NON-PROACTIVENESS AS BANE OF LEADERSHIP IN NIGERIA: HOW SOLIDARITY-DONATIONS COULD HAVE PREVENTED THE MAIDUGURI FLOOD (PLUS OTHER SORRY STORIES)
[By Sylvester Udemezue]
(1) SOLIDARITY-DONATIONS after preventable tragedies have occurred, are good. And while we commiserate with victims of this devastating flood in Maiduguri, Borno State, Nigeria, we heartily commend all public-spirited individuals and organizations who have shown solidarity by donating generously. However, how many of the many dead residents of Maiduguri would the SOLIDARITY-DONATIONS bring back to life? If governments and leaders were foresighted, proactive and pragmatic, couldn’t they have seen this disaster coming. Couldn’t these SOLIDARITY-DONATIONS have been solicited, organized and channelled towards preventing the disaster or reducing its impact if it must occur, rather than waiting for the disaster to occur and then (in a medicine-after-death style) collecting donations to assuage the pains and losses to victims some of whom are dead and can’t be assisted any longer. Why have Nigeria and Nigerians chosen perpetually to be a people whose habit is mostly to respond to symptoms but never to anticipate problems and prevent them from occuring?
(A). Governments in Nigeria wouldn’t take pragmatic steps to prevent floods and other preventable disasters. They prefer to wait for these to happen so that they would start crying and asking for relief materials that would end up being mostly looted.
(B). The Nigerian Police wouldn’t take serious steps to fight or prevent crimes. They just stay at checkpoints collecting money, while waiting for crime to occur so that they start fighting some alleged criminals!
(C). Nigeria’s EFCC wouldn’t take proactive steps to prevent crime or corruption; it prefers to wait to fight alleged criminals or corrupt people!
(D). Nigeria’s military wouldn’t deploy serious intelligence to prevent terrorism; they are waiting for terrorist attacks to happen, so that they would go and cordon off the place, and start harassing mostly innocent citizens!
(E). The Police wouldn’t take serious steps to prevent armed robberies in Nigeria; they rather wait for armed robberies to happen so that they would start looking for alleged robbers and in process arresting and detaining innocent citizens who would then pay heavily to secure their own release from unjust police detention while the real armed robbers roam the streets freely
(F). The Police wouldn’t be interested in preventing kidnapping; they wait for kidnapping to occur so that they would move in to join in negotiating ransoms, after which they shamelessly organize press conferences to announce RELEASE of the victims as if that was an achievement. If you can’t do anything to prevent kidnapping, you’re not doing any work; joining after kidnapping have occured, to secure release of victims, is evidence of failure of the police! It’s evidence of police incompetence, incapacity, and ineffectiveness in fighting crime! Kidnappings are preventable offences. But we hate prevention; we prefer to fight symptoms after disasters and crimes occur
(G). Most owners/drivers know their cars and vehicles are not in good conditions; they notice faults and prefer to manage them until the car collapses, and they would start efforts at repairs. Many are preventable faults which they saw coming.
(H). Most Parents wouldn’t effectively perform their parental duties towards raising their kids to responsible and productive adults. They abdicate parental responsibilities in favour of pursuit of wealth, riches and other things until their kids become delinquents, drug addicts, sex addicts, street urchins, criminals, irresponsible/wayward wives/husbands, etc, and the parents would start moving from Priest to Priest, from Imam and alfas to imam, doctors to doctors, looking for solution to the symptoms. A sign of incompetence in performance of their parental obligations.
(I). Governments in Nigeria wouldn’t construct roads to prevent accidents and traffic jams. They wait for the roads to get so bad to have killed thousands and or traffic jam completely taken over before they would start working to clear the traffic jams, and only the portions of the roads where the traffic jams occurred will be affected by government repair efforts. Thereafter, they organize press conferences to announce that the traffic jams have been cleared and the portion of the road repaired. They would then relax while waiting for another portion to start taking human lives through accidents and traffic jams, before they come out to clear and repair. Example: East-West Road in Nigeria! A culture of incompetence, incapacity and ineffective governance.
(J). Planning authorities and building regulators, especially in Lagos, collect huge bribes and look the other way as developers and builders deploy substandard materials in building construction. When the buildings collapse killing people, governments would then move in to start emergency relief efforts and organizing shameless press conferences to praise their own efforts. But the collapse could have been prevented if governments were pragmatic, competent and corruption-free.
(K). Governments, Planning authorities and building regulators, especially in Lagos, collect huge bribes and look the other way as owners, developers and builders construct in prohibited areas. Only to turn around after these buildings have been erected to start building demolition as part of government efforts to “sanitize” the city. And they expect people to clap for them. Where was government when the building construction was ongoing? Who had approved the building plans? Government! A sign of unscrupulousness, incompetence, incapacity and ineffectiveness in governance.
(L). WIVES wouldn’t show respect to their husbands, wouldn’t be responsible, effective wives. They keep misbehaving and waiting until their husbands become wayward, and they’d start curative efforts to stop the malaise which they (wives) by their own conduct alone, could have prevented.
(M) Governments and stakeholders wouldn’t take proactive and pragmatic steps towards making elections transparent, credible and fraud-free. They wouldn’t take PROACTIVE steps to prevent rigging and election-result manipulation. They prefer to wait for elections to be rigged, and they would then kickstart ineffective efforts to reclaim lost or stolen mandates or to nullify fraud-ridden elections. I wrote in a paper, as follows:
“The Electoral Act 2022 was signed into law with the aim of legitimising the e-management of election results, as an addition to the existing manual processes, by putting in place safeguards towards promoting the integrity of the pre-election, balloting, and especially post-balloting processes thereby entrenching greater transparency in the election process and ensuring that each round of elections came out as a true reflection of the will of the electorate. Unfortunately, in 2023, Nigerian Courts took the position that electronic transmission was not an indispensable requirement of the Electoral Act, 2022. Since then, a new wave of clamour, agitation to make electronic transmission a sine-qua-non in the election process in Nigeria has sprung up.” We would not hearken until this clamour and enact stringed laws to prevent frauds and manipulations during elections. We would rather wait until another round of elections come, rigging occur, and we would then start crying foul, and filing cases to reclaim mandates, annul rigged elections and punish alleged election criminals. [See: Sylvester Udemezue, “How Nigeria’s National Assembly Can Make the Electoral Act/system Impregnable on Electronic Transmission to Prevent Fraud During Election Result Collation” (a preprint, written on August 13, 2024). Available @ https://ssrn.com/abstract=4929155 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4929155
The reality is that if elections are properly and effectively managed with technological
innovations backed by and made mandatory by strict provisions of law, there might by little or no room for rampancy of
election petitions and agitations after each round of elections in Nigeria. Unfortunately, Nigerian lawmakers, governments and stakeholders wouldn’t take proactive steps but would rather wait until elections are truncated and the people’s will subverted. Thereafter, agitations by citizens follow. One may ask, why not we start the agitations now towards forcing leaders and lawmakers to enthrone impregnable laws that would ensure credible and transparent elections which would in turn render such agitations unnecessary? Put differently, let our agitations be channeled towards achieving prevention rather than towards securing a cure. The advocacy here is for PROACTIVE AGITATIONS as opposed to REACTIONARY AGITATIONS.
(N). Bosses and superiors on offices harrass, intimidate and victimize their subordinates, and thereafter give them queries and punishments as efforts to correct their inferiors in office rather than delivering good and inclusive governance that would carry along your subordinates and make the occasions that may warrant queries hard to occur. The reality is that true good leaders are not known or made by the number of their subjects they tramp down, trample upon or cause to tremble in trepidation. This is why Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote that “Correction does much, but encouragement does more.”
Summary: Most leaders in Nigerian are not foresighted, proactive, pragmatic and sagastic. Leadership Proactivity/Proactiveness is defined as the act, characteristic, or habit of leaders thinking and acting so as to prepare for, intervene in, or control expected events, especially negative or challenging ones. Absence of these breeds ineffectiveness in governance which is the best way to explain bad governance. When bad governance reigns, society rots and citizens groan.
▪️TO BE CONTINUED
Respectfully,
Sylvester Udemezue (udems),
Proctor, TRM
08109024556.
[email protected]
(20 September 2024