NIGERIA’S DOWNWARD SPIRAL OF LEADERSHIP

By Akin Ojumu

In many developed and developing nations, leadership tends to evolve along a trajectory of transformation, progression, and improvement. For the most part, successive generations of leaders are better versions of the people they succeeded. Particular premium is placed on choosing the best of the best to lead the rest.

Not so in Nigeria. Unlike in these civilized places, the arc of leadership in Nigeria bends towards the least common denominator. Since independence, the characters that emerge as leaders in Nigeria tend to come from the very bottom of the barrel. The worst of the worst always find a path to power. As the years go by, the profile of leadership in Nigeria gets dimmer and dimmer.

Nigerians have the habit of reaching into the depth of the sewer to pluck the dregs of the society to rule them. Leadership has been benchmarked to the crudest and vilest. The most crooked, violent, and unscrupulous you are, the better are your chances of getting elevated to the position of leadership.

It should, therefore, come as no surprise to anyone that a country that started its national history with supremely intelligent and visionary leaders of the heft and stature of Nnamdi Azikiwe and Obafemi Awolowo leading the charge now has the likes of Alhaji Tinubu and Nyesom Wike as the pipers dictating the tunes of the nation’s destiny.

If this sad turn of event doesn’t make Nigerians look back and weep for how far they’ve fallen, nothing else will. In that case, they’ve earned the misery that is their daily existence and the catastrophe that have become their daily reality is well deserved.

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