wholly and strongly believe in the wisdom William Sumner (1906) posited when he said that: The critical habit of thought, if usual in a society, will pervade all its mores, because it is a way of taking up the problems of life. Men educated in it cannot be stampeded by the stump orators. They are slow to believe. They can hold things as possible or probable in all degrees, without certainty and without pain. They can wait for evidence and weigh evidence, uninfluenced by the emphasis or confidence with which assertions are made on one side or the other. They can resist appeals to their dearest prejudices and all kinds of cajolery. Education in this critical faculty is the only education of which it can be truly said that it makes good citizen. These words when engraved in the marbles of the minds of humanity could carve a route towards the foundation for the solutions of many of humanitys inherent problems today. Many of us who are really worried about situations around us can take solace in trudging forward to assimilating the above words as a great push towards self discovery and self action. As a young Nigerian, my greatest headache and worry is founding a path through which I can contribute towards dragging our country out of the dungeon of bad governance. I believe many (like me) are cracking their heads day-in and day-out; philosophizing, idealizing, campaigning or physically fighting for a better Nigeria. Which ever route one takes towards reaching a solution, one basic intellectual ingredient is needed, if the mission must be a success - that in my view is critical thinking and critical intelligence. This is one ingredient that is today obviously lacking within the spheres of most of our national and regional judgments within the entity Nigeria. But can critical intelligence and thought appear into our nationalistic philosophies from a void? Obviously not! This basic intellectual element of human survival normally develops in individuals who bring it into a group from where it could move mountains. In his search for the cause of the Nigerian problem, Chinua Achebe, lamented in his book The trouble with Nigeria that the trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely a failure of leadership. According to him, there is nothing basically wrong with the Nigerian character. There is nothing wrong with the Nigerian land, climate or water or air or anything else. The Nigerian problem is the unwillingness or inability of its leaders to rise to their responsibility, to the challenge of personal examples which are the hallmarks of true leadership. Many others, such as Tai Solarin, Wole Soyinka, Gani Fawehinmi have come to agree with this assertion. Though, I agree with Achebes position that …there is nothing wrong with the Nigerian land, climate or water or air or anything else, (and that) the Nigerian problem is the unwillingness or inability of its leaders to rise to their responsibility, to the challenge of personal examples which are the hallmarks of true leadership, I strongly DISAGREE that there is nothing basically wrong with the Nigerian character. Our country has come a long way; it is a land of milk and honey, a land of groans and tears - a land full of future promises; and past and present woes. I vehemently accept it as a country suffering from bad governance. By bad governance I intend to emphasize that the problem with Nigeria is two fold - Leadership and Followership. I intend to use this piece to assert a position in my belief in the ideology that one of the major problems holding Nigeria back today could be traced to bad- followership. This problem has maintained a regular consistency in the history of our nation. The trouble with Nigeria today can be said to be simply and squarely a failure of followership. There is nothing wrong with the Nigerian land, climate or water or air or anything else; but there is something basically wrong with the Nigerian character. The Nigerian problem is the unwillingness or inability of its followers/citizens to rise to their responsibility; to live up to the challenges of coactive and proactive actions (or reaction) which are the hallmarks of true followership. Bad followership is the bad feature that I see in the Nigerian character. The whole idea of us always blaming only the leadership and ignoring the ever influential characteristic nature of the followership is like expecting a woman who is already pregnant with a monkey-fetus to deliver a bouncing human-baby. The leadership has been a hard-hearted, dictatorial and sadistic terrain that will never change unless it is matched with a simple, common-sensed and sensitive followership willing to see things as they ought to be seen and do things as they ought to be done. The Nigerian leadership (past, present and future) have formed a complex web within and outside the followership cycles, enmeshing the entire system with confusion and political complexities that enables it draw a substantial portion of the followership along with it in an effort to carry us along and make us share its draconian ill-values and ill-cultural traits. This is not a kind of leadership that can change on its own. It can only change when the followership withdraws from the bilateral or symbiotic relationship that it shares with bad leadership. If this does not happen, forget it, we all will write and talk and shout and even die while the bad deeds go on. To create effective followership today will be a way to quail the bad leaderships of today and tomorrow. Bad governance has proved to be the most consistent feature of our polity. The architects of this bad governance have always risen from our gallery of followership into the so called circle of bad leadership; and our inability to sanitize the country from the followership gallery can also be blamed for the sinking boat of our nation today. It is mainly effective followership that can stir up effective leadership; history has shown it rarely goes otherwise. Our legendary musical philosopher and crusader, late Fela Onikulapo-Kuti warned us all against this in his various afro-vibes, especially the popular lyric and tune termed suffering and smiling. May be we should practically start considering Felas message to the masses (the followership) rather than viewing it as the ranting of a drug addict, or the groaning of an aroused insatiable womanizer.
Posted on: Thu, 11 Sep 2014 21:20:01 +0000
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