Worried about this leadership merry-go-rounds
The other time when indulgees gathered at this Square Table, I made the point that there are too many dubious people in government who like to pretend that they love this country. We all agreed that the reality of the matter is that they like to deceive themselves into thinking that we don’t really see through their entire charade. For all that they bloody well care to know, it is because nobody truly loves this country, not even The Very Oga at the Very Top, that we are where we are! This is a shame, really!
It would seem to me, and very many indulgees too, that it is always ‘just another day at the office’ for many of those who parade themselves as political leaders occupying different positions that are meant to effect change in society. It is the reason why when they leave office nobody remembers them for much; and it is because nobody remembers them or talks about them for what they did while in office that they find such state of irrelevance unbearable and so continue to be political hustlers and jobbers, masquerading as powerbrokers in the desire to remain relevant.
You have heard how loquacious some of them can be, promising everything but nothing; including assurances about job creation numbers that stand logic on its head. They go all over the place attending dinners and making speeches at our expense and talk up progress when progress is not really being made. At federal, state and local government levels you will find thousands, if not millions of them, all of them happily taking care of themselves, at our expense! Otherwise, what’s the point of people being in government, telling us that they are working and we are not seeing any change occurring in our lives? What is the big deal about making sure that petroleum is refined in this country for the use of Nigerians? What is the big deal in making sure that power supply reaches a level that reduces the agonies of Nigerians? It often beats me silly just seeing how thinking and vision are often small when what’s needed is a vision with a BIG PICTURE!
Now, truth is, this might again seem like one of those unusual starter courses that indulgees get served up at this Square Table whenever the Chief Indulgee is angry and does not want to bury this with rib crackers! However, while indulgees tend to have an unbelievably large appetite to laugh at the deceit that Nigeria is being taken through by way of leadership, they sometimes find themselves facing near internal combustion as a result of what they see happening to their country. For how long do you continue to wait for your leaders to lead your country to realise its potentials? For how long do you just stand by and watch leaders, while fooling themselves, go on and on deceiving innocent citizens who expect so much but get so little? You will ask many questions but answers will elude you. What’s a revival if there are no revivalists to see it through? And why should leaders be offering us a paradise when they know in their hearts that it is only a fool’s paradise that they are capable of delivering? For how long shall they keep us in a different kind of slavery just because they are in a position to deceive their way into government and political offices? When a man has stolen or helped himself to a few billions and he has not been caught, why hang on to office when he knows in his or her heart that he cannot deliver on the task he has put himself forward to execute? Why not just let it go? Go with what you have helped yourself with, for which you have not been caught and allow those who mean well and can deliver on the people’s mandate to help Nigeria out of its nightmare!
One major concern that indulgees have always had is that it has never seemed quite clear that anybody is interested in getting this country to mount its rightful position in this world that we all live in. Leader after leader, taking the job as ‘just another day at the office’, are contented with just running a huge bureaucracy forgetting that leaders are not normally expected to just be contented with the day-to-day running of the machinery of government. Leaders are supposed to take the country to the next level in its historical journey. Or, as the case may be, lift it out of its doldrums! That is why they are expected to come with the big picture, to see far, far ahead into the future for their country. It is not a matter of the NOW and TODAY! It is a journey for which political expediency, allowing just for a two-term tenure of eight years, means that the leader sees beyond his tenure and his work can be seen in the futuristic, a positive way to see where we are likely to be going as a country and as a people! And it requires preparation… hard preparation.
Whenever indulgees have heard the word preparation, they have often questioned if this country has ever had any leader who was prepared for the office that often seemed thrust on them, hence the cluelessness in approach to governance that has permeated the system over the decades. As Chief Indulgee, I particularly feel we must begin to ask the hard questions about the state of preparedness of those who offer themselves up for public office. How on earth did a man like the late President Yar’Adua get to become the president of this country? How prepared was he? How on earth did President Obasanjo get to come out of prison (surely, never thinking of leading this country) and become president of this country, after being a one-time ‘illegal’ military head of state? How on earth did the current President Goodluck Jonathan, who was never prepared (at least there’s nothing to suggest that he had been working at it, mobilising support by doing good deed in his state, his region and across the country), get to become the vice-president and then president without any effort of proven conviction before the people? How on earth did a man like the late Sani Abacha get to become the head of state and became feared until his demise?
There are so many questions indulgees are asking at the Square Table and they all concern what people in government, who want us to believe they are working, think they are really doing. What do you all think you are really doing? Are you helping yourselves in this leadership merry-go-round? God help us!
The other time when indulgees gathered at this Square Table, I made the point that there are too many dubious people in government who like to pretend that they love this country. We all agreed that the reality of the matter is that they like to deceive themselves into thinking that we don’t really see through their entire charade. For all that they bloody well care to know, it is because nobody truly loves this country, not even The Very Oga at the Very Top, that we are where we are! This is a shame, really!
It would seem to me, and very many indulgees too, that it is always ‘just another day at the office’ for many of those who parade themselves as political leaders occupying different positions that are meant to effect change in society. It is the reason why when they leave office nobody remembers them for much; and it is because nobody remembers them or talks about them for what they did while in office that they find such state of irrelevance unbearable and so continue to be political hustlers and jobbers, masquerading as powerbrokers in the desire to remain relevant.
You have heard how loquacious some of them can be, promising everything but nothing; including assurances about job creation numbers that stand logic on its head. They go all over the place attending dinners and making speeches at our expense and talk up progress when progress is not really being made. At federal, state and local government levels you will find thousands, if not millions of them, all of them happily taking care of themselves, at our expense! Otherwise, what’s the point of people being in government, telling us that they are working and we are not seeing any change occurring in our lives? What is the big deal about making sure that petroleum is refined in this country for the use of Nigerians? What is the big deal in making sure that power supply reaches a level that reduces the agonies of Nigerians? It often beats me silly just seeing how thinking and vision are often small when what’s needed is a vision with a BIG PICTURE!
Now, truth is, this might again seem like one of those unusual starter courses that indulgees get served up at this Square Table whenever the Chief Indulgee is angry and does not want to bury this with rib crackers! However, while indulgees tend to have an unbelievably large appetite to laugh at the deceit that Nigeria is being taken through by way of leadership, they sometimes find themselves facing near internal combustion as a result of what they see happening to their country. For how long do you continue to wait for your leaders to lead your country to realise its potentials? For how long do you just stand by and watch leaders, while fooling themselves, go on and on deceiving innocent citizens who expect so much but get so little? You will ask many questions but answers will elude you. What’s a revival if there are no revivalists to see it through? And why should leaders be offering us a paradise when they know in their hearts that it is only a fool’s paradise that they are capable of delivering? For how long shall they keep us in a different kind of slavery just because they are in a position to deceive their way into government and political offices? When a man has stolen or helped himself to a few billions and he has not been caught, why hang on to office when he knows in his or her heart that he cannot deliver on the task he has put himself forward to execute? Why not just let it go? Go with what you have helped yourself with, for which you have not been caught and allow those who mean well and can deliver on the people’s mandate to help Nigeria out of its nightmare!
One major concern that indulgees have always had is that it has never seemed quite clear that anybody is interested in getting this country to mount its rightful position in this world that we all live in. Leader after leader, taking the job as ‘just another day at the office’, are contented with just running a huge bureaucracy forgetting that leaders are not normally expected to just be contented with the day-to-day running of the machinery of government. Leaders are supposed to take the country to the next level in its historical journey. Or, as the case may be, lift it out of its doldrums! That is why they are expected to come with the big picture, to see far, far ahead into the future for their country. It is not a matter of the NOW and TODAY! It is a journey for which political expediency, allowing just for a two-term tenure of eight years, means that the leader sees beyond his tenure and his work can be seen in the futuristic, a positive way to see where we are likely to be going as a country and as a people! And it requires preparation… hard preparation.
Whenever indulgees have heard the word preparation, they have often questioned if this country has ever had any leader who was prepared for the office that often seemed thrust on them, hence the cluelessness in approach to governance that has permeated the system over the decades. As Chief Indulgee, I particularly feel we must begin to ask the hard questions about the state of preparedness of those who offer themselves up for public office. How on earth did a man like the late President Yar’Adua get to become the president of this country? How prepared was he? How on earth did President Obasanjo get to come out of prison (surely, never thinking of leading this country) and become president of this country, after being a one-time ‘illegal’ military head of state? How on earth did the current President Goodluck Jonathan, who was never prepared (at least there’s nothing to suggest that he had been working at it, mobilising support by doing good deed in his state, his region and across the country), get to become the vice-president and then president without any effort of proven conviction before the people? How on earth did a man like the late Sani Abacha get to become the head of state and became feared until his demise?
There are so many questions indulgees are asking at the Square Table and they all concern what people in government, who want us to believe they are working, think they are really doing. What do you all think you are really doing? Are you helping yourselves in this leadership merry-go-round? God help us!
PHILLIP ISAKPA