Good system: bad leadership by Tunde Akande

A good form in the hand of bad leaders will fail and a bad form in the hand of good leaders will succeed. So what we need is good leadership.

"As to form of government, let fools contend, whatever is well administered is best," Oliver Cromwell (1599 - 1658) English military and political leader.

Oliver Cromwell's well deployed aphorism is very popular among political scientists. It captures the needless effort bothering about a specific form of government as a condition necessary for the success of government. A well designed form of government may produce no desired effect in the hands of bad handlers of that form of government.

A bad form may produce the desired result in the hands of good handlers. So what matters is not the form of government but those who operate it. In Nigeria we have seen since independence in 1960 the failure of both structure and handlers. The current thinking is that the nation should go back to the 1963 constitution if it wants success in its government. But that was the very form of federalism we moved away from when it collapsed in 1966 when a group of majors in the Armed Forces attempted to seize government alleging failure of the government to meet the aspiration of Nigerians. Thereafter a decree 33 promulgated by Major-General Aguiyi Ironsi effectively terminated the country's federalism and placed it on a unitary mode. It was felt then that it was the federal system that allowed the nation's three semi- autonomous regions to become so disunited as to want to break off. Though we call the contraption put together by the military a federal system, Nigerians know it was anything but federal because our system is effectively unitary, even up till now. Having tried a quasi-federal system or a pretentious federalism since the return to civil government in 1979 which failed again and was terminated by another set of military adventurers in 1983, we must be wise enough to define accurately where the rain started to beat us and to design appropriate solution. Civil government returned again in 1999 with a form of government not very different to the one the military terminated in 1983. Now in 2025 because of apparent failure, many people are clamouring for a return to the 1963 model from which we drifted.

If we go back to that constitution of 1963 that gave a federalism that many seem to prefer again, there is no certainty that it will not breakdown once again because the conditions that made it to fail are still present. We must look very deep before we take a leap again else we resume our dance in the dark. There are three reasons for the dance in the dark which has caused our going back and forth and our near failure as a nation. One was dealt with in my article titled: "We can not survive with this westernstyle democracy." Democracy, I pointed out, is bound by its very nature to fail. Socrates, a philosopher saw that early enough that only unwise people will lead in democracy and that it will lead to poverty in the people it is meant to serve. Not only in Nigeria but everywhere in the world, democracy has failed. Our second problem in Nigeria which Socrates also pointed out and which Oliver Cromwell also alluded to is the leadership that has been operating our forms of government within the context of the westernstyle democracy. In Nigeria we have fully achieved bad men and women ruling best men and women. Our worst men and women have mounted our leadership promoted by democracy. Cromwell's revelation is that a society must both care about good form and good leaders or operators. A good form in the hand of bad leaders will fail and a bad form in the hand of good leaders will succeed. So what we need is good leadership. Unfortunately, democracy of the western type can never recruit good leadership. Westernstyle democracy as I showed in my last article is also a bad form of government for many reasons. In Nigeria our gaping illiteracy is a big problem. Illiteracy has made possible widespread poverty. Even in the advanced countries where educational level is at a reasonable level many people still don't get interested in politics, neither do they fully comprehend the issues involved in elections. As advanced as America is, it recently voted in Donald Trump, a revelation of how bad democracy can be in choosing leadership. Supreme Court judges delayed justice in issues that would have stopped Trump from contesting because of some criminal cases against him. Youths between 18 and 30 voted for him because he represents what they consume on the social media. The values of America for good leadership is gone, encouraged by social media and democracy. Now Americans are lamenting their mistakes. Trump is like any tyrant in Africa’s political leadership.

What do we do in Nigeria if we want to avoid a calamity, especially if we want to grow our economy very rapidly? We have to design our own democracy by getting our brains to function. We have more that 350 ethnicities to unite into one nation, we have mass poverty to eliminate, the mass of our people are very ignorant, our technology is non- existent, we are prey for other bigger nations, they oppress and steal our natural resources. All the forms of government we have designed continue to get us armed robbers, soldiers-of-fortune, financial scammers and rentseekers into our government. Each cycle of leadership steal our money. We borrow to eat. Each cycle comes with its own programmes which they don't implement because they don't mean them in the first place and because they don't have the capacity and competence to implement anything. One of the great political and economic thinkers Nigerian has produced, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, once theorized that Nigeria will need at least 54 states to accommodate our ethnic diversity. I hope the grand-old-man will be around now to see what and where a 36 state structure has gotten us. Over 70 per cent of our revenue go into remuneration. We have 37 state civil services all of them indolent, we have 774 local government civil services, all of them indolent and do nothing but collect salaries and steal. After paying the civil-servants we are left with nothing for infrastructure. The bad leaders mop the rest into their pockets. What do we do that we don't perish? The thesis of this thinking is that we must collapse again into six regions, according to the six zones in the country so our finances are better managed and our people have opportunity to build together.

1, Nigerianize our democracy. Deng Xiaoping, called the father of modern China tolerated Mao the revered political father of China for as long as Mao remained in power. Though a trained and practical communist, he believed communism alone cannot help China out of poverty. Mao's "Cultural Revolution" and "A Great Leap Forward" had induced famine among the Chinese and about 4.5 million had died in famine. Deng was purged twice, they labeled him a "capitalist roader." Deng waited till Mao died, he struggled and outmanoeuvred his rivals and assumed effective leadership and commenced political reforms in China. He had a theory that looks like what Oliver Cromwell said: "a cat may be black or white but what is important is that a cat catches mice." He would not be stuck in communism, he will get the Chinese cat to catch mice. China must be out of poverty and misery whatever cat will do that, black or white. So China brought in some capitalism that opened up the latent energy of the Chinese, he encouraged foreign direct investment and opened China up to the world market. The rest is history as they say, no nation today can push China back, not even America which is now afraid of China. Nigeria must reform her democracy. Our current set of leaders must be our Mao. Our Deng Xiaopings must rise with determination to change both form and leaderhip recruitment pattern. We must use a combination of election and selection. One-man-one-vote must be aligned with a mode of leadership selection. One-man-one-vote will be retained to give our people a sense of belonging and participation but there must be selection of good leaders to ensure that only good and disciplined leaders get to our government. That is one of the political reforms of Deng Xiaoping. There are good leaders in Nigeria but with one-man-one-vote and the political party system we operate now they will never be given the chance to get to power.

Even the enemies of Chief Obafemi Awolowo acknowledged his intellect, hard work and wisdom but bad leaders effectively tackled him and made it impossible for him to get to power at the centre. The brief period he spent as the premier of the Western Region was a standard for the whole nation. But by political intrigue and manipulation he was sent to jail and his exact opposite, an example of a bad leadership was helped by the region that controlled power at the centre to gain power in the Western Region. That began the ruin of the Western Region and the ruin of Nigeria. There was a coup, a revenge coup and a civil war that killed millions of Nigerians.

One of the most conscientious lawyers ever produced in Nigeria and very hard working and a lover of the poor was late Chief Gani Fawehinmi. There was no prison in Nigeria where he was not locked up because of fierce agitation against oppression of the poor. There was no place in the country which did not enjoy his scholarship financed from money he made in his legal practice. In frustration because of continual bad governance, he offered himself to be president in Nigeria. If anybody voted for him they would be members of his household. He concluded that Nigerians didn't need him. Late Alhaji Balarabe Musa was a lover of the poor. By sheer luck he got to power as governor in Kaduna state where the legislature was dominated by a reactionary opposition. He was effectively impeached and that ended his vision. There are good people and bad people in Nigeria. There are two sets of Nigerians according to Nasir El Rufai, the diminutive stormy petrel of Nigerian politics who keeps fighting for a better Nigeria: good Nigerians and bad Nigerians. But one-man- one-vote will never get good Nigerians to power. Poverty, tribalism, religion and violence have become weapons of electoral victory. Muhammadu Buhari, the former president despite his many sins could not be removed because he weaponized tribalism. Each time there was a protest to remove him he appealed to tribalism: "They want to remove your brother," and people from the North will withdraw breaking ranks with their southern counterparts. Tinubu from the same party, APC, as Buhari won his election by weaponizing tribalism and poverty.

Forget it, one-man-one-vote alone will never get good leaders and any form of government will always fail with it. One-man-one-vote must be blended with a selection system. But how? Let's meet in the next instalment.

First Published in METRO

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Tunde Akande is both a journalist and pastor. He earned a Master's degree in Mass Communication from the University of Lagos.