Leaders provide shoulders upon which national goals are envisioned and prosecuted. For a leader to be effective, he must possess the capacity to manage things, not necessarily people. For leadership to be effective, the need for empathy by leaders towards inspiring the most of society is irreplaceable. The Chinese writer and philosopher, Lao Tzu, recalls the essential leadership as basically focused on rallying societies and nations for the collective good. A leader, according to the Chinese philosopher, “is best when people barely know he exists. When his work is done, his aim fulfilled, he will say we did it ourselves.”
In line with Tzu’s definition of true leadership, the prospective leader must rebuff the floodlight and find pleasure in a creative silence to walk his vision for a better society. In times of moral crisis, the leader is expected to rise above the trappings trodden by mean souls and catalyze into a symbol of consciousness that defines the dialectics of his times.
Leadership anchored on vision
There have been world leaders who, in times of deafening moral crisis, refused to tread the path of ease, but chose to rally their fellow countrymen and women to confront the common enemy that sought to dehumanise and reduce the dignity of man. In a titanic battle over slavery between the South and North, President Abraham Lincoln transformed himself into a dowel of right in the demand to eliminate the indignities unleashed on man by slave traders. On January 1, 1863, Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation Act that declared “that all persons held as slaves” within the rebellious states of the United States “are, and henceforward shall be free”.
The British Prime Minister, Wilson Churchill, from 1940 to 1945 became the relentless voice that stood against unspeakable horrors of World War 2 by Adolf Hitler whose major focus was the enthronement of Germans as the superior race. Churchill may not have attained the near status of Lincoln, but he is remembered today as one of the greatest leaders of the British Empire. Both Lincoln and Churchill were men of vision and empathy committed to the creation of a new world from a wrecked and burdened global community suffering discomfort.
In fighting for a new world devoid of man’s oppression against his fellow man, visionary leaders are not easily deterred from walking to their mountain top of envisioned destination. The slain US President and British Prime Minister were influenced by their better angels, having been convinced that freedom can only be real when all of humanity is free to live and act according to the dictates of their conscience. As a true believer of democracy, Lincoln once declared that no one “is good enough to govern another man without that other’s consent”.
Democracy in strange soil?
Just like even developed countries are becoming dungeons for democracy, Africa, especially Nigeria remains an inexplicable system where the ballot government is growing in poverty. Both national and sub-national leaderships have turned Nigerians into crumb-eating citizens. Blessed with vast human and natural resources, Nigeria has continued to remain a spectre of horror and an enabler of everything that is shameful in the comity of nations.
According to reports, no fewer than 100,000 Nigerian citizens have been killed in the last eight years. Even the death toll in the war between Ukraine and Russia is not close to the death toll in Nigeria. In the face of this galloping death toll, trailed by decimation of communities and interminable bloodshed, many have called for self-defence, but the Nigerian military authorities have rebuffed such calls, describing it as a call for anarchy. But is Nigeria not at war?
The breathers the country witnessed in the beginning of the last six days are fast fizzling, with insecurity tearing the country apart. Those who are holding the country by the jugular are becoming bolder as the dread of these coldblooded murderers are spreading fears over our communities. Not even the military who are employed to unleash violence are spared the horror of the men many Nigerians describe as gunmen.
Leadership must wake up!
Against the backdrop of the obvious failings by the military to rein in the blood-thirsty gang of kidnappers, Abuja has become the nation’s kidnapping zone where the military will soon be running for cover at the sight of criminals. The cave men are flooding Abuja, as residents are now panic-stricken, not knowing when the bell would ring for them. On Wednesday, the criminals stormed an Abuja military estate and abducted a woman in place of her husband that was not at home.
With citizens not able to breathe under the crushing weight of poverty, the initial hope in the capacity of the military to rein in the criminal activities of brigands is gradually turning into a forlorn dream. Security forces must wake up to the dreaded profiles of these murderers who are miles ahead of our military. Nigerian citizens are fast running out of patience with a system that can’t guarantee the security of lives and property. The malaise of leadership becomes clearly manifested when the government is embarrassingly unable to incapacitate the capacity of non-state actors to wreak havoc on poor and defenseless citizens. We don’t know how long citizens and besieged communities can hold out, but President Bola Ahmed must avoid the path trodden by former President Muhammadu Buhari where the failure of the military’s top echelon was rewarded.
