By Martins Idakwo
Former President of the United States, Barack Obama, on Saturday, 16 May 2020, criticized U.S. leaders overseeing the nation’s response to the coronavirus, telling college graduates in an online commencement address that the pandemic shows many officials “aren’t even pretending to be in charge.”
Obama who spoke on “Show Me Your Walk‘’, a two-hour event for students graduating from historically black colleges and universities broadcast on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.
His remarks were unexpectedly political, given the venue, and touched on current events beyond the virus and its social and economic impacts.
“More than anything, this pandemic has fully, finally torn back the curtain on the idea that so many of the folks in charge know what they’re doing,” Obama said. “A lot them aren’t even pretending to be in charge.”
Later Saturday, during a second televised commencement address for high school seniors, Obama panned, “so-called grown-ups, including some with fancy titles and important jobs” who do “what feels good, what’s convenient, what’s easy.
“Which is why things are so screwed up,” he said.
Although Obama did not name President Donald Trump or any other federal or state official in either of his appearances. He had criticized the handling of the pandemic as an “absolute chaotic disaster”.
Trump’s response.
Returning from a weekend away at Camp David, the president, Donald Trump was asked by reporters if he had any reaction to the criticism levelled at him on Saturday by his predecessor, Barrack Obama.
Mr Trump said he had not heard the comments, but said of Mr Obama: “He was an incompetent president. That’s all I can say. Grossly incompetent.”
After a while, the world was ready for big entertainment, because President Trump, as usual, went to Twitter for a ‘’better response”.
• Trump tweeted Monday that President Barack Obama ‘didn’t have a clue’
• He claimed over the weekend that Obama and Biden were the most ‘corrupt’ administration in U.S. history.
• Also suggested they should face jail time of 50 years – for their involvement in the Michael Flynn case.
• “It was the greatest political crime in the history of our country,” Trump said.
• Trump has repeatedly tweeted about what he calls ‘Obamagate’ and last week said lawmakers should call his predecessor to testify.
The Commencement (as the ceremony of graduating students is called) remarks were the latest sign that Obama intends to play an intensifying active role in the coming election.
He has generally kept a low profile in the years since he left office, even as Trump has underestimated him. Obama told supporters on the call that he would be “spending as much time as necessary and campaigning as hard as I can” for Joe Biden, who served as his vice.
Is this how he has started supporting his former vice?
As he congratulated the college graduates and commiserated over the enormous challenges they face, given, the devastation and economic turmoil the virus has brought. I’m sure the graduating students got the message the former President was trying to pass, but that didn’t come like a plate of Amala and begin.
The world’s ability to shape events in this century will depend on the quality of its leaders. Yet every nation is producing too few future leaders who combine substantive depth with international experience and outlook.
So, too, managers with a broad strategic vision in a rapidly changing world are in short supply. The shortage is only partly a matter of numbers in the skill categories, particularly for the government, given its constraints in paying and reaching out for talent.
Rather, what is lacking today are men and women whose experience and training have given constraints in paying and reaching out for talents required of tomorrow’s broad-gauged leaders.
Fulfilling that need calls for a bold national initiative bringing together government and higher education, foundations, intergovernmental organizations and the for-profit sector.
Leaders of tomorrow must make tomorrow come, else no one will! They will more than ever before, live, work, and compete in a highly fluid, disruptive, and sensitive world.
Therefore, to succeed and to live a fulfilled professional and personal life, this breed of leaders have to possess very unique skills so as to get the opportunity to grow and to make a pathway.
In the case of the former President Barack Obama and President Donald Trump, you’ll notice that all the issues they have been engaging are ‘Issues politics’, tabling all the issues affecting the country and presently, its the handling of the novel virus.
In Nigeria, the prevalent leadership style is focused on charisma, team orientation, humane orientation, and participation.
According to the Leadership Effectiveness in Africa and Diaspora (LEAD) qualitative study in Nigeria, there is a significant degree of convergence between the Delphi technique and focus groups regarding the role of culture and leadership effectiveness. Overall, the results indicate that cultural beliefs of ancestors and community landmarks on moralistic behaviour are important factors in the Nigerian culture.
An effective leader in Nigeria is viewed as well educated, knowledgeable, honest, trustworthy, fair in all manners, persevering and sociable in nature.
The findings further reveal that leaders who care for the needs and well-being of the people in the face of challenges and life-threatening circumstances are classified as heroes and should be celebrated.
Unlike the United States, Nigeria does not practice issue-based politics. They have eventually planted a seed that has germinated into corruption. It has eaten deep into society.
Nigeria, as it is today, serves its leaders and not its leaders serving it. If we sum the bogus money spent on the legislators for the jobs they do for less than 150 days a year, for which they collect in one month what some people collect over a lifetime, it is just indispensable, and this country needs to be restructured towards the benefit and consideration of its people, not its leaders, just like what the former President and the President of the United States are doing.
In conclusion, youths all over the world and particularly in Nigeria should take their destinies in their hands by taking up leadership roles through innovative ideas.
There is this popular saying that “youths are leaders of tomorrow.” Unless you make it come, you cannot see tomorrow. However, I would like you to know that tomorrow we are talking about is now. So make it count!
Although the youths are leading in the world now, both in ideas and innovations, there is need to take a step further to a national course in terms of political participation, because the youth population constitutes the highest voting population in Nigeria.
