How poor leadership has kept Nigerians in poverty

Achebe was right when one considers how the leadership has wasted the opportunities. Today, because of mediocrity and lack of vision, our country still struggles to provide the basic things that are taken for granted in other climes. All the indices of development are looking grim. Nigeria’s leadership dilemma was again brought into focus with the release of the 2016 Mo Ibrahim Index of African Governance recently. The 2016 index ranked our country 36th out of 54 countries. While the foundation’s report on the state of governance on the continent is disturbing, the ranking of Nigeria was not surprising. The foundation noted that after 56 years of independence and 17 years of uninterrupted democratic rule, Nigeria is yet to register impressive growth in many critical sectors. In general almost two-thirds of African peoples live in countries in which safety and rule of law have deteriorated in the past ten years, while bad governance is stalling the continent’s progress. The Ibrahim Index assesses African countries based on the quality of their governance. Countries are graded on factors, which fall into democratically elected former African heads of state who have delivered; Security, health, education, rights, rule of law and economic; who have democratically transferred power to their successors in the last three years; good governance is crucial, Participation and human Rights and sustainable Economic opportunity and human development.
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That speech, which was made fifty years ago, is still reflective of all the ills that are the root of Nigeria’s leadership challenges today. The collapse of the First Republic was the purveyor of leadership misadventures that peaked with the corrupt Second Republic. The inept leadership of the brief former President Shehu Shagari years and the brigandage of military regimes have been well-documented. Nonetheless, it was in those years that billions in oil revenue was stolen. Needless to say that our country lost several years to visionless leadership; but it was also in those years that leaders in the countries now categorized as Asian Tigers kept their nose to the grindstone to pull their people out of poverty. The story of Singapore and its leader Lew Kwan Yew show how visionary and honest leadership is critical to a nation’s development. It is indeed a paradox that a country with abundant resources cannot deploy such endowments to the benefit of its people.
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Editor’s note: On October 1, 2016, Nigerians marked 56 years of independence from the colonial rule. Nigeria has made significant progress in the development of Africa. However, the country is still facing so many problems. NAIJ.com Editor-in-Chief, Mr Bayo Olupohunda, in this opinion piece explores how the poor leadership has kept Nigerians in poverty.

     

Fifty-six years ago when Nigeria became an independent nation after a century of British colonialism, the euphoria of that era symbolically suggested the birth of a new nation on the verge of greatness. The indices had pointed to a country with huge potential waiting to be harnessed. Indeed, there was every reason to hope in a nation blessed with abundant human and material resources. The intellectual power houses of that epoch of Nigeria’s political development consist of its first generation leaders, strong educational institutions and an effective civil service that had executed some of the best regional policies and programmes ever witnessed till date. In the south west with Ibadan as its capital, Chief Obafemi Awolowo provided the leadership and vision that made the region a talking-point of development years after independence. The late politician did not have the benefit of oil which though discovered in Oloibiri in 1953 did not have commercial value. All major infrastructures were built with the agricultural resources of cocoa and other products. In the South east, Nnamdi Azikiwe, Michael Okpara, Akanu Ibiam, visionary leadership developed the eastern part of Nigeria with the resources accrued from the vast coal mines of Enugu and the oil palms in what is now Imo state which was complemented with drive of the Igbos for business and industry. In the northern part of Nigeria the legendary tales of the now extinct groundnut pyramids in Kano and the irrigated agricultural lands that made the region the food basket of the nation evokes the nostalgia of a paradise lost. Now we can only imagine the lost opportunities in a country where the promise of greatness disappeared even before it could materialize. The brief period of Eldorado after independence had since disappeared like a candle in the wind.
Read more: https://www.naij.com/1030281-poor-leadership-kept-nigerians-poverty-since-independence.html

Editor’s note: On October 1, 2016, Nigerians marked 56 years of independence from the colonial rule. Nigeria has made significant progress in the development of Africa. However, the country is still facing so many problems. BRAINIAC AKINZ  in this opinion piece explores how the poor leadership has kept Nigerians in poverty.