Below is an article written by Etcetera, a singer turned a writer:
Why are we dancing? Why do we keep rolling out the drums each time we have a new government, only for us to start crying few months down the line? Is it that we are too quick to forget or we just love to dance? Do you celebrate a child who’s about to write his exams or the one who has written and passed? What is this jubilation for? Because I really don’t understand. Is it that the election of Buhari in itself has suddenly alleviated our sufferings? I am really confused here, hearing how six bikers lost their lives in Zaria celebrating Buhari’s victory. One would think that a people who have been shortchanged for so long by past presidents will know better to be calm and take every word of the new president with a pinch of salt until he proves to be different.
This process is becoming an unending circle, again and again we’ve danced and again and again, we’ve cursed and cried at the end. It is still shocking to me that a lot of Nigerians fell for the story that the president was born without shoes. Was anyone born with shoes on? Buhari’s triumphant entry into the presidency last Sunday which coincidentally was a palm Sunday doesn’t yet prove he is the redeemer. Just like the second coming of our supposed political messiah Obasanjo didn’t prove any significant improvement in our lives.
We all thought he was the one anointed by the gods to take us by the hands and lead us right straight into the promised land, where we shall have no more gnashing of teeth. But when he left office, the roads were still as bad as they were before he took office. The hospitals were still without facilities and most importantly, he failed to defeat the demon in the power sector even with billions of dollars thrown at it. The demons in the same power sector have claimed Jonathan just like they did Yar’Adua, Abdulsalami Abubakar, Sanni Abacha, Shonekan, IBB and Shagari. Even Buhari himself had already been defeated by this demon before. So what says it is not going to be the same this time around. Remember obasanjo was defeated twice by this same demon.
Why won’t our leaders take us for granted when they’ve noticed that we are always ready to jump to our feet and “judile” with the announcement of every new regime? When Buhari overthrew the democratically elected government of Shehu Shagari in 1983, many of you reading this took to the streets to boogie down. When Babangida sent Buhari packing a couple of months later, a lot more of you got drunk and vomited all over the place. Even Abacha’s sudden death brought smiles on the faces of most bar owners across the country as they ran out of booze. Is something wrong with us as a people? We are forgetting a very important fact that this election proves that we are and will still remain a divided people. We are divided by our ideologies with no realistic integration in sight. The election has also reinforced the thinking that we are divided by regional, tribal and religious interests and not national. These are some of the significant issues that will define our tomorrow.
Finally, some of you who are reading this may be saying, oh Etcetera, can’t you be optimistic for once? My brother, I can’t. Optimism and its younger brother, hope have proven to be very dangerous especially in Nigeria. They have sent millions of Nigerians to their early graves. What is the point of being optimistic in a system that has always left me in tears and heartache? Or is it till I get arrested by Mr. Cardiac? Tufiakwa!
In “Another Leadership Lesson from Buhari”
By C. Don Adinuba his message clearly got you all wrong Etcetera by comparing President-Elect Buhari to the men in your writeup. Buhari is a different leader who many you’ve compared him with, including our outgoing President GEJ (a good man in his own ways), can learn good lessons from his superior leadership behavior as follows:
Leadership and management practitioners as well as theorists have increasingly come to the realization that trust, teamwork and communication skills are the bedrock of successful organizations and, by extension, national development. These factors count more than academic brilliance. There are examples of Nigerian banks, for instance, run aground by first class university graduates owing to their avarice, rather than technical competence. The greedy erstwhile chief executives consequently do not enjoy the trust of their ex colleagues and, in fact, the loyalty of a number of reasonable members of society.
In a previous essay on leadership, I followed the Francis Fukuyama thesis to argue that trust and similar values like honesty, commitment and honour which define social capital are not just personal virtues but also the basis of national economic growth. High trust societies like the United States, Japan and Singapore are developed economies while low trust societies like Nigeria are, in the words of Fukuyama in The End of History and The Last Man, immersed in misery and other sorrows of history. Southern Italy which comprises Sicily and Naples is called the Third World of Italy because of the absence of trust arising out of the activities of criminal organizations like the mafia whiles the northern part which consists of Milan and Rome is as developed as the First World because of the superabundance of values like trust, honesty and commitment. Trust may be defined as the belief that a person would not take undue advantage of a situation even when there is a good chance that the action would not be found out, at least immediately. In Japan, for instance, very junior employees are authorized to shut down big plants in corporations like Toyota, Nissan and Honda if, in their opinion, there is a serious threat to the plants. Yet, there is no record of employees abusing this power. Can you imagine such sweeping power vested in Nigerian employees, including junior ones? Because Japan is a high trust society, it has, more than any country in the world, a more robust record of lifetime employment. Traditionally, employees hardly think of leaving an organization for another. It is easy to find employees whose grandparents worked in a particular organization, only to be followed by their parents and now their children. The Japanese are exceedingly loyal. Of course, loyalty is earned, and not a commodity you can purchase across the counter.
I have, frankly, yet to see many Nigerian leaders who equal Muhammadu Buhari in enjoying the confidence of those who have ever worked with them as subordinates, contemporaries or superiors. My first experience of how he is respected by those who know him was in January or February of 1984 when I was invited by the Anambra (now Enugu) State Television to do a 30-minute current affairs programme on the military regime which had just taken over from the corrupt civilian administration in a coup d’état. As I arrived for the recording, I realized I was going to appear with J. C. Ojukwu, a retired military officer who had in October been sworn in as the member representing the Idemili Federal Constituency of Anambra State in the House of Representatives. Ojukwu and I had met the previous year when he was a candidate of the Nigerian Peoples Party (NPP) and struck up a friendship. I was expecting him to be angry like many people who had won in the general elections only to be removed from office by the military coup, but I was wrong.
“General Buhari is a very patriotic Nigerian, honest to the extreme and absolutely reliable”, Ojukwu asserted in his characteristic gentle but firm voice. “He is very fair minded. He is also very strong physically; don’t be deceived by his fragile looks. He and I joined the army the same day, and ever since then he has been more of a brother than a friend”. I had never seen Ojukwu, reserved and calculating, speak about any person with so much enthusiasm as he did about the new military head of state. Though I can’t remember meeting Ojukwu since the TV programme, I understand from mutual friends that he and Buhari have remained the best of friends.
The second example I would like to cite about the high esteem in which all those who know Buhari hold him is my good friend, Ishaya Jim Bakut, former commander of the West African multinational force in Liberia called ECOMOG and ex Principal General Staff Officer in The Presidency during the Ibrahim Babangida and Sani Abacha years. I was in 2003 invited by the Africa Independent Television (AIT) to be its guest on the popular “Kakaki” programme. Like most social discussions Nigeria, the interview veered to corruption in government. I argued that much as Nigeria has since independence been known for official graft, individual government leaders were not known for personal corruption until Ibrahim Babangida became the military president. I cited the example of Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa who had no riches anywhere, the example of Yakubu Gowon who was our military head of state for nine years but had no house anywhere in the world, and the example of Michael Okpara who was from 1960 t0 1966 Premier of the Eastern Region (now broken into nine states) but had no house or even an undeveloped property anywhere in the world, despite being the person who created the magnificent Independence Layout in Enugu and allocated the plots in this vast swathe.
When it came to an analysis of Buhari’s government, I challenged the audience to name any minister or state governor who added even a six-inch block to any house anywhere in the world. For effect, I reminded the audience that Buhari’s Minister of Finance, Onaolapo Soleye, returned to the sociology department at the University of Ibadan to teach, just as the Minister of Energy, Tam David-West, went back to the same university to teach virology after the coup which removed them from power. Emmanuel Nsan was Buhari’s Minister of Health and later of Works, and he returned to Calabar to practice medicine in a modest bungalow! I rhetorically asked the audience if it was conceivable now that a senior minister could return to the university campus even as vice chancellor or to practice his profession in a modest manner. As I was leaving the studios after the programme, one of the first calls I received came from Bakut who was emotional in recounting how, as military governor of Benue State, he worked his heart out without dipping his hand into the public till “like any other person who served under Buhari, a very upright man who would not fail to allow the sledge hammer to fall on you if you dared misbehave”.
The next instance is a person who served as a state governor under Buhari and later held key positions in successive governments. I would keep out his name from the media for now for tactical reasons. About five years ago when he and I were reviewing the Nigerian condition in his home in Lagos I stated that Buhari’s government remains the most outstanding of all the governments I have watched in Nigeria in terms of discipline and patriotism. This fine gentleman, known for reticence, looked me in the face and declared solemnly: “C. Don, though I held higher offices under governments which came later, Buhari’s administration is unparalleled. As a state governor, I could not travel to my hometown to see my parents without permission from the Supreme headquarters. I must state in detail every month how the security vote was spent, even though the vote, compared with today’s humungous amounts, was insignificant”.
Sam Momah, former Minister of Science and Technology, prolific author, engineer and brilliant retired two star general, has been speaking approvingly of Buhari based on his experience as his principal staff officer when Buhari was a general officer commanding (GOC) in the army. Ignatius Olisaemeka, Minister of Foreign Affairs under Abdulsalami Abubakar, has also been of how Buhari chose him as Nigeria’s ambassador to the United States without regard to his ethnicity or religion. Buhari was only interested in the competence and integrity of his appointees, Olisaemeka wrote recently.
It is instructive that everyone who has ever had anything to do with Buhari has great words and sentiments for him. In contrast, I know many beneficiaries, including contractors, of the outgoing administration who in private do not have wonderful things to say about the country’s current leadership. Loyalty is earned, not bought. Loyalty is a key aspect of leadership. Buhari enjoys the trust and loyalty of millions of Nigerians and foreigners.
– See more at: https://www.bodedolu.com/nobody-should-celebrate-buhari-writes-etcetera/#sthash.hE83hR4u.dpuf
Etcetera, you got it all wrong by comparing President-Elect Buhari to the men in your writeup. Buhari is a different leader who many you’ve compared him with, including our outgoing President GEJ (a good man in his own ways), can learn good lessons from his superior leadership behavior as follows:
Leadership and management practitioners as well as theorists have increasingly come to the realization that trust, teamwork and communication skills are the bedrock of successful organizations and, by extension, national development. These factors count more than academic brilliance. There are examples of Nigerian banks, for instance, run aground by first class university graduates owing to their avarice, rather than technical competence. The greedy erstwhile chief executives consequently do not enjoy the trust of their ex colleagues and, in fact, the loyalty of a number of reasonable members of society.
In a previous essay on leadership, I followed the Francis Fukuyama thesis to argue that trust and similar values like honesty, commitment and honour which define social capital are not just personal virtues but also the basis of national economic growth. High trust societies like the United States, Japan and Singapore are developed economies while low trust societies like Nigeria are, in the words of Fukuyama in The End of History and The Last Man, immersed in misery and other sorrows of history. Southern Italy which comprises Sicily and Naples is called the Third World of Italy because of the absence of trust arising out of the activities of criminal organizations like the mafia whiles the northern part which consists of Milan and Rome is as developed as the First World because of the superabundance of values like trust, honesty and commitment. Trust may be defined as the belief that a person would not take undue advantage of a situation even when there is a good chance that the action would not be found out, at least immediately. In Japan, for instance, very junior employees are authorized to shut down big plants in corporations like Toyota, Nissan and Honda if, in their opinion, there is a serious threat to the plants. Yet, there is no record of employees abusing this power. Can you imagine such sweeping power vested in Nigerian employees, including junior ones? Because Japan is a high trust society, it has, more than any country in the world, a more robust record of lifetime employment. Traditionally, employees hardly think of leaving an organization for another. It is easy to find employees whose grandparents worked in a particular organization, only to be followed by their parents and now their children. The Japanese are exceedingly loyal. Of course, loyalty is earned, and not a commodity you can purchase across the counter.
I have, frankly, yet to see many Nigerian leaders who equal Muhammadu Buhari in enjoying the confidence of those who have ever worked with them as subordinates, contemporaries or superiors. My first experience of how he is respected by those who know him was in January or February of 1984 when I was invited by the Anambra (now Enugu) State Television to do a 30-minute current affairs programme on the military regime which had just taken over from the corrupt civilian administration in a coup d’état. As I arrived for the recording, I realized I was going to appear with J. C. Ojukwu, a retired military officer who had in October been sworn in as the member representing the Idemili Federal Constituency of Anambra State in the House of Representatives. Ojukwu and I had met the previous year when he was a candidate of the Nigerian Peoples Party (NPP) and struck up a friendship. I was expecting him to be angry like many people who had won in the general elections only to be removed from office by the military coup, but I was wrong.
“General Buhari is a very patriotic Nigerian, honest to the extreme and absolutely reliable”, Ojukwu asserted in his characteristic gentle but firm voice. “He is very fair minded. He is also very strong physically; don’t be deceived by his fragile looks. He and I joined the army the same day, and ever since then he has been more of a brother than a friend”. I had never seen Ojukwu, reserved and calculating, speak about any person with so much enthusiasm as he did about the new military head of state. Though I can’t remember meeting Ojukwu since the TV programme, I understand from mutual friends that he and Buhari have remained the best of friends.
The second example I would like to cite about the high esteem in which all those who know Buhari hold him is my good friend, Ishaya Jim Bakut, former commander of the West African multinational force in Liberia called ECOMOG and ex Principal General Staff Officer in The Presidency during the Ibrahim Babangida and Sani Abacha years. I was in 2003 invited by the Africa Independent Television (AIT) to be its guest on the popular “Kakaki” programme. Like most social discussions Nigeria, the interview veered to corruption in government. I argued that much as Nigeria has since independence been known for official graft, individual government leaders were not known for personal corruption until Ibrahim Babangida became the military president. I cited the example of Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa who had no riches anywhere, the example of Yakubu Gowon who was our military head of state for nine years but had no house anywhere in the world, and the example of Michael Okpara who was from 1960 t0 1966 Premier of the Eastern Region (now broken into nine states) but had no house or even an undeveloped property anywhere in the world, despite being the person who created the magnificent Independence Layout in Enugu and allocated the plots in this vast swathe.
When it came to an analysis of Buhari’s government, I challenged the audience to name any minister or state governor who added even a six-inch block to any house anywhere in the world. For effect, I reminded the audience that Buhari’s Minister of Finance, Onaolapo Soleye, returned to the sociology department at the University of Ibadan to teach, just as the Minister of Energy, Tam David-West, went back to the same university to teach virology after the coup which removed them from power. Emmanuel Nsan was Buhari’s Minister of Health and later of Works, and he returned to Calabar to practice medicine in a modest bungalow! I rhetorically asked the audience if it was conceivable now that a senior minister could return to the university campus even as vice chancellor or to practice his profession in a modest manner. As I was leaving the studios after the programme, one of the first calls I received came from Bakut who was emotional in recounting how, as military governor of Benue State, he worked his heart out without dipping his hand into the public till “like any other person who served under Buhari, a very upright man who would not fail to allow the sledge hammer to fall on you if you dared misbehave”.
The next instance is a person who served as a state governor under Buhari and later held key positions in successive governments. I would keep out his name from the media for now for tactical reasons. About five years ago when he and I were reviewing the Nigerian condition in his home in Lagos I stated that Buhari’s government remains the most outstanding of all the governments I have watched in Nigeria in terms of discipline and patriotism. This fine gentleman, known for reticence, looked me in the face and declared solemnly: “C. Don, though I held higher offices under governments which came later, Buhari’s administration is unparalleled. As a state governor, I could not travel to my hometown to see my parents without permission from the Supreme headquarters. I must state in detail every month how the security vote was spent, even though the vote, compared with today’s humungous amounts, was insignificant”.
Sam Momah, former Minister of Science and Technology, prolific author, engineer and brilliant retired two star general, has been speaking approvingly of Buhari based on his experience as his principal staff officer when Buhari was a general officer commanding (GOC) in the army. Ignatius Olisaemeka, Minister of Foreign Affairs under Abdulsalami Abubakar, has also been of how Buhari chose him as Nigeria’s ambassador to the United States without regard to his ethnicity or religion. Buhari was only interested in the competence and integrity of his appointees, Olisaemeka wrote recently.
It is instructive that everyone who has ever had anything to do with Buhari has great words and sentiments for him. In contrast, I know many beneficiaries, including contractors, of the outgoing administration who in private do not have wonderful things to say about the country’s current leadership. Loyalty is earned, not bought. Loyalty is a key aspect of leadership. Buhari enjoys the trust and loyalty of millions of Nigerians and foreigners.