, and sustain institutions. Leadership is not proven in the sharpness of commentary but in the steadiness of action.
If idealism alone produced effective governance, individuals would never regret their personal decisions. Yet even in private life, we wrestle with uncertainty. We choose between alternatives, aware of their risks, and sometimes discover that the road not taken appears better only in retrospect. Governance magnifies this human dilemma on a national scale.
In the end, being a good critic may win applause. Being an effective leader requires something heavier: the courage to decide amid ambiguity, the humility to accept imperfection, and the resilience to endure criticism from those who do not carry the same burden. That difference is the line between commentary and command, between observation and responsibility.
Bagudu can be reached at bagudumohammed15197@gmail.com or on 0703 494 3575.
