Stephen Adewale
Unless we have incorruptible leaders in every sphere of Nigeria’s public life, the country may never emerge from the cocoon of misery. Leadership is not only about who to be; it is also about what to be. A leader is a seer, seeker, servant, strategist, shepherd, sustainer, steward, and spokesman. The portrait of 21st century Nigeria is disquieting. While South Korea is busy taming the moon and befriending Mars, Nigeria trudges on in poverty, corruption, disease and illiteracy.
By now everyone familiar with the story is aware that the Code of Conduct Tribunal on Thursday found the suspended Chief Justice of Nigeria, CJN, Justice Walter Onnoghen guilty of all the six-count charge levelled against him and ordered his removal from office. The tribunal also ordered the forfeiture of all money in the account of the Justice Onnoghen, which he did not declare while he was banned from holding any public office for ten years. While ordering his removal as the CJN, the CCT also ordered that he be removed as chairman National Judicial Council.
The verdict is in order, but it turned out to reveal the leadership crisis the country faces. Though the order of forfeiture is valid, it was not a pleasant picture to behold. While the conviction is simply an outcome of judicial process, Onnoghen’s story is also a sad reflection of Nigerian leadership reality. As a result of corruption of the leaders in high places, the wingless eagle called Nigeria is cumbered on the ground continuously.
Incorruptible leaders! Their dearth has imposed painful limitations on our collective existence. It does not matter what type of organisation you are in, principled leadership determines success. It is a critical variable in development calculus, and its dearth is the sole restrictive force that has barred Nigeria and its people from moving forward and upward. Barring the multinational and partnership business ventures, one could rely on one’s fingers to count the number of indigenous Nigeria organisations with one-billion-dollar operating capital. And, although Singapore is almost breasting the tape in the IT and space technology race, Nigeria seems glued to the starting block.
Let there be competent leaders, as many are needed, and Nigeria would leap from recession to recovery, from limitation to liberation, and from collective doom to continuous boom. The vibrant, dynamic and servant leadership of colonial and early independence years is hardly seen these days. Look into the socio-political arena of Nigeria and check on some of the people calling the shots at various leadership levels. Do they all have the sincerity, vision and savvy of Ahmadu Bello, the modesty, selflessness and integrity of Tafawa Balewa, the courage and tenacity of Godwin Alabi-Isama, the Spartan temperance and bravery of Awolowo and the charm and brilliance of Azikiwe? Every sector in the post-colonial Nigeria is awash with leaders who misruled the nation, misled the people and misused the resources. Nigeria could feed and fund the continent, but it has remained poor and stunted. Reason: the country is starved of right leadership.
Nigeria is a fragile nation, and no one should be deceived that Onnoghen’s conviction will solve the problem of corrupt practices. All of the corruption stories in Nigeria are colourful and unique. After consuming enough of them, one begins to wonder if it is not futile to even try to save Nigeria. The pessimists among us have long concluded that the structure through which our leaders emerge was never designed to produce incorruptible leaders and that there is nothing anyone can do that can change the system for the better.
They are convinced that there are more political appointments than everyone getting their own share. One cannot really blame them; they have seen agents of civil societies and other progressives, who once fought the repressive regime to a virtual standstill, becoming the same monsters they hunted. Right before their eyes, a man who once sat atop the labour union to agitate for the welfare of the masses joined the political bandwagon. The messianic intent of new entrants such as this is therefore no longer accorded enough consideration.
They may be pessimists, but they understand that Nigerian leaders are predatory machine and are not expected to live up to a level of integrity that is demanded of virtually no one else. After one gets over the drama that combusts when Onnoghen ran against the cold hard wall of legal process, one reaches the point of paralysing despair.
How do we break through the conundrum and set Nigeria on the road to redemption? We can expect that in another few weeks, we are going to have another similar wave of Onnoghen’s experience. While the particulars of the tales will be unique, the corruption issues will remain the same. By the time we go through that in different news cycles, even the people who still hold out hopes that things might change for the better, if a different breed of citizens emerge as leaders, will bail on Nigeria entirely.
While one thing, which almost all of us can agree on, is that Nigeria is worth saving, achieving that requires changing strategies but what we have in Nigeria is not leaders in the real sense of it as those who really wield the power to make the changes we need are content to have the aberration remain the way it is.
The story is not different in the other two arms of government where political corruption and other forms of malpractices are the order of the day. We were here when, President Buhari said at an All Progressives Congress caucus meeting that thugs who snatch ballot boxes on election day do so at the expense of their lives. He said he had given instructions to the police and the military authorities to be ruthless with alleged election riggers, but when the election riggers were snatching ballot boxes and burning the INEC collation centers on election day, both the government and its security apparatus looked the other way.
Corruption issues among Nigerian leaders requires permanent solution. People want a society where processes work and where incorruptible leaders represent their unsubverted will. But we cannot beat a short cut to a functional society if we cannot reason out solutions to the perennial problems of corruption beyond a resort to selected cases.
As if this was not sad enough, the monopolistic combines of ‘progressives’ and other opportunity seeking ‘intellectuals’ who could have rendered a substantial help in the corruption eradication project seems too busy formulating plan that keeps turning back the clock of Nigerian history. They were formally on the side of the masses, but they left to take their own shares of the “National Cake.” No sooner had they arrived Abuja than they denied ever knowing us.
Their denial of the masses before the cock crow twice may be painful to some but understandable to the keen watchers of Nigerian events. After pretending to preaching revolutions for a decade they, now successful businessmen, politicians and men of pleasure, are terrified when they see the inevitability of one. To demoralise and betray the course of the masses in this manner is the greatest cardinal sin to mankind. History will not be kind to them.
A day after his mandatory retirement for misconduct was recommended by the National Judicial Council (NJC), Onnoghen’s letter of resignation was delivered to the Chief of Staff to the President, Mallam Abba Kyari, by some Supreme Court judges on Thursday, April 4. The letter was hurriedly drafted and hastily presented in an attempt to save the disgraced chief justice from imminent embarrassment. Never before has any Supreme Court justices been guilty of such treacherous and ignominious role as the authors of this baneful and sadistic attempt to disillusion and swindle an already disenchanted country for the gratification of the fiendish bliss of the sworded and helmeted judicial demagogue. To these justices, their prestige is more important than due process, and the victory that is not based on fraud must be raised on force. Ostensibly, justice is out of their agenda and the heartless beasts have lived from decade to decade.
I cannot address the embarrassment of Onnoghen’s conviction without confronting the unscrupulous beings who give an intellectual and legal cover to such elements in the society. No thanks to these learned fellows, every action and statement that ought to be called out is endlessly justified through a ridiculous stretch of logic. When he described the undeclared funds as a “mistake,” many Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SANs) and supposed public intellectuals were there to justify it. These folks should know that to be a leader’s supporter, and a Nigerian should not be mutually exclusive. They should be able to call out corrupt leaders when they stray from the ideals of uprightness and not be all over the place, selectively digging out aspects of the law that can help them to justify their faux pas.
They should be reminded that leaders will come and go, and now Onnoghen has been disgraced out of the office, but the precedent they help to set will come back to bite them. Someday, when they or their loved ones have been ensnared by the devil they helped birth, history will have it written on their epitaphs: this one died in the hands of the monsters they helped create.
Stephen Adewale is a fellow of the American Council of Learned Society and currently serves as the Director of Africa Dialogue Mission, Abuja, Nigeria
THE VIEWS OF THE ABOVE ARTICLE ARE THOSE OF THE AUTHOR AND DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEWS OF THE KAFTAN POST EDITORIAL TEAM
