Kingsley MOGHALU's Thoughts on Leadership -Build, Innovate and Grow (BIG)

Leadership Is Under Threat Worldwide

AROUND THE WORLD TODAY, THE VERY IDEA OF LEADERSHIP CONFRONTS BIG CHALLENGES, BIG OPPORTUNITIES, AND BIG possibilities. From corporate leaders in advanced industrial countries who have to worry about the implications of disruptive innovation, the demands of corporate citizenship on business models, and the rising political risk to bottom lines from the surge in populism in western democracies, to entrepreneurs in Nigeria faced with unstable macroeconomic environments, absent infrastructure, policy inconsistency, and weak institutions, leadership is stressed and challenged.

From the political ferment in the United States in the era of Donald Trump to the stunning victory of Emmanuel Macron in response to the yearnings of French citizens for bold, new leadership. From the electoral shifts in the recent elections in the United Kingdom in the era of Brexit to the political crisis in Brazil over allegations of corruption against its elected leaders, leadership is the big issue. For good or ill, we live in its shadow.

We can understand why: in all its manifestations – political, corporate and entrepreneurial, science and innovation, academia, healthcare and public policy, leadership is the main determinant of social and economic progress.
It should be clear that the consequences of leadership failure, while not good for any society, developed or developing, are far more profound for developing countries such as Nigeria. Developed countries have strong institutions that can mitigate the effects of bad or weak political leadership. But our country, saddled as it has been with fledgling or undeveloped institutions, cannot achieve transformational progress without effective domestic political leadership.

What Real Leadership Means

We must confront and overcome the critical challenge of leadership in Nigeria if our democracy is to yield good governance, if the entrepreneurial talent expressed in the narrative of an Emerging Africa is to yield true economic transformation, and if the dynamism and ingenuity of Nigerians is to translate into an explosion of innovation that can make us competitive in a globalised world.

Leadership is about utilising appointive, elective or situational authority to envision, to inspire, and to take calculated risk.

.....stay tune.

How can we get leadership to make Nigeria prosper and matter? We have seen impressive leadership by Nigerian entrepreneurs. These businessmen and women are altering our national narrative from one of poverty and foreign aid to one of creativity and wealth creation. Nigerian entrepreneurs are making progress against all odds. But they remain outliers in a sea of poverty, successful not because of good leadership and governance in our country but rather in spite of bad leadership and governance.
Our country’s leadership problem is located mainly in our venal politics. But it is precisely this space that determines what kind of society, economy, education and health system that we have.

The first order of business is that of our minds. We must reinvent the Nigerian mindset. Our minds determine whether or how we understand what leadership means or doesn’t. Our minds determine what kind of worldview we bring to the task and responsibility of leadership. And our minds determine whether we have, or can acquire, the character and competence of leadership.
Great leadership must be transformational. I always approach the subject of leadership with the end in mind: what, for example, would be said about my service after I have completed a specific leadership task or responsibility? Indeed, to envision more radically, what will be said at my funeral? (One should hope that that event will hold somewhere north of my 100th birthday!)

I have applied this understanding to every leadership role in which I have had the privilege to serve – from national reconciliation and nation-building work by the United Nations in New York, Cambodia, Croatia and Rwanda to institutional and management reform in the UN, from building global partnerships and raising billions of dollars for social investments in developing countries by The Global Fund in Geneva to structuring and facilitating investments in emerging markets, from leadership roles in monetary policymaking and banking sector reform in Nigeria in the wake of the global financial crisis to serving as a professor in one of America’s premier universities, my vision has always been to leave the situation, institution or assignment I was tasked to handle much transformed from where I met it.

Leadership is about utilising appointive, elective or situational authority to envision, to inspire, and to take calculated risk. A leader’s task is to take societies, family units, organisations or institutions from A to Z or whatever point in the 26 alphabets is relevant, necessary, and possible. It is not, as we often misunderstand it in Nigeria, about merely holding positions of power or deploying authority mainly for self-serving purposes. This is why many career politicians in Nigeria that consider themselves “leaders” are in fact – and despite the veneer of democratic processes – more accurately “rulers”, or minions and accomplices of despotic power.

Leadership requires a certain kind of character that emphasises and upholds core values, a sense of abnegation to consciously forgo opportunities to advance self or other narrow interests, and the competence to bring these values to bear in a manner that creates change and sustains social progress.

In an illuminating article by Sunnie Giles that was published in the Harvard Business Review (“The Most Important Leadership Competencies”, According to Leaders around the World, HBR, March 15, 2016), the author’s research found that the top 10 leadership competences, based on the percentage of respondents from 200 global leaders asked to rate 74 qualities, were:

(1) Has high ethical and moral standards (67%);
(2) Provides goals and objectives with loose guidelines/direction (59%);
(3) Clearly communicates expectations (56%);
(4) Has the flexibility to change opinions (52%);
(5) Is committed to my ongoing training (43%);
(6) Communicates often and openly (42%);
(7) Is open to new ideas and approaches (39%);
( Creates a feeling of succeeding or failing together (38%);
(9) Helps me grow into a next-generation leader (38%);
(10) Provides safety for trial and error (37%).

As Giles explained, neuroscience confirms that a leader that possesses high standards based on core values and acting consistent with it, when combined with the ability to communicate expectations clearly, creates a safe and trusting environment and heightens brain activity related to creativity, social engagement, and a drive to excellence.

Leadership for Nigeria requires a worldview that can build a real nation-state out of the hodge-podge of ethnic nationalities lumped together by Britain as colonial power. For this to happen, a Nigerian leader must be able to rally his or her countrymen and women around a common goal and destiny that is higher than what divides us. It is around this goal that we must thrive together for progress. This is different from the narrow views that fuel the ethnic and religious-identity irredentism that have dominated the domestic political space in Nigeria.

But in order to liberate and educate citizens, the leader, must have the substance with which to educate and liberate.

We are trapped in these ethnic tensions and strife because our rulers have exploited these divisions in the past instead of liberating and educating their citizens. But in order to liberate and educate citizens, the leader, must have the substance with which to educate and liberate. As the legal maxim puts it, nemo dat quad non habeat (you cannot give what you don’t have). Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, the late Nigerian musical maestro, had little time for elegant Latin maxims. He put it bluntly in one of his songs: “Teacher, don’t teach me nonsense”!
But in order to liberate and educate citizens, the leader, must have the substance with which to educate and liberate.

Nigeria’s Leadership Jinx

In the quest for good leadership and governance in Africa, few if any countries are more important than Nigeria, Africa’s largest economy and most populous country with 180 million people. Nigeria, like many African countries, has made some progress, but far too little. We are a far distance in our stage of development from where we could have been after 57 years of independence. Nigeria’s case is especially disappointing when we consider the country’s vast reservoir of human capital and the dynamic nature of its enterprising people.

As the great African writer Chinua Achebe wrote, “Nigeria’s problem is simply and squarely that of leadership”. This leadership failure has led to slow progress (and many outright reversals) in the quest to build a united nation, and a dependence on raw mineral and commodity exports (crude oil) for foreign exchange earnings that has prevented real economic transformation.
Nigeria’s leadership jinx flows out of three conundrums. These are the “us versus them”, the “power versus responsibility”, and the “loyalty versus competence” syndromes.

“Us” v “Them”. This is the problem of ethnic religious or other atomistic identity that defines the acquisition or exercise of political power in African countries. An extreme attachment to these primordial identities creates factions. This problem exists even in mature democracies and economically advanced countries such as the United States, Belgium and Spain, but because these countries have already achieved advanced economic progress, the problem is an imperfection or a characteristic in their democracies, and is better managed in the wider national interest. In Nigeria it manifests as ethnic or religious identity politics in which politicians feel they can only trust persons of their tribe or faith. This narrow worldview is a foundational problem that has prevented the development of exceptional leadership.

The effect of these divisions on leadership selection and practice is that contests for political power in Nigeria are based not on ideology or clearly articulated leadership goals, but are in reality contests for ethnic or religious dominance. Political power obtained on this basis can hardly be exercised as transformational leadership. This breeds a “governance” culture of patronage based on divisive identities.

Leadership for Nigeria requires a worldview that can build a real nation-state out of the hodgepodge of ethnic nationalities lumped together by Britain as colonial power.

Authority v Service/Power v Responsibility. In Nigeria, as in many other African cultures pre-colonial rule, the power of traditional Kings was absolute. This cultural reality has not adapted well to concepts of modern statehood, democracy, and the checks and balances offered by the separation of executive, judicial and legislative power. Political leadership is thus often perceived in Nigeria more as authority than service, as raw power rather than responsibility. In this context, electoral accountability for the performance of leadership is often weak. This cultural reality, however, is beginning to change in a gradual but irreversible direction as democratic practice matures toward substance rather than the mere formality of holding elections.

This power/responsibility conundrum is also reflected in a prevalent culture of sycophancy in political leadership. Few aides or government officials can provide independent minded and objective advice to a superior at any level of authority and leadership. This culture of prioritising a place in the good graces of a leader’s ego over actual work performance creates a strong incentive for leadership failure. (“L’elat c’est moi”) (“I am the State”), as the French King Louis XVI famously stated. Many Nigerian political leaders have this mindset.

Loyalty v Competence. The “Us versus Them” instinct combined with that of power versus responsibility creates an exaggerated need for Nigerian leaders to surround themselves with “loyal” aides. Often, personal loyalty is reified above competence because our career politicians want to feel secure in the loyalty of subordinates with whom the leader is personally acquainted. This tendency often excludes competence from a leader’s immediate orbit, precisely because transformation is not the leader’s real priority. On the contrary, African leaders who have placed a strong accent on technocratic competence in countries like Rwanda and Nigeria during the presidency of Olusegun Obansanjo from 1999 to 2007, have been able to achieve transformational or at least significant progress, in particular in economic management which is Africa’s real contemporary challenge.

...stay tune as we continue with the lecture.

One of my favourite contestants...

Time to strive towards having a new set of politicians who are experienced or technocrats. Those who have served in the public sector creditably without blemish have added value.

I wish most of the young aspirants agreed to work towards getting into NASS for a start. We need a new crop of people there.

Citizen-solutions

How can Nigeria overcome its leadership capital deficit?

Fortunately, democracy offers a great opportunity for an improved process of leadership selection. This brings to
my mind the role of the citizen. In a normal scheme of things, it is leaders that shape the destinies of nations, but in functioning democracies citizens act as a check on leadership performance. In a country such as ours, then, where so- called leaders have performed so poorly, it is time for citizens to stand up for their own future.

Our citizens must exercise their democratic rights more effectively and make choices informed by objective leadership selection criteria. That criteria needs to include character, competence, and relevant experience, as well as the track record of persons seeking positions of leadership. To do so, voters must understand what really is in their best interest. That “what” is frequently different from the primordial affiliations and the patronage systems that politicians exploit and build to continue ruling instead of leading us. When subjective factors such as ethnicity, religion and corrupt inducement determine who we vote for in elections instead of objective leadership competence in leadership selection, we become very active accomplices in their own poverty.

A paradigm shift in leadership selection will require voter education by civil society organisations. It calls for increased demands for democratic accountability by citizens and civil society, the institution of a real social contract between states and citizens as demanded by the latter, and an all-important emphasis on leadership training for the up and coming generation of youth who we should want to be real leaders, not rulers, of tomorrow.

Conclusion

The leaders of Nigeria must build a real nation-states out of what Count Clemens von Metternich, Europe’s leading statesman in the early 19th century, referring to Italy, called “a mere geographical expression” – in other words, countries that are artificially formed and are not nations in a real sense. Our leaders have the responsibility of building institutions that can create a level playing field for everyone and shield citizens from tyranny, to achieve economic transformation, and to reclaim our countries’ place in the world.
Citizens, for their part, have the responsibility to decide who should have the responsibility for their welfare. In many African countries, they have not taken this duty as seriously as they should. Professor Ameena Gurib-Fakim, the competent and erudite President of Mauritius – one of Africa’s most successful countries – put it so pithily: “But the onus is also on all Africans. People have to start asking the right questions. Politicians, leaders, policymakers in normal democracies are all accountable to the people. But, and I am sorry for saying this brutally, we get the government we deserve. The one we vote in. It’s your vote”.

Recommendations

The next president of Nigeria must take the following leadership actions beginning on Day 1 of his/her four-year term of office:

• Communicate clear goals based on a unifying vision of Nigeria’s national destiny
• Uphold high ethical and moral standards of governance
• Lead by example based on the principles of transformative leadership
• Ensure the execution of the appropriate training for the effective management that must support such transformative leadership across the length and breadth of Nigeria’s public service
• Personally (not delegate ministers or other Government officials) hold regular town hall meetings across the country to communicate a new vision of leadership and governance in Nigeria and get a 360-degree “leadership audit” from the citizens of Nigeria
• Support and empower the “Office of the Citizen” to hold the government and governance accountable to the citizens of Nigeria.

Our country’s leadership problem is located mainly in our venal politics. But it is precisely this space that determines what kind of society, economy, education and health system that we have.

THE WORLDVIEW STATE

NIGERIA NEEDS TO BECOME A WORLDVIEW STATE. IN OTHER WORDS, OUR COUNTRY NEEDS TO BE DRIVEN BY A WORLDVIEW.

We all have worldviews, that mental and philosophical compass that guides how we see and interpret the world and make our way through life. The Oxford dictionary defines a worldview as “a particular philosophy or conception of the world”. And as I say, humorously but at the same time with all seriousness when I speak to global audiences – and paraphrasing a popular credit card advertisement – “my worldview is like my American Express card; I don’t leave home without it”.

As it is with individuals, so it is with countries and nations. Just as an individual without a worldview is one
without a road map to navigate life, so is a country without a worldview rudderless in the world.
The question of worldviews matters for nations and individuals. It’s not so much a matter of whether or not a worldview is right or wrong, for worldviews are really subjective for the most part. It’s more about the consequences of the worldview for individual or national progress and what happens when a country, which is our focus here,
doesn’t have one.

Nigeria today appears rudderless, with no particular direction in the world. Our country has no purposeful destiny
that we can say with conviction is our lodestar. Our citizens are increasingly unsure of what being a Nigerian means. This is a fundamental challenge that we must overcome, for a country or nation without a clear worldview simply cannot become a prosperous and powerful one.

Worldviews automatically lead to a set of values and organising principles for societies that have these solid philosophical foundations.

There are several reasons, each of practical importance and consequence in our national life, why Nigeria needs to become a “worldview state”.
The first reason is that we are not truly a united country. Without unity and a common sense of purpose, we as Nigerians cannot achieve much as a country and make real progress. When a country is not organised and motivated by a worldview, “small views” reign. In our case, these “small views”, which in reality are very narrow worldviews, are ethnic and religious irredentism, intolerance, and corruption.
Ethnic groups such as the Hausa-Fulani, Yoruba, Igbo, Ijaw, or Tiv, for example, have become the most important identifiers for us. We are losing all sense of primacy or the importance of Nigerian-ness. We retreat into our primordial cocoons of nativity as opposed to identification with modern statehood. When we travel overseas and identify ourselves as coming from Nigeria, we are often met with a typical response:

“Are you Igbo, Yoruba, or Hausa?” Kenyans don’t get asked by immigration officers in an American airport or by British shop attendants whether they are Kikuyu, Luo, or Kalenjin. Ghanaians don’t have to affirm or clarify that they are or are not Ga, Fante, or Ashanti. Why is our ethnologic sociology in Nigeria so nationally and even globally prominent?
It is because of the fundamental failure of Nigeria’s contemporary political leadership to create a worldview that unites us around some national vision, destiny or ambition. Rather, the cleavages of ethnic or religious identity became the path to political power for Nigerian politicians. Because there is no loyalty to any value higher than our selfish and other narrow interests such as ethnic/religious dominance, corruption reigns supreme in Nigerian public life. The Nigerian state is unstable and lacks cohesion. Low level conflicts abound, from the killing fields of Benue State to the creeks of the Niger Delta.

This is why creating, promoting, and internalising a national philosophical worldview is the fundamental way to solve the problems of ethnic and religious bigotry in Nigeria. We are not the only country in the world that has a diverse population. Indeed, diversity within countries is the default composition of most of the world’s countries.

The notion that every culturally and linguistically cohesive group should become its own country would result in disruptive global chaos! We must therefore develop a worldview because it will help us define to ourselves who we are as a people and defeat disunity and divisions that have only kept us poor.

We also need a Nigerian national worldview to help us achieve our potential. That potential, which springs from our being a dynamic, vibrant, and hardworking people full of world-class talent, has been much talked about but has remained a mirage. Yes, we are the country of potential, but potential is not a strategy. So was Haiti two centuries ago. After 57 years of independence, it is time we moved from potential greatness while wallowing in real poverty, to actual greatness which makes our poverty (mostly) history.
A worldview will give us the motivation and the tools to shape and meet out national goals because it is the only thing that can drive progress that is genuine, one that we can measure and sustain. This is because value systems that define a country, and a knowledge system that equips a nation’s citizens to acquire, interrogate, and validate knowledge, and a strategy to attain collective goals are all part of any coherent worldview. Worldviews automatically lead to a set of values and organising principles for societies that have these solid philosophical foundations.

Thirdly, having a worldview matters for Nigeria because it will enable us to assess from a comparative and competitive standpoint the distance between us and other more successful countries. That assessment should mostly be from the perspective of technological achievement and economic productivity, but also should include values. Thus, for example, a solid worldview can drive us to catch up with and possibly overtake countries that, at our independence from colonial rule in 1960, had less economical or technological prospects than Nigeria, but today are advanced industrial economies or at least emerging markets while we have remained a poor, “frontier” market economy. Countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and even South Korea fall into this bracket.

Nigeria also needs to become a worldview state so that our statecraft – our economic management, global diplomacy, and security and intelligence services – can actually advance the real interests of our people – the nearly 200 million Nigerians – rather than those of foreign countries. These are countries whose worldviews are driving their own activities and advancing their own national interests.
The first basic set of questions a worldview asks and answers are these: why is the world the way it is? Who are we as people in it? Any country that fails to ask these basic questions and answer them correctly will remain a third- rate player in the international society of states.
There are three particular subjects of practical importance to which the Nigeria of my vision as a worldview state should address itself. The first is globalisation. The second is foreign aid. The third is whether or not there is such a thing as an “international community”. Nigeria cannot have leaders in the 21st century who don’t understand what globalisation really means as well as its opportunities and implications for us as a country.

...the major weakness of this worldview was that it was exclusively a political one and lacked a domestic economic dimension.

Globalisation is not random or accidental. It is the product of a deliberate design by globalising nations. The phenomenon is driven by a worldview, a global strategic intent to dominate the world. Technology is the chief driver and conduit for globalisation, and innovation is what generates technology today.

The countries that have technological prowess that springs from innovation are the most productive and globally competitive today, and this trend will continue in the foreseeable future. The expansion of new frontiers into driverless and renewable energy-fueled vehicles that do not need the hydrocarbons on which our economy relies so heavily, as well as the increasing importance of artificial intelligence, have important implications for us and our place in the world economy.

We must understand, then, as part of our worldview, that we should aim not merely to be a marketplace for the products of globalisation such as our Android-powered Samsung and Apple mobile telephones. Rather, we must become part of the production value-chain of globalisation. This is what the Southeast Asian countries have done and continue to do. The worldview lesson is simple: globalisation has drivers and passengers. Right now, we are passengers. We should, and can, move to the steering wheel. I will discuss how we can do this in the chapter on innovation.

As for foreign aid, my world view is simple: Nigeria should be giving it, not receiving it. This was once partly the case. Foreign aid is a tool of power projection that gives effect to the worldview of donor nations. The President of Ghana, Nana Akufo-Addo, made the case that Africa does not need foreign aid and that our relations with the Western powers should not be anchored on aid. President Emmanuel Macron of France, who was giving a joint press conference with the Ghanaian leader when the latter made this bold and “politically incorrect” assertion, appeared to have been caught off-guard by an African leader boldly asserting what should be a fundamental worldview for African countries.

Nigeria has, in recent years, become an expanding recipient of foreign aid. The humanitarian crises in the Northeast region became the excuse for our government to hold out a begging bowl in the capitals of industrialised nations. In my vision of my country, this is beneath our dignity. Even more practically, as in most cases in Africa, the aid received has not achieved its ostensible purpose. Instead, it created yet another empire of corruption for Nigerian government officials, and jobs and a comfortable lifestyle for foreign aid workers. The victims of Boko Haram deserve better. Were Nigeria a worldview state, we would have handled this grave humanitarian crisis more effectively, with our own organisation, initiatives, and resources.

The “international community” is a great exaggeration. It is an aspirational phrase. What exists in reality in the world today is an anarchical international society of states, each jostling for its own national interests. Nigeria must understand this is in the context of a clear worldview, and conduct its foreign and international economic policy accordingly. Else, we will continue to be exploited by the international powers of the West and the East.

In a worldview state, everything is driven by the national worldview, a national sense of self and our place and purpose in the world. It will be the core narrative, the reason we exist. We were once a worldview state, or at least partially so. Paradoxically, that was during the era of military rule, in particular during the Murtala Mohammed/Olusegun Obasanjo military government from 1975 to 1979.
Nigeria exuded a dynamic sense of purpose and sure-footedness in foreign policy in that era. We saw ourselves as the bellwether country of the black race and played a decisive role in the liberation of South Africa from Apartheid and the emergence from black majority rule, as well as the decolonization of such Southern African countries as Angola, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe.

But the major weakness of this worldview was that it was exclusively a political one and lacked a domestic economic dimension. Thus, we remained a petro-state on fiscal life support from crude oil sales and failed to diversify our economy into a truly productive one. Only a real worldview, one with economic transformation as a core component, will enable us to return to our rightful place in the world. Worldviews drive powerful countries such as the United States, Russia, China, the European Union and the rising countries of East Asia. We know of “the idea of America”, the “manifest destiny” of the United States, its self-image as the “shining city on the hill” and a “land of the free, home of the brave”. More recently, the Donald Trump presidency’s worldview of “Make America Great Again” has had important consequences for the previously dominant liberal world order, and for the United States itself.

We must understand, then, as part of our worldview, that we should aim not merely to be a marketplace for the products of globalisation such as our Android-powered Samsung and Apple mobile telephones.

With the “peaceful rise of China” worldview and a switch from a communist to capitalist economy, China steadily transformed itself into a great economic power and the world’s second largest economy after the United States, with the ambition to overtake America. Russia under Vladimir Putin, a former KGB agent, operates under a worldview of the restoration of a Russian global influence that Putin believes declined in the post-Communist era. Rwanda and Ethiopia are two African countries consciously – and to a large extent successfully – pursuing the worldview goal of “developmental states”. Rwanda has reduced its child mortality rates more than any other country in the world in the past two decades.

With the “peaceful rise of China” worldview and a switch from a communist to capitalist economy, China steadily transformed itself into a great economic power and the world’s second largest economy after the United States, with the ambition to overtake America. Russia under Vladimir Putin, a former KGB agent, operates under a worldview of the restoration of a Russian global influence that Putin believes declined in the post-Communist era. Rwanda and Ethiopia are two African countries consciously – and to a large extent successfully – pursuing the worldview goal of “developmental states”. Rwanda has reduced its child mortality rates more than any other country in the world in the past two decades.

Leadership with a Real Worldview

The most important aspect of the paradigm shift that our country needs in leadership selection is the emergence of a national leader with a real worldview. This type of leader will necessarily possess a combination of intellectual depth, a mindset capable of philosophical reflection, and the practical leadership ability to inspire, motivate, and provide guidance to Nigerians. He or she will be able to appeal to both our enlightened, collective interest in a radical departure from the absence of real nationhood, and to “the better angels of our nature”.
Historically, great leaders have had this ability. From Abraham Lincoln of the United States to Britain’s Winston Churchill and Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew, from China’s Deng Xiaoping to Malaysia’s Mahathir Mohammed, from Botswana’s Seretse Khama to Mauritius’ Ameena Gurib-Fakim, the countries led by these men and women have been built and developed on the basis of clearly discernible worldviews. In the context of Nigeria’s tortured past and the possibilities before us, a leader with a worldview of radical transformation in the direction of national unity, economic development, and Nigerian’s place in the world is now needed in our country.

My vision of how we can reinvent Nigeria as a worldview state rests on the following steps and processes:

A Worldview Charter

I recommend the establishment of a simple, relatively short but profound worldview charter entitled “Nigeria: One Nation, One Destiny” (I know, this was the slogan of the National Party of Nigeria, NPN, in the Second Republic!). This document should be prepared by a committee of relevant intellectuals drawn from the fields of philosophy, history, literature, law, sociology, engineering, economics, sciences, and business. The document should not be more than two pages and be rendered in a simple and easy-to-understand language. It should address the following issues:

• The Amalgamation of 1914
• The promise held out by the anti-colonial struggle and “the labors of our heroes past” – the three Founding Fathers Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Sir Ahmadu Bello, as well as Anthony Enahoro and Gen. Murtala Mohammed.
• A determination to re-create a united nation by building on the strength of our diverse, dynamic people
• Express collective regret at the loss of millions of lives lost in the Nigerian Civil War and declare that such a tragedy will never happen again
• An affirmation of the importance of justice, equity, and the rule of law as the basis of governance in the “New Nigeria”
• A clear affirmation of entrepreneurial capitalism which encourages the ethic of individual hard work, while seeking an appropriate balance between the role of the state and the marketplace, as the foundation of a productive Nigerian economy in the context of a developmental state
• The need to establish a true social contract between the state and the citizen, and encourage citizens to pay their taxes on this basis
• Innovation and skilled human capital, not natural resources, as the foundational basis of economic activity in the “New Nigeria”
• Nigeria’s place in the world on account of its unique position as the biggest economy of the black race in the world
This charter should be ratified by the National Assembly and all State Assemblies, and signed by the president and all state governors in Nigeria

Worldview Education

The worldview charter should become part of the curriculum in all primary and secondary schools in Nigeria, with a simplified emphasis at the primary school level and a more comprehensive study in secondary school. This will create a new generation of Nigerians with the requisite mindset of patriotism and strategic national ambition.
Worldview Communication
The president of Nigeria and his or her cabinet should act on and communicate this worldview in all governance activities, as should all state governors and national and state legislators. Building great nations often requires leaders with a strong ability to communicate to their fellow citizens and to lead by example.
This worldview state is a fundamental condition precedent for good governance, to which I now turn.

I recommend the establishment of a simple, relatively short but profound worldview charter entitled “Nigeria: One Nation, One Destiny”

GOVERNANCE-A NEW PARADIGM

A TRUE LEADER MUST ENVISION, INSPIRE AND MOTIVATE. HE OR SHE MUST BE ABLE TO TAKE CALCULATED AND WELL-MANAGED risks based on his or her vision. But good political leadership must be backed up by good governance. This is the process by which governments and public institutions conduct public life and manage public resources. You could say that the ability to govern well is the acid test of leadership. Governance, more broadly, is basically how decisions are made and implemented.

“Leaders” who believe they have earned being described by such a term because they are good at the vote- winning – or rigging – tricks of partisan politics, but have no clue about how to govern effectively, have kept our country poor. Nigerians yearn to be set free from the vice-grip of such compatriots, and deeply desire good governance.

It is time for Nigeria to be governed in a manner that is fundamentally different and vastly improves on our disappointing national experience with governance. How a leader governs is determined by his or her worldview, the absence of one, or how well developed such a worldview is.
Good governance, then, is largely defined by its key elements. These include effectiveness, transparency, inclusiveness, accountability, efficiency, and respect for the rule of law.

Effectiveness

To use Creative Learning’s memorable phase, “governments must govern.” A government must deliver on the promises it has made or deliverables that are essential for effective governance. Effectiveness is regarded as the most important criteria of good governance. There is nothing more pathetic, as has become the norm in Nigeria, than to keep hearing the excuses for leadership failure in contemporary Nigeria such as: “the President means (or meant) well, but ...” The blank could be filled in by anything from the activities of “cabals” a domineering presidential spouse, incompetent and ineffective ministers and aides (all appointed by the President) and sundry other excuses. The buck stops with the leader, whether the president, a state governor, or a local government area chairperson. An ineffective government is a reflection of an ineffective man or woman elected to a responsibility he or she lacks the capacity to deliver on.
Effective governance requires more than good intentions. Meritocracy is an important dimension of effective governance. Competent individuals must be selected to positions of public trust. Merit should not be sacrificed in the alter of federal character, because we know that there are highly competent and skilled Nigerians from all parts of our country.

Transparency

This attribute of good governance requires that governance processes, in particular decision making processes, be easily visible and susceptible to monitoring by other arms of government, citizens, civil society, or the private sector. Transparency stimulates trust between the government and citizens because it lets citizens know that there is no hidden agenda and that the government and its institutions are willing to be accountable. Transparency in governance also helps check corruption. Its absence in governance in Nigeria is a major reason for the massive and corrosive corruption in Nigerian governments.

It is time for Nigeria to be governed in a manner that is fundamentally different and vastly improves on our disappointing national experience with governance.

Accountability

Governments need to be accountable to citizens and their constituencies. For this to be the case, citizens must be empowered to ask questions, demand answers and, if deemed necessary, vote out non-accountable governments. Governments in Nigeria are overwhelmingly not accountable. This is because Nigerian citizens are docile, poor, and still largely asleep to their power as citizens. The civil society is relatively vibrant, and Nigerian citizens voted an incumbent president out of office in 2015. But its remains to be seen whether that occurrence was a unique one or whether it can be repeated. The forces of government “power” arrayed against the average Nigerian citizen, deployed by both career politicians and politically subservient public institutions, remain significant. I want my fellow countrymen and women to wake up to their power in a democracy and turn that power into a culture of accountability.

Rule of Law

Good governance is impossible without the rule of law. Government must respect the rule of law, for that is what differentiates a democracy from despotism. Decisions must follow and respect legal norms and due process, notwithstanding that such decisions may be well-intended.

Inclusion and Participation

Good governance emphasises process as well as results. The inclusion and participation of all relevant stakeholders, and citizens more broadly, is essential to good governance. This requires a process of consultation before major public decision are taken. Inclusion also requires, in a diverse population such as Nigeria’s, that citizens of all ethnic nationalities and religions be made part of governance and decision making. Where particular sub-groups are favoured in appointments to public offices and other opportunities, it is the worst kind of governance because it breaks the trust between the government and excluded groups, disrupts or prevents the achievement of natural unity and cohesion, and in extreme cases can breed political and even armed conflict.

A government must deliver on the promises if has made or deliverables that are essential for effective governance.

Efficiency

Federal and state governments in Nigeria do not execute their mandates efficiently. Efficiency has two dimensions. One is efficiency of processes, which influences how effective a government or its public institutions are. The other is resources consumed by the government itself relative to results achieved.

On both counts, governance in Nigeria is a monument to waste and inefficiency. The process is often inefficient because business efficiency principles are not followed in many public institutions that have become dumping grounds for political patronage. The real purpose of governance processes in Nigeria is often the desire of politicians to retain political power at all cost. It is not to achieve efficient and effective outcomes.

The huge cost of governance in Nigeria, and the real benefits it robs our country in terms of development outcomes such as quality education, healthcare and the absence of social security schemes, is a scandal that has been tolerated and perpetuated by successive federal and state governments. Unless and until we have the political will to cut down waste in public sector governance in which recurrent expenditure in salaries for armies of inefficient and unproductive public sector staff is more than 70 percent of national or state budgets, Nigeria’s politicians will have nothing much to offer our citizens despite rhetoric about their commitment to “good governance”.

My Vision for Governance in Nigeria

I have a vision for a transformational approach to governance in Nigeria. That approach should be anchored on a clear vision of the outcomes the leader would like to achieve by the end of four-year term of office, his or her understanding of public policy, his or her national and/or international experience of best practice standards of good governance. Other elements around which a clear vision of governance should be anchored are political will, preparedness, and proactive readiness for governance responsibilities. The next President of Nigeria should take the following actions in governance.

• Utilise the transition period between winning an election and being sworn into office efficiently and effectively to prepare to hit the ground running on taking office.
• Appoint and announce the key Presidency officials of Secretary to the Government of the Federation, National Security Adviser, and Chief of Staff to the President immediately upon being sworn in as President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
• Nominate and announce all members of the Executive council of the Federation within 48 hours of being sworn in as President. Subject to Senate confirmation of nominees, the cabinet will commence full time work activity within 30 days of being sworn in as President
• All appointments to Chief Executive Officer and boards of directions positions in public sector parastatals will be made within 90 days from Day One of the new administration.
• Meritocracy and professionalism should be enthroned in the Federal Public Service. Public institutions will be de-politicised, re-professionalised, and administered according to the highest principles of corporate governance, transparency and accountability.
• Unprecedented levels of inclusion into governance, both in terms of decision making process and in personnel appointments will become a hallmark of governance. The constitutional principles of “Federal Character” will be implemented, but without prejudice to merit. No region or section of Nigeria will suffer marginalisation, and our country will be governed on the basis of equity and justice.
• Extensive and fundamental reform of the Federal Public Service will be implemented.
• The cost of governance will be markedly reduced. Concurrent expenditure as a percentage of the overall national budget will be reduced to not more than 50 percent of the budget by the end of the President’s second year in office; savings available as a result will be deployed to four budget line items – health, education, science, technology and innovation, and infrastructure.
• To ensure transparency and delivery on time and under budget, world-class project management companies will supervise all federal infrastructure projects.
• A National Office of Risk Management (NORM) will be established and manned by skilled risk management professionals. Strategy, risk and project management will become an integral part of governance in all ministries, department and agencies.

The huge cost of governance in Nigeria, and the real benefits it robs our country in terms of development outcomes such as quality education, healthcare and the absence of social security schemes, is a scandal that has been tolerated and perpetuated by successive federal and state governments.

TRANSFORMATIVE GOVERNANCE STRATEGY

What is Strategy?

IT IS COMMONLY ASSUMED THAT WE DID NOT LACK AN UNDERSTANDING OF WHAT EXACTLY THE OBSTACLES TO DEVELOPMENT ARE. The real challenge is to just get on with ‘doing it’. But it is more the case that we have not actually understood these challenges at a depth where it makes a real difference. Most Nigerians understand that factors such as ethnicity or corruption have been big problems. But the real problems are at a full level below. They are foundational, and can only be addressed by a transformation that begins in the mind, in the way we think. Thinking is often more important than we think (forgive the pun). We must ‘think it through’.

As a result of not having thought it through for far too long, Nigeria has failed at the formulation and implementation of public policy that is so necessary to create a real change in our circumstances. A discussion of the subject of strategy is therefore essential. The effective formulation and execution of strategy give life to worldviews and moves nations and companies from A to B. The fact that we have virtually no formal structure for strategy formulation, execution and monitoring, as well as risk management structures, is a fundamental failure in an era of modern governance and is an important reason for policy failure, which in turn is a main reason why most of our countrymen and women are poor.
Strategy must become embedded in governance thinking and architecture in Nigeria. To the very limited extent they exist, strategy units in the government tend to be focused on political strategy. This is only a sub-set – and a short-term one – that is aimed at winning and retaining power but is not focused on effective governance and the delivery of value to citizens from the perspective of governance. That is the real art and science of strategy.

Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, had a famous strategy unit in No. 10 Downing Street that drove his governance agenda and ensured that a single thread of vision, communication and execution priority (in his case, education) ran through all the narratives and actions of his ten years in office. Strategy and risk management have in fact only come into their own as legitimate functions in private sector companies in Nigeria in the past decade. While they developed in the context of the competitive ethos of the private sector, and even then only after World War II, their application to the role of the government and the effectiveness of the state – which encompasses the private sector commercial space – is even more consequential for our future.

Strategy, as the strategist Max McKeown has observed, is about shaping the future. It is about how to create the future of our imagination. That ‘how’ is the difference between dreaming and visioning and bridging the gap in between. Strategy is a set of integrated actions planned over time to achieve a desired outcome. In other words it is a ‘game plan’ to get from a current state to a desired end-state, and should have defined goals and milestones as well as the resources for achieving these goals. It is a necessary tool for long-term success by good leaders towards achieving transformation at either the corporate, national or regional levels.

But it is important to note that strategy is first and foremost about thinking and about a way of thinking, before it becomes a matter of plans. As McKeown writes in the context of corporate organisations, but also applicable to nations: ‘Strategy is about out-thinking your competition. It’s about vision first and planning second. That’s why it’s so important that you think before you plan; and that the thinking part of what you do is given priority. Strategists who don’t take time to think are just planners’.

This is why, in response to the banal phraseology of ‘stomach infrastructure’ in Nigerian politics, which is focused on the immediate gratification of hunger (with food provided of course by politicians seeking popularity to wins elections, rather than being the result of hard work on a level playing field). I have argued that we really need to focus on ‘mental infrastructure’: a longer-term focus on thinking, planning and execution that delivers sustainable development rather than palliative measures that in reality perpetuate cycles of poverty.

Most Nigerians understand that factors such as ethnicity or corruption have been big problems. But the real problems are at a full level below. They are foundational, and can only be addressed by a transformation that begins in the mind, in the way we think.

Strategic intent and ability are linked to the concept of worldviews, since strategy first requires strategic thinkers whose minds are open to vast possibilities and who see the larger picture. Second, worldviews, strategy formulation, and strategy execution are all intricately linked. We ‘make plans’ in Nigeria, but clearly this planning is without the right sort of thinking – without strategic intent. It is therefore planning in a context that has not moved us forward in great leaps in the manner that Asia has.
We should visualise strategy as a compass for steering and coordinating efforts and actions in order to get to a predefined destination. Strategy is not static; the only thing constant during the life span of a strategy is the stated strategic destination, ‘the end-state’. The strategic choices selected to get from current state to future state will evolve as progress is made and new threats and opportunities come to light in the course of implementation. For strategy to be relevant, it has to be dynamic and constantly adjusted in light of new developments, challenges, and opportunities.

It is important to grasp the simplicity of what strategy formulation is. Strategy is something everyone does explicitly or implicitly. It is not complex; in fact there is a simplicity about it that is common sense. Developing a strategy is about understanding your specific issues and challenges, identifying the strategic options available to you in addressing those issues informed by your core strengths, unique position, and opportunities you could take advantage of, and then making decisions on which options to pursue. The decisions thus made result in a set of integrated actions to be implemented in order to move forward.

In practice, formulating coherent strategy for a nation could be daunting, given the complexity and interdependencies of the macroeconomic challenges. For African nations such as ours, this is further complicated by the prevailing high level of poverty, poor infrastructure, high level of illiteracy, poor governance and the absence of accountability, high level of corruption, political instability, insecurity, and unfavourable trade terms. Without a clear destination, however, and a plan of action to get from here to there, we can’t make progress. The difference between having a coherent strategy and not having one is that those nations without one are highly likely to be implementing numerous incoherent and disjointed policies while the nations with a plan of action are more likely to achieve the desired outcome.

Success in deploying strategy therefore lies in the systematic commitment to what makes up a strategy. These elements are: a clear and shared vision; distinct and imbibed values; focused objectives; strategic design; implementation and co-ordination; monitoring and evaluation; consequence management; continuous impact assessment; and strategic revalidation.
Having a plan of action documented and published as a ‘National Strategy 2020 or 2030’ as the case may be, is not in itself the sole driver of success. Transformation can only be achieved through effective and timely implementation of the plan; in other words, effective strategy execution.

Starting point: Focused objectives
Strategy is about turning things on their head and doing something different and differently. The place to begin is to articulate clear objectives with distinct milestones. One of the hallmarks of strategy is objective setting within the framework of a well-articulated and focused vision. For Nigeria to achieve true transformation, as is evident among the BRIC nations Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, such objectives must be articulated within the context of a worldview. Similarly, in entities such as Dubai, Malaysia and Singapore that have achieved a stunning degree of transformation in recent decades, central to their success has been a strategy characterised by clear objectives within the worldview concept. This leads to the articulation of clear competitive positioning of the entity and the development of well synchronised action plans for their operating units with clear milestones.

The definition of, commitment to, and drive towards a distinct and transparent ‘Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG)’, is the compass that guides all action plans of successful entities and the evaluation of the leadership by the followership. It is helpful to start with a few simple questions:

Strategy is about out-thinking your competitors. It’s about vision first and planning second. That’s why it’s so important that you think before you plan...

• What is our collective aspiration as a nation?
• Where do we want to be in 10, 20, 30 years?
• What will the future look like?
• Who is responsible for the transformation?
• What should the role of the government be today and in 10, 20, 30 years?

Evaluating, discussing and reaching consensus on the desired future state in view of the current situation would help in starting to create the nation’s worldview as we begin to understand the level of transformation required to achieve a shift from the current state to the future one. To have impact, it is important for the different dimensions of the strategic destination to be measurable. The difference between the future end-state and the current one is the Transformation Gap. Identifying the plan of actions to close the gap is the essence of the strategy. Closing the gap requires doing something differently. It is true that ‘if you do what you have always done, you will only get what you have always got’.
The strategic destination for Nigeria would be based on our aspirations and current issues, and is only as limited as our desire for lasting change. In developing the strategic destination, it is important to imagine the impossible as possible. Imagine reading this about our country:
Nigeria ranks high (top 30 instead of the current rank of 152 out of 188 countries) in the United Nations Development Program’s Human Development Index, with good health, housing, security, 90 per cent literacy level, and high life expectancy and access to reliable utilities.

• Nigeria has low unemployment.
• Nigeria’s revenue from its natural resources accounts for less than 20 per cent of its GDP.
• Nigeria is a reference point for good governance, accountability and transparency.
• Nigeria is one of the top 20 nations of the world in terms of per capita income.

This is not impossible. Consider, again, the transformations of the United Arab Emirates, Singapore, Malaysia, India, and Brazil. These transformations did not happen in a vacuum. The leaders of these nations were clear on their desired destination and they had clear worldviews of who they are and what their position in the world should be. And they were committed to making it a reality.
In an increasingly global world, we sometimes tend to over-focus on the competitiveness of nations. What is more immediate and would serve Nigeria better for the long run is productivity. The argument that national level strategy should be focused on how to create an environment that promotes productivity and business is a strong and valid one. As Harvard Business School Professor Michael Porter puts it, ‘The principal economic goal of a nation is to produce a high and rising standard of living for its citizens. The ability to do so depends not on the amorphous notion of “competitiveness” but on the productivity with which a nation’s resources are employed’. At a national level, the simplicity of this idea puts the emphasis on how well governments are able to mobilise their resources into the key action programmes that would drive productivity and thus help create the transformational shift.

It is paramount that each component of the strategy crafted is measured and reported on. What is measured and reported on will largely determine what will be focused on. Many development indicators are published and tracked, but as informative as they are, it is paramount for success that the portfolio of measures used to track the performance of the strategy are those that matter for understanding progress toward the nation’s strategic destination. The measures that inform on the specific performance of the strategy, provide strategic insights and thus help inform the decision on how to adjust the game plan, are by far the most useful. These measures should also be the ones that help in driving collective behaviour and performance at all levels of the society. The measures selected should be driven by the strategy.

Strategy Management

As part of the process of making strategy more science than art, emphasis has shifted from managing strategy solely as a planning process to a process of identifying strategic choices, an emphasis alluded to earlier. This approach to strategy – although planning remains an important aspect of the strategic process – is most agreeable because it is strategy in its purest and most effective form. Taking the choice approach to formulating strategy is what will lead to Africa’s transformation. With this in mind, seven steps to strategy making developed by A.G. Lafley, former chairman and CEO of Procter & Gamble, Roger Martin, dean of the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, Jan Rivkin, professor at Harvard Business School, and Nicolaj Siggelkow, professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Management, will be critical for Nigeria, with appropriate adaptations:

Step 1: Frame a Choice

The scholars and practitioners of strategy identified the need to move from issues to choices in the context of commercial organisations where issues such as declining profits or market share are dominant for the business corporation. But this leads to a focus on investigating the issue rather than an emphasis on different choices or options that would solve the problem. This is a reactive approach to managing strategy. Choice-making is more proactive – and more effective. Choices can create the paradigm shifts that Nigeria needs. This is because choices define and determine the future state to which all effort can be directed at achieving; rather than dwelling in lamentations about ethnocentricity, corruption and other well-known shortcomings of the modern African state. It is important to frame strategy as clear choices by converting issues into choices and possibilities that offer paths to resolution. This has been described by A.G. Lafley et al. as ‘the proverbial crossing of the Rubicon – the step that starts the strategy making process’.

Step 2: Generate Strategic Possibilities

Having made choices, it becomes necessary to generate possibilities, which is to say a future state that is often a happy one, and how the country or region might succeed in getting there. The possibilities depend on the context, but should be clear about the advantage the entity aims to achieve, the scope across which the advantage applies, and the activities that would deliver those advantages across the scope that is envisaged. Strategic possibilities should be generated by a team with a diversity of backgrounds, as this often leads to fresh and creative thinking. Many organisations and countries often fall into the trap of stereotyping the persons best placed to generate such possibilities on the basis of whether or not such persons are members of staff of the organisation or members of the government, or whether or not they possess stereotypically ‘relevant’ qualifications. In doing so, they can only limit their possibilities.

Step 3: Specify Conditions for Success

An important part of the scientific formulation of strategy is to specify the conditions in which generated possibilities are viable and valid. As Lafley and his colleagues note, this is not a discussion of what is true as a matter of fact but of what would have to be true for the choice to be a great one.

Step 4: Identify Barriers

It is important to identify what the barriers are to each strategic possibility that is generated, or the barriers to the conditions that would have to be true for those possibilities to be valid. Scepticisms in the process of making strategy are healthy, and can help to improve the rigour of a strategy.

Step 5: Design Tests for Barrier Conditions

This is the next step in the strategy formulation process. In this stage, the strategy management group tests the main barrier conditions in order of importance through a scientifically designed and executed survey of appropriate stakeholders.

Step 6: Conduct the tests

Lafley et al. recommend the ‘lazy man’s approach to choice’ in conducting the tests designed. In that scenario, the strategy management group tests conditions starting with those in which the group has lowest confidence and moving up the chain in reverse order. Typically, outside consultants and experts are brought in at this stage. This approach offers depth, and is much more scientific than the standard approach of strategic planning because the latter is not based on the genuine inquiry and hypothesis testing that defines the scientific method.

Step 7: Make the Choice

Because this approach to strategy is based on a scientific method, the choices it throws up make decision-making less difficult than in other approaches that can be quite acrimonious, because it is largely evidence based. At this stage, what is required are the political will and the leadership to drive the strategy, generate national support and buy-in, and effective execution.

Strategy Execution

One of the biggest barriers to crossing the bridge of success and transformation is the implementation or execution of strategic plans. Success is not guaranteed by having a well-documented and published strategy. To move forward and gain traction on the wheel of transformation, effective strategy execution is paramount. The challenge of making execution happen cannot be underestimated. Simply put, at a very human level, strategy execution is about ‘making strategy happen’. This is far harder than crafting a strategy. Crafting strategy is creative. It pulls at the heartstrings by allowing collective visualisation of a better future and motivating through the creation of active steps that can help transform that vision into a reality for a nation or an organisation.

Success is not guaranteed by having a well-documented and published strategy.

Execution, on the other hand, is about rolling up the sleeves and building those steps one by one. It is about sweat from the brows. Crafting strategy is like architecture, while execution is much like construction. Both roles are equally important and must be integrated seamlessly to work. Else, the well-crafted strategy is nothing but a beautiful dream. To make the vision a reality, the builders must fully understand what they are to build; they have to internalise the vision, and the architects who crafted the strategy must be on hand to programme, manage and support the builders, helping to make adjustments as barriers are discovered in the building phase.

Driving effective execution is a process well accepted by many governments when they develop and publish their strategies. Nigeria’s Vision 2020 blueprint states that: ‘Deepening the ability of the government at both state and federal levels to consistently translate strategic intent into actions and results on a permanent basis, is recognised as the single most important factor in making NV2020 a reality’. As I write, we are in 2018, and we are nowhere close to achieving the goals of Vision 2020. Indeed, it was essentially discarded as soon as President Yar’Adua died in 2010 and Goodluck Jonathan became President and came up with his Transformation Agenda, just as former military dictator General Sani Abacha’s Vision 2010 died with him!

Even where the strategy is maintained, there are many factors that contribute to the failure of the execution process. If these factors are not dealt with, recognising the importance of execution will not in itself create the needed transformation. It is important to understand why most countries and organisations fail at execution before we can discuss some of the things to put in place to support effective implementation.
National level strategies, especially in the context of African countries, fail primarily because of factors such as:

• Short-termism (a particularly Nigerian trait in governance);
• Absence of buy-in, reflected in the inability of governments to sell the vision and the strategy persuasively to the populace;
• Absence of visible leadership to drive implementation;
• Inconsistent understanding of the various elements of a strategy and how they interconnect with and depend on each other;
• Absence of a review mechanism;
• Weak alignment and coordination of different arms of the government
• Poor ongoing strategy management (execution and implementation) and monitoring;
• Weak alignment of national or sub-national budgets to strategy;
• Accountability deficits;
• Indiscipline (countries with a culture of discipline embedded in their societal fabric find it easier to execute strategy – economic, military and diplomatic among others; examples include China, Rwanda, South Korea, and Switzerland)
• Low Standards (a culture of mediocrity)

If there is a visible leadership and governance process in place that requires the leaders of selected key stakeholder organisations to participate as part of a ‘Strategy Execution and Implementation Committee’ responsible for ongoing strategy review (at least on a quarterly basis), this would ensure ongoing management of the implementation; and by default, they are more likely to ensure that their own organisation is not the one holding the execution process back. It also helps if the framework used to develop and capture the strategy is simple and self- explanatory – some well-tested tools for this include road maps, change agendas and strategy maps.
To specifically address the alignment issue, some governments such as the Abu Dhabi national government have an executive council in charge of working with the various arms of government to ensure that the strategies of the various elements are aligned to the national vision and strategy.
The Balanced Scorecard, a strategy performance management system introduced by Robert Kaplan and David Norton in 1992, is a superior framework for strategy execution. The framework is based on five principles:

• Mobilise change through executive leadership
• Translate strategy into operational terms
• Align the organisation to the strategy
• Motivate to make strategy everyone’s job
• Govern to make strategy a continual process

The use of the Kaplan/Norton Balanced Scorecard concept – where entity key goals and targets for the strategic and operational outcomes that it must individually deliver in a given time frame are defined for each government – has proven to be a real help to many governments and government entities, including Botswana which adopted the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) strategy management approach and has started to see significant and measurable results.

Alignment is particularly important for implementing national level strategy because most initiatives that would drive transformation typically cut across many sectors. Let us assume, for instance, that a key aspect of the strategic destination is to have a ‘safe and secured environment in which all citizens and residents feel protected’, but the country is facing fundamental challenges of terrorism and a high crime rate. If the only organisation involved in crafting the strategy and implementing it was the security and defence organisations, it is very likely that the strategy would be focused on their role and not fully consider what the other organisations and stakeholders can do to help address the root causes of the issues.

The holistic approach would be to think through the root causes and understand all points of influence and then form a relevant strategy working group that pulls the right people from the relevant sectors to focus on the right details. For this particular goal, apart from the security and defence organisations, the government entities responsible for communication and information, immigration and border control should be involved as well as the justice department, religious communities, women organisations, the education sector, local governments and the health sector.

Effective alignment to strategy by all public and private stakeholders is a real game changer. It creates a differential advantage between those nations that succeed at execution and those that fail. Imagine the collective energy that would propel a nation forward and the level of transformation that would happen if all arms of a nation’s government individually and collectively focus on the right details at the right time.

Strategy Execution Management Framework

Since the early 1990s, many management gurus have dedicated much research effort to understand why each of the different factors discussed above occur. An execution management framework is about creating an approach for managing the implementation of strategy in an ongoing basis, and thus creating a process to keep the ball rolling. A good strategy execution management approach enables constant challenge to ensure focus on implementation – Are we on the right path? What else can we be doing? What are the potential threats? How can we be prepared if the threats become a reality?

A transformation strategy execution framework needs to tackle each of the core barriers discussed above that are relevant to a nation. The governance model described earlier should be at the core of any good strategy execution framework. According to Kaplan and Norton, there are four main processes in managing strategy in the context of the Balanced Scorecard:

Translating the vision. Clarifying the vision and gaining consensus.

Communicating and linking. Communicating and educating, setting goals, and tying rewards to performance measures.
Business planning. Setting targets, aligning strategic initiatives, allocating resources, establishing milestones.
Feedback and learning. Below is an illustration of a more detailed strategy execution and management framework with its constituent elements:

Execution, on the other hand, is about rolling up the sleeves and building those steps one by one. It is about sweat from the brows.

WHY INSTITUTIONS MATTER

TO UNDERSTAND THE STATE OF DEVELOPMENT OF ANY COUNTRY, ALL WE NEED TO DO IS TO LOOK AT ITS INSTITUTIONS – WHETHER they exist in fact and, if so, how robust they are. Institutions are the foundations of modern statehood, the conceptual basis of the modern state. I use the term “institutions” here not in the sense of organisations such as, for example, educational institutions, but rather as structures of social order that organise and govern our individual behavior in a society as well as the conduct of even the political leadership of such communities. They include the judiciary, the military, the security and intelligence services, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), as well as the central bank and other institutions that govern the conduct of economic activity.

Against this conceptual backdrop, institutions matter for four main reasons.

First, institutions matter because their basic function is to guarantee the security and stability of the state. In other words they guarantee internal order and cohesion and even protection from external threats such as military aggression or other threats to the integrity of any state. In today’s era of globalisation, this raises some challenges when the perceived threat is of a non-military nature. Immigration, asylum and refugees, while governed by international and national laws, are examples of what may be perceived from a domestic standpoint as non- traditional threats. Internet governance and cyber security is another such subject.

Second, institutions matter because they guarantee, in the eternal words of the French political philosopher Baron de Montesquieu, “a government of laws and not of men”. They do so, or ought to do so, by checking despotism or the untrammeled power of the sovereign or the political head of government, and by ensuring that the rule of law prevails in a society. The modern state is made up, in reality, of a series of institutions beginning with the various arms of government – the executive, the legislature and the judiciary. Institutions then, are the difference between a government of laws and, say the famous quote ascribed to another Frenchman, Louis XIV, the absolute monarch of France between 1643 and 175 who quipped: “l’etatc’estmoi” (“I am the state”).

Third, institutions are essential for sustainable economic growth, economic development, and economic transformation. Both economic theory and practice and, as we will see shortly, world history, show us that institutions are essential for economic progress. Virtually every nation today operates a capitalist economy in some form or the other. Under the classic theory of capitalism developed by the political economist and moral philosopher Adam Smith in his famous book The Wealth of Nations, property rights and free markets create the wealth of nations. This process can’t happen effectively if there are no institutions that protect these rights and regulate the market effectively.

The point here is that Nigeria and many other developing nations in Africa are poor, unable as yet to obtain the benefits of broad-based, inclusive economic growth from capitalist economics because they are yet to understand what makes capitalists economies successful. Creating and strengthening the institutions that underpin efficient markets is a necessary step to development. Where such institutions exist in Nigeria, they are often weak and immature.

The three essential ingredients for successful capitalist economies are: property rights, innovation, and capital. None of these are optimally available in Nigeria. Property rights in particular are weak. The Land Use Act vests ownership of land to the state. Citizens can only “occupy” land with a Certificate of Occupancy. Innovation is not driving our economy because the institutional framework for intellectual property is unable to create real incentives to spur innovation. Capital is not generated at an adequate scale owing to institutional weaknesses in the efficient and effective taxation of citizens and the absence of institutional guarantees of a social contract, such as social security.

Fourth, institutions matter because they protect democracy. How real, for example, is a “democracy” in which the impartiality or effectiveness of the electoral umpire is questionable? All the processes of democracy, from voter registration to voting logistics to the integrity of the vote count require strong institutions such as electoral commissions and the judiciary. The case of the 2017 presidential elections in Kenya, where the country’s Supreme Court took the unprecedented step of annulling the results of an election in which an incumbent president was declared the winner, is instructive. President Kenyatta, presumably miffed at the seeming affront of the judicial decision to his powers and his office, reportedly described the decision as a “problem” that needed to be solved.

Institutions are the foundations of modern statehood, the conceptual basis of the modern state

The Evolution of Institutions: Lessons from English History

The institutions of the modern state are a relatively recent phenomenon. They go back only 300-400 years. Before this period, the divine right of kings held sway. This was so in the Western world, and in Africa before most African countries were colonised by western powers.

As Daron Acemoglu and James explain in their seminal book Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty, the secret of the present day wealth of the western powers lies in the evolution of inclusive institutions that, over time, checked the absolutist powers of European monarchs, created a more level playing field, and led to the Industrial Revolution. Acemoglu and Robinson also demonstrated how the European nations that underwent the process first, in particular England, became established global economic powers while European countries in which the process was delayed, such as Spain, did not attain the same economic heights as England.
But as global history also teaches us, strong economic institutions can only gain ground if they are preceded by strong political institutions. This makes sense. The strengthening of economic institutions is first of all a political act which requires political will, for by doing so the political authority decreases the scope for autocratic interventions in the economic realm and increases the likelihood of a level playing field for economic actors, more rational economic policy, and ultimately increased national wealth.

English history from the 13th to the 17th century was marked by intense political conflict between the monarchy and its subjects, and between different factions of the society fighting for power and advantage. The first important development was when in 1215 the barons – the layer of aristocracy beneath the king – pressured King John into signing the Magna Carta (Great Charter). The charter limited the king’s authority to impose taxes by requiring him to consult with the barons before he could do so, and set up a council of the barons to ensure compliance. King John eventually got the Pope to annul the Magna Carta, but its influence remained. This was the first limitation on the king’s absolute authority.
The second constraint was the establishment of the first elected parliament in England in 1265. This development empowered a broad class of people. Subsequently, conflict between citizens and the monarchy’s absolute power continued, marked most significantly by the Peasant Revolt of 1381. As these conflicts continued, the monarchy sought to cling to its despotic power. But social change was redistributing the balance of power across the society. In 1623 Parliament passed the Statute of Monopolies which curtailed King James I’s power to create domestic monopolies in favour of his cronies

In 1642, King Charles and Parliament fought a civil war. Those whom the Crown had favored with lucrative monopolies supported the monarchy. The parliamentarians, under the leadership of Oliver Cromwell, defeated the monarchy and tried and executed Charles in 1649. They abolished the monarchy, although it was restored in 1660. Charles’ brother James II ascended the throne and attempted to restore absolutist rule. This led to another civil war and the Glorious Revolution in which Parliament not only defeated the Crown, but brought William of Orange from Holland to lead their forces. William defeated King James’ army and became the new king. A new constitution and the Declaration of Rights followed in 1689. From 1688 authority in England effectively shifted from the monarchy to the parliament.
Parliament reformed taxation in a manner that encouraged manufacturing, and also began to reform financial markets. The Bank of England, the central bank, was created in 1694. This development stimulated a financial revolution that made loans more easily available to anyone who provide the required collateral. An economic and the Industrial Revolution followed.

The Development and Retrogression of Nigerian Institutions

After the era of military rule from 1984 to 1999, the restoration of democracy in 1999 brought with it an effort to establish or strengthen institutions. These institutions where seen as essential for a modern economy and the rule of law. This focus on establishing or strengthening institutions took place largely under the presidency of Olusegun Obasanjo from 1999 to 2000. His government established the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission (ICPC), the Pension Commission, and the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) which handles the privatisation and commercialisation of state-owned companies. These institutions were all created by legislation adopted by the National Assembly, which gave them a solid basis in public policy.

Although the track record of these institutions has been mixed, their existence has established an institutional foundation on which our country can build, with better governance, to make them more effective. The Pension Commission has been effective in discharging its mandate of regulating funds and creating a reformed pension industry. Despite much loud controversy, the two anti-corruption agencies – the EFCC and the ICPC – have not made the impact in our society that was hoped for when they were created. An absence of political will and the use of these bodies, especially the EFCC, as instruments of vendetta against political opponents by successive governments has weekend their effectiveness and legitimacy.

Today in Nigeria all national institutions have been progressively weakened because political leaders have increasingly deployed them for partisan political ends. In other words, these institutions are not independent as they should be. They also are frequently underfunded.
The Central Bank of Nigeria and the judiciary are two of our most important national institutions. They both happen to be in bad shape today. Although the CBN has existed since 1958, it was revamped and strengthened with a new law, the CBN Act of 2007, that made the Bank a powerful, independent institution as required by modern and ambitious economic management. The new law explicitly stated that the Bank would be independent in the performance of its functions. My understanding of this provision is that the CBN should be independent of the government’s political interests (say, in low interest rates when economic conditions require a rational response of higher interest rates to fight inflation), or the vested interests of private-sector players and the financial markets.

But in the years since 2014 the Bank has increasingly become politicised. After falling oil prices put downward pressure on the exchange rate value of the naira, the Bank appeared to take its cues from political considerations. President Muhammad Buhari aired his (populist, but necessarily economically rational) opinions on forex policy in a manner that suggested that he expected CBN policy to tow his line. The Bank did. But this led to loss of confidence in Nigeria’s economy by foreign investors, and a sharp decline in foreign direct investment into our country. Foreign exchange scarcity followed the central bank’s attempts to maintain an artificial value for the naira as surely as night follows day, when market fundamentals dictated a different course of action.

The Bank’s politically-induced policy stance directly fostered massive corruption in the forex market. This was strange to see in a government that came to power by criticising the corruption that was rife in the previous one. Anecdotal evidence pointed to persons close to the government in power at the time as the chief beneficiaries of this scam of obtaining dollars at subsidised rates and selling them on the parallel market for handsome profits. Double standards?
Manufacturers who could not get an adequate supply of dollars laid off workers and reduced production. Productivity declined sharply. The worst recession in a quarter-century followed. This was a very real example of how nations are impoverished when its institutions are weak – or, as in this case, become weakened.

The judiciary in Nigeria has also been severely weakened by the corrosive influence of partisan politics and by the self-inflicted blows of widespread corruption in the institution. Judges play a key role in society. They are not and should not be politicians. The Nigerian judiciary once was an elite club of men and women of unmistakable distinction. Today, this is not the perception we have of our judges, broadly speaking.
Judicial appointments require the character attributes of independence and impartiality. A judge should be intellectually competent. He should have an understanding of a judge’s role in the broad sweep of history. The Nigerian judiciary actually has the scope to be the most independent institution in our country. Appointments of judges go through a process largely controlled from within the legal profession itself. The appointive role of the president or the governor of a state is at the very last stage. These political leaders can only appoint persons recommended by the national or state judicial councils as judges.

But the Nigerian judiciary dealt itself a body blow when corruption began to fester among the men and women of the wig and the robe. The widespread perception in our country today is that “justice” can be bought and sold. This led to a controversial midnight rate on the residences of Supreme Court judges by state security agents that brought the Bench to the lowest repute it had ever been held in Nigeria.
Having sunk to its nadir, our once-outstanding judiciary has nowhere to go but up. The appointment of Justice Walter Onnoghen, a respected Supreme Court Justice as the Chief Justice of Nigeria raised hopes of a judicial institutional rebound. But even that appointment almost did not happen, precisely because it became the subject of sordid politics when it was delayed beyond decency in what was interpreted as a transparent attempt to side-step Onnoghen because his ethnic origins were deemed inconvenient for certain vested interests.
A Vision of Nigeria’s Institutions
My vision of Nigeria’s institutions is one in which institutional appointments are done on the basis of professional competence and character, and the line between politics and professional stewardship of these institutions is clear.
First, members of political parties may be non-executive members of boards of directors of public institutions (with the strong exception of sensitive institutions such as the CBN) but must never be appointed the chief executives of public institutions. The outcome of such politicised appointments, which has become increasingly prevalent, is that the institution is steered to achieve partisan political ends and loses the independence that is essential for its performance.

Second, the principles of corporate governance must guide the governance and operations of public corporations. The extreme politicisation of appointments into public institutions in Nigeria has led directly to bad governance, as these institutions are unable to achieve their mandates.

The three essential ingredients for successful capitalist economies are: property rights, innovation, and capital. None of these are optimally available in Nigeria.

But as global history also teaches us, strong economic institutions can only gain ground if they are preceded by strong political institutions.

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has long been a prime example of how the absence of corporate governance leads to institutional decay and ineffectiveness. This is why the NNPC must be partially privatised (with well-thought provisions to protect the interests of host communities in the oil-producing states of its operations) if it is ever to run as an efficient corporation.
Finally, the privatisation and commercialisation of relevant public corporations must be done in a transparent and professional process. This will avoid cronyism and increase confidence in public sector institutional management in Nigeria.
Institutions matter. We ignore their importance at our national peril.

Today in Nigeria all national institutions have been progressively weakened because political leaders have increasingly deployed them for partisan political ends. In other words, these institutions are not independent as they should be. They also are frequently underfunded.

HOW TO (REALLY) FIGHT CORRUPTION

THERE IS NO DEBATE ABOUT WHY OR HOW CORRUPTION HAS STALLED NIGERIA’S DEVELOPMENT. BUT, THE MORE WE SCREAM about corruption, the worse it appears to have got in the past five decades. Any thinking person should be curious, very curious indeed, about this reality. For it means, simply, that making a song and dance about fighting corruption is not the same thing as fighting corruption effectively.
We as Nigerians, and our leaders, must get real about combating corruption. This means that we must first go beyond lip service to actually fighting corruption. Second, we must quit making corruption a political football that is tossed around as blame game between political parties or successor and predecessor governments and confront corruption as a crime and as a common enemy of Nigeria’s development.
Corruption takes place in multidimensional ways. Its root causes are (a) human nature (b) a collapse of value systems that has caused the phenomenon to move from the periphery to becoming a way of life, and (c) a failure of the rule of law. Fighting corruption effectively therefore requires a multi-pronged approach beyond one centered on the work of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). That is a narrow – and, so far, relatively ineffectual – approach to fighting corruption.

I believe that corruption in Nigeria can only be confronted and tamed through a combination of (a) value-system education and re-orientation (b) moral and ethical leadership by example (c) plugging systemic loopholes; (d) Accountability; and (e) reform of public service pay and the institution of social safety nets.

Values-system education and re-orientation

We must reset the value systems of Nigerian society from the materialistic get-rich quick culture that has taken root over the past 40 years back to one in which hard work, character and delayed gratification are restored.
This requires a combination of leadership at the political level and inculcating such values in our educational system. Who does a national or state political leadership honour and validate by association? Who gets national honours and/or awards? It matters who political leaders validate.

If, say a president is known to prefer the company of men and who are materially wealthy (which is not a bad thing in and of itself) but whose wealth is of doubtful provenance as opposed to a verifiable track record of hard work, this sends a subtle message across the spectrum of society that it doesn’t matter how you get rich. Just make money, however you do it, and you can become a Friend of the President (FOP) because you are rich. Corruption is thus validated. If a political system honours and rewards outstanding teachers, professors, inventors and literary grants consistently, a message goes forth that ideas matter. It becomes ‘cool’ to channel energy in such endeavours because they are respected and rewarded.

We must reform our educational system to prioritise the importance of values by inculcating the ethics of what is right and wrong and the consequences of choices between such distinctions for the individual and society. Ethics should become a compulsory subject in the secondary school curriculum in Nigeria. Civic education is taught in most such schools. That subject, however, deals far more with the structure of governance than it does with the values that should guide the organisation of our country as a community or society.

Moral and Ethical Leadership

To fight corruption successfully, a national or sub-national political leader must set a personal example of moral and ethical leadership.
Leadership that either avoids discussing corruption because his or her personal lifestyle in public office or those of his or her associates in government is above their incomes, or talks the talk against corruption but does not walk the walk, will not inspire a national resolve to combat the scourge of corruption.

This does not mean that a leader should become hypocritical in a vain effort to ‘show’ that he/she is not corrupt. Leadership office requires certain protocols. We learnt a traumatic national lesson from the assassination of Gen. Murtala Mohammed in the attempted coup of 1976, because his security was inadequate.

The important ethical and moral standard a leader should set is to avoid engaging in corrupt self-enrichment. Given Nigeria’s history of political leadership and even the expectations of an increasingly ethically warped society, this is a challenge that can only be dealt with by a leader who has a resolute character and is not afraid to be different. This is why track record and antecedents should be important factors that influence who we elect into public office.

Thus, the setting of standards of ethics is one of the most important roles of leadership in a society such as ours,
with weak institutions and widespread poverty. Part of the leader’s role is to teach citizens that poverty cannot and should not justify corruption but rather should be tackled in a structural and more sustained fashion. Corruption only deepens the poverty of poor nations. Nigeria’s history is proof positive of this reality. ‘Spreading wealth’ from the proceeds of corruption has not increased our GDP per capita from the abysmal figure of an average of $1646 since Nigeria’s independence in 1960!

Plugging Systemic loopholes

Taking a forward-looking approach to fighting corruption matters. Plugging the loopholes for official corruption in Nigeria will be one of the most important ways to do so. The two most important avenues of official corruption in Nigeria are ‘budget-padding and contract inflation. Given the perverse incentives that are already built into public sector governance in Nigeria for inserting unnecessary, inflated or repetitive line items in federal or state budgets, I recommend that the President and State Governors subject budgets to a professional audit by independent accounting firms before submission to national or state legislatures.

Even if the political will existed and this were to happen, how does an executive branch of government deal with legislators who go beyond reviewing and approving budgets to inserting expenditure line items in the budget as has frequently happened in the National Assembly in respect of the annual budgets of the federal governments? This practice is very arguably unconstitutional. It contradicts the principle of the separation of powers in a constitutional democracy because budget preparation is a constitutional function of the executive branch, while an appropriation (legal authority to spend) is a legislative one.

A parliament may reduce a budget but may not increase it beyond what the executive branch has submitted for approval. This perversion does not happen in any serious democracy. There is only one solution I recommend for this anomaly that is itself a form of corruption. The Federal Government of Nigeria should ask the Supreme Court of Nigeria to rule on whether or not it is lawful and constitutionally appropriate for the National assembly to increase the federal budget by inserting line items by and for itself. As with most aspects of Nigeria’s failed political leadership, however, the political will on the part of the FGN to do so clearly is absent. The stupendous corruption of and in Nigeria’s budget process is a core aspect of bad government.

The massive inflation of government contracts can be eliminated in a number of ways. One is to improve the implementation of the Public Procurement Act by increasing transparency around the market prices of items that form part of, say, construction contracts. The introduction of e-governance processes would help. To illustrate, an updated electronic record of the current range of relevant market prices should be maintained by government ministries, departments and Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs). These prices should serve as a benchmark, against which bids for contracts by firms should be evaluated, with appropriate allowance made for ‘mark-ups’ for profit up to but not exceeding 20 percent.

To fight corruption successfully, a national or sub-national political leader must set a personal example of moral and ethical leadership.

Beyond this approach, risk and project management must be introduced for major contracts in Nigeria. This will ensure that contracts are executed to required standards of performance, on time and within budget. I recommend the engagement of professional project management firms to supervise the execution of all major contract awards in federal and state government. If properly done, this will reduce corruption in the Nigerian public sector dramatically. The savings that will be accrued from this approach will dwarf the costs of engaging such firms.

Accountability

Accountability for proven acts of corruption is easier said than done. The institutions to hold corrupt persons to account in our country are inadequate and ineffective. There is a singular focus on the EFCC but not enough on the police and the judiciary. The principal draw back to the EFCC’s effectiveness is that the commission is not truly independent. The EFCC has been politicised by successive administrations, which tend to focus the commission’s investigations almost exclusively against opposition politicians. This trend has worsened in recent years and prevents real progress in the fight against corruption. Additionally, few cases of corruption are never truly finalised and resolved in Nigeria. This points to a lack of political will at the highest leadership levels.

Accountability for corruption will not deter corruption if the process lacks legitimacy. Legitimacy can only come from independent institutions and processes. As transparency, impartiality and effectiveness are not evident in the fight against corruption in our country today, the absence of these requirements led to criticism of the Muhammadu Buhari administration, for example, of fighting corruption ‘with insecticides’ against opposition politicians and with ‘deodorants’ when it comes to allegations against officials of its own government and members of the ruling party.

This absence of political will to punish loyalists who are perpetrators of corruption is a betrayal of public trust. Clearly, both the Buhari and Goodluck Jonathan administrations have been ineffective in establishing accountability for corruption because, as with everything else in Nigeria, partisan politics and vested interests come first. In South Africa and South Korea, we have seen sitting presidents indicted and called to account for allegations against corruption. This is possible because the relevant institutions are independent.
Addressing these failures requires a far more preventive than reactive approach. It also calls for strengthening the relevant institutions. To begin with, the EFCC Act of 2003 needs to be amended in a number of ways. Why must the chairman of the EFCC be a member of the Nigerian Police Force? This is a limiting provision. The head of the Commission should be someone with relevant experience. The individual could be a serving or retired judge, a lawyer, or a member of any of the security services.

Second, the EFCC and the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission (ICPC) need to be merged into one institution to avoid duplicating and overlapping mandates, as well as confusing the minds of Nigerian citizens about the nature and scope of the anti-corruption architecture. Third, control and supervision of the EFCC by the President and the Presidency must be terminated. The commission cannot truly be independent and trusted by Nigerians until this change is made. Nigeria needs to have the machinery elevated to something akin to the Public Protector in South Africa, where a sitting president, Jacob Zuma, was indicted with approximately 800 counts of corruption charges he was destined to answer upon leaving office! Such a scenario would be impossible to imagine in today’s Nigeria. If that is the case, as it surely, is, accountability for corruption is fate that can only befall lesser mortals in our country.

Accountability for corruption will not deter corruption if the process lacks legitimacy.


Public Service Remuneration and Safety Nets

Low remuneration and a fear of penury in retirement is a major driver of corruption in Nigeria’s public sector. This factor must be addressed if corruption is to be fought effectively. I recommend far more adequate pay for members of the Nigerian Police Force and the Civil Service if we are to remove the incentives to corruption. But this must be accompanied by wider public service reform that streamlines our excessively bloated public sector if the approach is to be sustainable. In Singapore, for example, the civil service attracts the best and the brightest and pays well. In Nigeria, with the exception of a few public sector institutions such as the Central Bank of Nigeria, which was traditionally a repository of human capital, the private sector is far more attractive to labour than the public sector.

The Vision, Overall

We need a paradigm shift in combating corruption in Nigeria. The approach must be one that completely re-evaluates the problem and its causes by understanding that, first, corruption is in the human nature of sin and imperfection and that it can be minimised to the extent of becoming the exception and not the norm if we enthrone accountability and combat poverty in our country at a far more fundamental level than we have done.

Corruption cannot be eradicated completely but our systems must be truly reformed and empowered to hold to account anyone who chooses to indulge in acts of corruption. We must move away from fighting the symptom of corruption while ignoring the real causes – the absence of a national worldview with a value system, an absence of political will to be impartial and the failure to wage a decisive war against poverty.
We as Nigerians, and our leaders, must get real about combating corruption. This means that we must first go beyond lip service to actually fighting corruption. Second, we must quit making corruption a political football that is tossed around as blame game between political parties or successor and predecessor governments and confront corruption as a crime and as a common enemy of Nigeria’s development.

HISTORY: THE GREAT NATION-BUILDER

WE ARE HELD CAPTIVE BY OUR HISTORICAL PAST, YET WE DISDAIN HISTORY SO MUCH, OR ARE SO AFRAID OF ITS TRUTHS, THAT IT was removed from the national curriculum. We need to confront our history and use it as a basis to create a new tomorrow for our country.
History is important as a keeping of record. But its most important function for a country is to let us know where we are coming from. Drawing on the lessons learned in that journey, we are guided as to where we should be going.

For this reason, the progress of all great nations has been driven largely by a sense of history. China has risen to global dominance in the past 40 years because the country is keenly aware of its historical glory as the ancient Middle Kingdom at a time in history when the western countries were relatively backward. The Chinese were later defeated by Britain in the Opium Wars of the 19th century and had to cede Hong Kong to the British. Britain had a two-century reign as an imperial global power. For the Chinese, the humiliation of this era of their history rankled. They were determined to reclaim their place in the world. Today, China rivals the United States in global dominance and has long overtaken Britain.

Japan, also an imperial power at the time, attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii in the United States on December 7, 1941. This event dragged the US into World War II. All Americans know President Franklin Roosevelt’s reaction to the attack with the famous words, ‘This day will live in infamy’. The Pearl Harbor attack united America as a nation like never before. Japan, its imperial power was decisively defeated when the Americans dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, became a pacifist country after World War II. Memorial Day is a major public holiday in America, celebrated in memory of the country’s fallen soldiers. History as nation-building.
More recently, history came full circle when Barack Obama became the first black President of the US. That has not turned America into a ‘post-racial’ society, but it was a moment that symbolised the country’s possibilities as a nation.

History can be uncomfortable. Relations between Japan on the one hand and China and South Korea, on the other, are tense because of history. The Japanese imperial army invaded China twice in the first half of the 20th century, massacred 600,000 Chinese and raped another 20,000 Chinese women in the famous Rape of Nanking. During Japan’s harsh colonial rule of Korea between 1910 and 1945, the Japanese imperial army’s extensive use of Korean ‘comfort women’ as sex slaves has left relations between Japan and South Korea deeply ambivalent despite a formal apology by Japan decades afterwards. Inside Japan itself, the country finds it difficult to confront its history and the war crimes it committed.

Then there is the mother of all uncomfortable histories, the Holocaust of six million Jews by Nazi Germany during World War II.
Back home in Nigeria, we are yet to come to terms with our history. The consequence of this is that Nigerians are hood-winked with narrow and incomplete interpretations of history in the service of vested interest that keeps us divided as a people, prevents us from building a united nation, and keeps incompetent politicians in power.

The four most important points in our national history in this context are (a) the Amalgamation of the Northern and Southern Protectorates in 1914, (b) the 1951 regional elections in Ibadan (in the Western region), (c) the January 1966 coup d’état, and (d) the Nigerian civil war of 1967-1970. These four events and their consequences have held us captive and prevented us from moving forward because they have been interpreted in ways that have weakened national unity and influenced the selection of subsequent leaders in our country at the national level.
The nation-building responses to these events, from my own perspective, should be as follows: Yes, the Amalgamation was done for the economic interests of the British colonial masters, but this does not mean that Nigeria cannot successfully become a nation if we chose to keep going forward.

The January 1966 coup was a tragic and unconstitutional attempt to subvert democracy by some military officers. If I were a northern Muslim, I would feel aggrieved by the killing of the Sardauna of Sokoto, Sir Ahmadu Bello and the Prime Minister, Tafawa Balewa. But we should know and remember that this was not an ‘Igbo coup’. It was an act by individual military officers that included those of Igbo and non-Igbo origin. Igbos, as a group, were not involved in planning what was an exclusively military affair, and therefore should not as a group bear responsibility for the actions of individuals acting in their individual capacities.

Besides, the coup was effectively frustrated by military officers of Igbo origin – General Aguiyi Ironsi and Col. Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu. The 1966 counter-coup was equally unfortunate, and the killing of Ironsi was also a grievous act. More importantly, the pogroms of Igbos in the North were horrendous crimes against humanity, a disproportionate response to the January coup. Igbos, especially affected families, are understandably saddened by the loss of their loved ones in such circumstances. We all need to confront these historical facts with a sense of humility and collective regret rather than chauvinism, and we need to heal and move on.

The politician Paul Unongo, said in a media interview that the act of cross-carpeting instigated by Obafami Awolowo’s Action Group that robbed Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, an Igbo, and his National Council of Nigerians and the Cameroons (NCNC) party of the latter’s victory in the parliamentary election in Ibadan in 1951 to become the Premier of the Western Region, was what introduced tribalism into Nigerian politics.

Certainly, this political crisis aggravated tribal consciousness. But did it create it? I think the British had already structured and managed Nigeria in a manner that made ethnic and religious differences very pronounced, but perhaps not yet enough to stop the cross-ethnic appeal of the savvy and nationalistic Zik or the popular Fulani man Umaru Altine, who won elections twice as the Mayor of Enugu in the 1950s. It is true, that some British colonial contraptions that cobbled some countries together later failed. Examples include Sudan. But some have also survived. These include Nigeria. But ‘survival’ is not good enough. We must build and grow as a nation, and it requires political leadership that can turn history into a nation-building tool because such a leadership will not have any ‘hidden agenda’ – the bane of politics in Nigeria.
And then there was the civil war. There are conflicting interpretations of what led to the war, but it is clear that a combination of the pogroms of the Igbos in the north and the failure of the Aburi Accord were two main reasons. But the war happened, millions perished. Fifty years later, Biafran secessionist groups gained ascendance. This is a nation-building failure. Because that and other agitations throughout our land are simply, at their most basic, a cry for justice.

There can be no peace without justice. Our response should be a constitutional restructuring and a greater focus on equity and inclusive governance that both address the genuine concerns of groups that feel marginalised.
We must confront our history, but utilise it as a tool to build our future and not as a divisive wedge. History should and must be taught in schools, else we are building a country based on a lack of knowledge that is important for nation-building. The most important mindset, however, is to approach history as a series of lessons learnt, and to believe that our future can be bigger and better than yesterday.

These histories happened, but they must not become destiny. They cannot be. My personal life and experience bears this out to me. My first job was given to me by a man from Akwa Ibom State, Ray Ekpu of Newswatch in the late 1980s. I went abroad for post-graduate studies in a prestigious university in the US with a scholarship that a great Yoruba man and former Foreign Minister, Prof. Bolaji Akinyemi, personally intervened to help me secure. I was appointed deputy governor of the Nigerian central bank in 2009 on the recommendation of Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, now the Emir of Kano. The last time I checked, he is not an Igbo man.

We should be careful not to let the mistakes of our history blind us to the possibility that we can build a nation more united and prosperous than we have today. What it takes is leadership and a determined citizenry. Especially leadership that truly understands why history matters, but not in the ways we often misguidedly think.

...survival is not good enough, we must build and grow as a nation, it requires political leadership that can turn history into a nation-building tool.

90 MILLION WOMEN: MISSING RIBS

WOMEN MAKE UP HALF OF THE WORLD’S POPULATION AND, AT 49 PER CENT, NEARLY HALF OF NIGERIA’S. WOMEN MATTER. WE are born by them, raised by them and are loved by (and love) them. When we build up women we build our nation and our communities.
To unlock Nigeria’s growth potential, the voices of women should be heard and considered at the highest level of decision-making and in all spheres of society. Yet, nothing that mattered so much has been as unrequited as women in Nigeria have been.
As is the case across the world in both developed and developing countries, women remain unequal with men. The problem is global, with roots in history, culture and religion. How unequal women are in any country is only a matter of degree. In the words of Nelson Mandela:
It is important that government structures understand that true freedom and prosperity cannot be achieved unless...we see in visible and practical terms that the condition of women in our country has radically changed for the better, and that they have been empowered in all spheres of life as equal.

There are five major areas in which women in Nigeria have lived with inequality: access to education for young girls, access to finance, women’s marital protection rights, violence against women, and the poor ratios of women representation in political and corporate leadership in Nigeria.

It’s not that Nigerian governments have done absolutely nothing to correct the situation. But they have not, in truth, done enough as a matter of law and, even more important, focused policy. The result is that there is still a lot of tokenism towards women and they remain highly unequal in Nigerian society. It’s time to mainstream gender equality and make it a way of life in our country.

To unlock Nigeria’s growth potential, the voices of women should be heard and considered at the highest levels of decision-making and in all spheres of society.

Nigerian governments have established the National Center for Women Development in Abuja and similar centers in our 36 states, adopted laws protecting the rights of widows in several states such as Enugu (2001), Oyo (2002), Ekiti (2002), Anambra (2004) and Edo (2004). Anambra and Imo States passed the Gender and Equal Opportunities Law of 2007 providing affirmative action measures to redress under-representation of women in appointive or elective positions, and prohibiting discrimination in education and employment. But these laws are still not well or fully implemented.

But the defeat of the Gender Equality Bill in our National Assembly in 2016, by both Christian and Muslim legislators largely on grounds of religion, said it all: our women have been condemned to inequality and discrimination by our political leadership class. We are one of the most backward countries on earth when it comes to how we treat our women in social, community and public life. The World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Report for 2017 ranked Nigeria 122 out of 144 countries in its Gender Gap Index that measures how unequal women are in four thematic areas: Economic Participation and Opportunity, Educational Attainment, Health and Survival, and Political Empowerment.

Issue 1: Access to Education

Educating young people is the best way to break the cycles of inter-generational poverty. Nigeria has the world’s highest rate of out-of-school children with a figure of nearly 15 million. Females are 5.5 million of these children, again making Nigeria the country with the highest number of females out of school. The problem is particularly acute in the Northern states, with the North-Central and North-West regions having the lowest numbers. According to UNICEF, as few as 20 per cent of women in the North-West and North-East regions of Nigeria are literate and have attended school Educating girls brings many benefits. Educated girls empowered with skills are more likely to have decent incomes, less likely to become child-brides, and are able to participate effectively in the society because they have more self-confidence. Girls education helps cut down maternal mortality rates, and the children of educated women frequently also go to school, which helps reduce poverty across generations.

There are many barriers to the education of women in Nigeria. The most important are culture and poverty. Both root causes reinforce each other. Because debilitating cultural habits favour boys over girls in the wrong belief that women do not need education to perform the tasks of childbirth, child rearing and home-making, poverty becomes entrenched because the society is not broadly productive across genders. This poverty in turn acts as an incentive or excuse to keep girls out of school because scarce resources lead families to make education choices in favour of boys. Even then, millions of boys remain out of school, so the problem goes beyond gender discrimination. In addition, most schools lack adequate facilities for quality education such as classrooms, educational equipment, water, health and sanitation.

Recommendations

The federal and state governments in Nigeria must make primary and secondary education mandatory. Incentives should also be trotted out to facilitate compliance. An example of such incentives could be a kind of household subsidy to families below the poverty line who comply with laws and policies to ensure the education of girls.
Beyond incentives, it is vital to engage traditional rulers and other custodians of culture in our country on why it is the broader interest of the society for girls to go to school. This dialogue must be structured and consistent, and its outcomes made measurable to ensure it actually yields progress on the education of women.
Third, it is essential for state governments in Nigeria, in particular in the northern part of our country, to mount strong and effective sensitive campaigns on the benefits of girls’ education through traditional and social media channels.

Issue 2: Lack of Financial Access

According to Women’s World Banking, an international non-profit organisation, 77 per cent of Nigerian women do not have access to financial services. This is a staggering figure. It means that only about 23 per cent of women in Nigeria have access to finance. It also presents a huge strategic opportunity for inclusive economic growth through financial inclusion of women. Women engage in the kind of broad-based small and micro businesses that, if well- funded, could give a remarkable boost to economic growth.
The Central Bank of Nigeria has identified key barriers to women’s access to finance as including lack of ownership of collateral because tradition seldom cedes property rights to women, as well as the absence of credit histories since most women-owned businesses are informally organised. Beyond these factors, most women lack income and are financially dependent on men, in rural areas they often lack physical access to financial services, and are hobbled by low levels of financial literacy – part of a wider problem of low levels of education in general. Of marked importance, interest rates in Nigeria are very high, at an average of 17-20 per cent as of 2018.

Beyond incentives, it is vital to engage traditional rulers and other custodians of culture in our country on why it is the broader interest of the society for girls to go to school.

Women’s lack of access to finance in Nigeria is a paradox because evidence suggests that women make better financial borrowers than men. They utilise resources more frugally and responsibly, and are more faithful in repaying credit facilities.
Improving financial support for women would markedly increase the numbers of women venturing into new businesses, which in turn will foster economic activity and productivity, and create new jobs. Financial freedom is a precursor to gender equality and, in turn, will help assure social security. Women make up a formidable demographic force, and mother the youth that is the next generation. Their well-being has important implications for our society at large. Empowering women, in particular financially, is a critical challenge.

Recommendations

• The Central Bank of Nigeria should create an enabling policy environment for the establishment of women’s banks by the private sector, that can provide funding to women to start their own businesses or grow preexisting businesses, with minimal collateral.
• Financial institutions and the government should partner to provide venture capital and private equity funding to female-owned businesses.
• Banking institutions should increase their products tailored to women’s preferences and constraints.
• The CBN should revamp its micro-finance policy, which has so far not achieved the vision that inspired the institution of microfinance banking in Nigeria, to serve mostly women and be owned mostly by women. This is why microfinance has been successful in Asia but has not succeeded in Nigeria: the concept was predominantly female-oriented, while in Nigeria microfinance has been erroneously operated as mini-commercial banks.
• Financial inclusion policy, training and advocacy in Nigeria should be more specifically focused on women in order to bridge the gender gap and also improve access to finance more broadly. Failure to take this approach is why Nigeria has remained far from meeting its goal of reducing financial exclusion by 80 per cent by 2020, to which the CBN committed Nigeria in the global Alliance for Financial Inclusion.

Issue 3: Marital Protection Rights

Many married women today ask themselves this question: “what happens if my spouse dies or divorces me?” Many married women are not financially independent and depend solely on their husbands to survive. They have no access to their husbands’ financial resources through, for example, joint banking accounts.

Matrimonial laws ought to be fortified to provide substantive rights to women in the event of divorce or death of their male spouse. The opaque and porous state of existing family protections has effectively left women second- class citizens in contravention of the Nigerian constitution. For example, Nigeria ratified Article 7 of the Protocol to the Charter on Human and Peoples Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa. The protocol provides for both parties in a marriage to enjoy equal rights within and after the marriage in issues of custody and access to an equitable share of the joint property deriving from the marriage, but this has not become the case in reality.
Three forms of marriages are recognised in Nigeria – Customary, Islamic and Christianity. The reality of women married under Customary and Islamic law has not yet been affected by the protocol. A woman married under customary law is entitled to be provided with a home by her husband as long as the marriage subsists. She is also entitled to use her husband’s property but cannot dispose of it as her own. The right to be provided with a house by her husband terminates upon divorce. Upon divorce, a woman married under customary law has no claim over a house jointly owned with her husband. Her position is not helped by the provisions of the Matrimonial Causes Act in respect of maintenance and settlement of property, which expressly excludes the application of its provisions to marriages under customary and Islamic law. However, in the case of women married under the Act, where she can produce documents showing she made a contribution to the property, she is entitled to the part of the property commensurate to her contribution. Despite this, several ills against women persist. Many women are denied custody and access to their children upon divorce and child marriage is still prevalent under Islamic law.

Recommendations:

• State Governors should convene a policy-oriented dialogue with traditional rulers, who are the custodians of culture, to build consensus around reforms to traditional and cultural practices that deny women their rights in marriages. Resistance to efforts at women empowerment frequently comes from traditional institutions which believe they are defending culture or religions with conservative interpretations of the place of women – who are indeed different from men and have unique roles in nature and family life, but are not inferior to men. We cannot therefore make progress in the fight against gender discrimination without the active collaboration of traditional rulers and religious authorities in our country. Governments and gender-focused organisations should organise and hold seminars for men and women on women’s marital rights.
• Policies that protect the rights of women during a divorce settlement or death of spouse based on cultural/family dynamics and traditions should be more vigorously developed and implemented, especially at the state and community levels.
Issue 4: Violence Against Women
We are all too familiar with violence against women in Nigeria. Even with the drastic measures being taken to combat these potentially fatal acts against women, thousands of reported cases have continued to occur. Any form of violence against women should be punishable by law.
Twenty-five per cent of women in Nigeria have suffered the ordeal of domestic violence. Such violence includes, in its worst forms, battering, trafficking, rape and homicide. Women, whether married or single, condone various degrees of abuse for reasons such as lack of income, the fear of losing child custody, low self-esteem, fear of stigmatisation and much more. Victims are often prevailed upon to be forgiving regardless of the ordeal they undergo daily: physical trauma, psychological torture and emotional detachment.

Recommendations

• Government agencies should join forces with other violence-focused organisations or women’s platforms to raise awareness on the issue.
• Law enforcement should be sensitised to enforce laws against violence against men who physically abuse any woman. This element of deterrence needs to be robustly administered if a culture shift is to take place away from violence against women. Gender based violence against women occurs less frequently in Western countries because men understand that it is taken seriously.
• More influential Nigerian men should join and spearhead the fight against violence against women. Men must become part of the solution, and not much will change if the mindsets of men are not reformed.
• Medical practitioners should be mandated to report every suspected case of violence to law enforcement authorities.
• Government and non-governmental organisations should provide homes or shelters for abused victims.
• Educational programs on prevention of domestic violence must be stepped up to confront a pervasive cultural and deeply rooted problem for our society.

Issue 5: Low Female Representation in Leadership

Women experience inequality in their everyday lives, from their career choices to the workplace, from relationships/marriage to their finances and the amount they are “allowed” to earn as women. Government, employers of labour, organisations and schools need to provide more opportunities for women to fill leadership positions. A more balanced gender mix in these establishments will go a long way in removing the unconscious bias and stereotypes that currently exist against women. We need more women in positions of authority and power to inspire and change behaviors.
Women, whether married or single, condone various degrees of abuse for reasons such as lack of income, the fear of losing child custody, low self-esteem, fear of stigmatization and much more.
Women are often absent or have low numbers in leadership positions in public life and corporate boardrooms in Nigeria. The situation in Nigeria’s federal elective political positions is even more pathetic in the context of gender equality: there are only seven women in our 109-member Senate, and 15 in the House of Representatives. Although Dame Virgy Etiaba served briefly as Governor of Anambra State from November 2007 to February 2008 after Governor Peter Obi was impeached by the Anambra State House of Assembly, no woman has ever been elected a state governor in Nigeria.

The problem is just as deep in the executive branch of our federal government and in most state governments. While the government of President Goodluck Jonathan pursued a target of 35 per cent of his cabinet being women, and achieved 33 per cent, the numbers of women ministers and other executive leadership roles in President Buhari’s government has sharply declined to only 14 per cent.
It is important to address this under-appreciated national crisis of gender inequality in political empowerment, as the chances of progress on gender equality will remain difficult.

Recommendations:

The solution to closing the political empowerment gender gap in Nigeria lies in the political domain. I recommend:
• A massive increase in female participation in voting in the 2019 elections; more women should register to vote and acquire a Permanent Voter Registration Card (PVC)
• Female and male voters should inflict “political punishment” on all members of the National Assembly that voted against the Gender Equality Bill by campaigning and voting for their defeat in the 2019 legislative elections.
• The election of a presidential candidate, whether a man or woman, with a clear program and track record of support and advocacy for female gender equality in Nigeria.
• The adoption by the next President of Nigeria of an aspirational policy target of 50:50 gender parity in appointments to the cabinet and other political appointments, and in no event to achieve a gender gap closure rate of less than 40 per cent of political appointees being qualified and competent women with proven track records.
• The revival and sustained implementation of the National Gender Policy adopted by the Federal Ministry of Women and Social Affairs in 2008 in consultation with state governments and international development agencies.
• The prioritisation of constitutional and human rights of women to freedom from discrimination over conservative interpretations of religion in national and state legislation, bearing in mind that Nigeria is a secular and not a theocracy.

The Vision for Women

We cannot build a new Nigeria, one that is stable and prosperous, without the central involvement and participation of one half of our national population. Our collective self-interest, including sustained and inclusive economic growth, requires an end to the marginalisation of women in Nigeria’s economic opportunities, educational attainment which has been proven to help break inter-generational poverty, maternal healthcare, and political participation.

We return to the matter of worldviews. A political leader’s worldview, whether male or female is a major influence on how such a leader approaches the matter of gender equality in society and closing gender gaps. The worldviews of candidates for President, Governors or members of legislative houses, and their personal track record on issues of gender progress, matters.
I envision a Nigeria in which our 90 million women play roles as decisive as those of men. Indeed, given the sorry track record our male career politicians in all areas our national life, we must encourage the more active participation of women in our national democracy as voters and candidates.

In my vision, men must become more involved in the quest to end discrimination against women, considering how much my own gender has been part of the problem historically. The point is that women alone cannot solve the problem. Men too must stand to be counted in the quest to end this centuries-old scourge.
We should not encourage tokenism. The quest for gender equality must pursue affirmative action without lowering standards for women while upholding higher ones for men. Tokenism does great harm to the cause of gender equality, for when unprofessional women are placed in positions that require a high degree of professionalism and leadership skill and perform badly, this creates negative stereotypes.

• I believe that God created women with an obvious uniqueness that lends them to be better than men at certain aspects of social and family life. Even in the workplace and in national life we see their strength of character and, just as one example, an ability to manage resources well. But their difference from men does NOT make women inferior. On the other hand, I am not a feminist. While I believe in equality of opportunity, I am not a supporter of bra-burning feminism that denies the very essence of womanhood that makes women special.
• We must find a balance that recognises and makes use of the difference in genders in our country, while ensuring that no gender is discriminated against in social, community or national life and in the workplace or marketplace.
I repeat, our country will not rise without our women.

Educating girls brings many benefits. Educated girls empowered with skills are more likely to have decent incomes which helps reduce poverty across generations. Less likely to become child-brides, and are able to participate effectively in the society because they have more self-confidence.

A LETTER TO OUR 60 MILLION YOUTH

I HAVE A VISION FOR OUR YOUTH – THAT YOU WILL FINALLY RISE UP AND TAKE YOUR PLACE AT THE DRIVING WHEEL ON OUR national journey into tomorrow.

“The youth of a nation are the trustees of prosperity” Benjamin Disraeli, a former Prime Minister of the UK once said.
But consider, also, the famous quip by J. Edgar Hoover, the founding Director of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), that “blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt”.

Hoover must have had Nigeria in 2018 in mind when he spoke over half a century ago. Here we are: a massive expansion of Nigeria’s indebtedness under the government of President Muhammed Buhari landed Nigeria with a debt profile of over N20 trillion. The ratio of debt to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) stood at 24.1 percent as of January 2018 and, more important, 66 percent of national revenues were spent on servicing the national debt. Nigeria may be returning to debt slavery from which it extricated itself under the Olusegun Obasanjo regime in 2004.

Nigeria’s youth appear blissfully unaware that their future may have been mortgaged. Disraeli and Hoover offer two visions of the possible implications and importance of being young.
We live today in a season of discontent. Poverty rates are higher than ever at 60 percent, and more than 30 million Nigerians, mostly young people like you, have no jobs or are underemployed. In the meantime, population growth is exploding, with the UN projecting that our population could hit 400 million by 2050 and make us the third most populous country in the world.
These 400 million will be you and your children. What will that future look like? On current trends of our leadership, governance and economic performance, not good. What is your role as youth? With 60 million estimated to be between the ages of 15 and 35, that future is in your hands. The power belongs to you, though you may or may not know it. Or maybe you do, but you don’t know how to act to change your future.
Only you, the youth of Nigeria, can change our country’s trajectory. You have the numbers, but can you rise to the challenge? The nation waits in bated breath.

Are you registered to vote in 2019? Or are you sitting around on your behind complaining into cyberspace? Are you, to use the American expression, “all throat and no voice?”
You may be on the queue of unemployment. You graduated from a university or a polytechnic, but you have no job and no hope of one. How can you change your destiny? Here’s what you need to know: only your vote can bring about a competent government that can wage a decisive war against poverty and unemployment. We need a government that is competent enough to create an economic environment that creates jobs.

The New Tribe

Perhaps you are part of the New Tribe of successful young Nigerian entrepreneurs who have made it through innovation and hard work. Not because good governance created an enabling environment but rather, in spite of the absence of real national leadership.
This New Tribe is so cool. I was with you at Red Media Africa’s The Future Awards Africa (TFAA) in Lagos in December 2017. I was thrilled as you were recognised for your achievements and took your awards home.
I identify with you, this New Tribe that is focused on innovation and the quest for excellence, you who care not about the “tribalisms” that have held back our nation’s march to progress. Rather, we, together, are a New Tribe of Nigerians who believe a new Nigeria is actually possible.

“The youth of a nation are the trustees of prosperity” – Benjamin Disraeli, former Prime Minister, UK.

I watch you on television programs such as Y Television’s “Rubbing Minds” and my heart swells with pride. I could be mistaken, at such moments, for the new Minister of Happiness and sundry types of fulfillment.
But there’s just one thing missing: you carry on with life in a bubble of prosperity like politics don’t matter. You live on an island of comfort with your latest apps, surrounded by a sea of poverty that Nigeria has become.
Only your vote can bring in the kind of leadership our country really needs. It’s only your vote, and nothing else, that can create a tomorrow in which the wealth you have today will increase while, at the same time, the rising tide lifts all boats and not just yours. We must become a nation of “we” rather than the one of “me”.

An awakening is taking place regarding youth participation in politics in Nigeria. It looks like we are now “woke”. We can only know, however, how real this awakening is after the elections in 2019. The Not Too Young to Run movement achieved a significant victory when the National Assembly enacted a bill lowering the minimum age for seeking elective offices in Nigeria.

Making the Most of the Youth Bulge

There are different paths to youth participation in politics. On one hand, we have a choice between voting participation, which is a heightened exercise of civic duty and responsibility, and thus shaping outcomes, and running for elections, which is a desire to exercise responsibility through service.
On the other hand, there is the option to participate in politics and leadership selection through informal civil society processes such as the movement that gave rise to the Arab Spring (only this time geared to democratic outcomes), versus the option of participating through formal structures such as political parties.

In the context of Nigeria, as between the first set of options, exercising civic responsibility by voting actively in elections is of greater strategic significance than young people contesting for elections, although that, too, is important. But the reason a focus on active voter participations matters more is that such an approach will give Nigerian youth more influence and a real voice in political outcomes. It will also create an enabling environment for a generational takeover of politics by the youth, leading to their own emergence as leaders with real experience. That approach will be better than contesting elections for the mere sake of youth candidacy in an environment still dominated by the adverse vice-grip of the old and established order of career politicians.

Regarding the second set of options, participating in politics though the formal structures of political parties will ultimately have greater impact than the “informal” politics of civil society. There is only one caveat to add here: Nigerian youth should form and populate new political parties rather joining the “youth wing” or “women’s wing” of dinosaur political formations. You will have no real voice in such parties, dominated as they are by the career politicians that underdeveloped our country.