Nigeria’s leadership problem is not just political, it’s in every sector.
When we complain about Nigeria not having good leaders, it is important for us to put it in perspective, Nigeria’s leadership problems are not restricted to just politics, it’s not just that Nigerian past and present President(s), governors, ministers, commissioners, senators, house of representatives, union leaders, etc horrible at their jobs, it’s that even super market managers, CEOs, HR managers, IT managers, Heads of departments, even school prefects etc are so quite horrible at their jobs. I’ll explain why.
Quite naturally, and since African culture is not particularly pro-human rights, freedom or liberty, most Nigerians do not recognize the rights of one another. The concept that all men are born free, equal and entitled to inalienable rights does not quite sit well with the African school of thought, you can spin it however you like but it’s true. Taking Nigeria as a case study, there are private institutions that do not have very documented policy and procedure for their employees and the ones that do are famous for not adhering to said policy and or procedure. It is not uncommon to see privately owned companies where employee salaries are not paid for months yet the management team of such companies enjoy massive benefits. Yes, some employers don’t pay their employee’s salary so they throw a massive wedding party for their children.
I know an individual working in a company where she (or he) does most of the work (including decision making) and makes as little N70,000 while his (or her) manager makes as much as N500,000 — imagine the income gap and put into consideration the volume of work placed on some employees, how different is the management team of these companies from the leadership structure of our political institutions? Not very different if you ask me.
Let us consider Nigeria’s Academic Staff Union of Universities and the Nigeria Labor Congress, some of the leaders of these unions live way above their means, I hate to sound cliché but how on earth do some of them have kids studying in expensive institutions in Europe? I get that some of them have investments (which we can argue is a form of bribe from the political class) and rich spouses but I’m still not buying it. And then there is the blatant disregard for employee’s human rights by some employers. Some employers reading this are fond of bringing their personal business to work. A Nigerian boss asking his employee, whose job description is financial accounting, to go wash his car, that to me is wreaks of egoism, it won’t kill you if you wash your own car or plugin in your own laptop charger or buy your own air time credit.
The list of atrocities Nigerian leaders outside of politics commit on their employees is endless; some bosses physically abuse their employees (even in the cooperate sector), some are just plain emotionally abusive taking out their personal frustrations on their employees at work by deliberately victimizing them. The question then arises that if as an employer, you cannot respect the rights and liberties of your employees, why would you ever expect anything different from your political leaders? Should we give our leaders in politics one set of standards and then give ourselves a different set?
No, that is not what societies that want positive improvement do.
