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Author: Dr. Austin Yekpabo
Posted to the web: 11/29/2009 12:21:22 AM

Labyrinth of Leadership: Nigeriaâ's Peculiar Mess (penkelemesi) In Greek mythology, the Labyrinth, which is synonymous with maze in colloquial English, was an elaborate structure designed and built in Knossos by the legendary artificer Daedalus for King Minos of Crete. The „maze‟ was designed to hold the Minotaur, a creature that was half man and half bull. The creature, according to mythology, was eventually killed by the Athenian hero, Theseus. The story is that Daedalus had made the maze so complicated that he himself could barely escape it after he built it. It is also said that Theseus, to find his way to kill the Minotaur, had the help of Ariadne who provided him with a thread, literally the clue, so he could find his way out. The issue of leadership, especially leadership in the country of my birth, Nigeria, can be likened to the Labyrinth. Many years after independence from Britain, 49 years to be exact, we are still caught in the maze; still trying to figure out how to capture the Minotaur, which in our case, is not the half man half bull monster, but the ability to use our God-given human and natural resources for the good of all of our citizenry! Throughout history, countries have witnessed extraordinary leaders that allowed their economies to flourish; on the other hand, other countries have witnessed chaotic and tyrannical leaders; Nigeria is a case in point. Strangely enough, Nigeria, with its oil wealth and an educated workforce, has not lived up to its potential. Many knowledgeable and creative minds have written about leadership, and certainly, many people have attempted to define what qualities make up a good or bad leader. Although there are numerous books about leadership, there is not a set guideline about being a good leader. In this article, I will attempt to discuss how leadership has evolved in Nigeria, by presenting a historical perspective from the time that Nigeria was a colony of Britain to the present. I will also examine and evaluate past and present political leadership in Nigeria, a situation, which an erstwhile politician in Nigeria‟s first republic, Gbadamosi Adelabu Adegoke, called penkelemesi, an obvious Yorubanization of the phrase, Peculiar Mess! To understand how we got here, one must understand the unique history of Nigeria, although our unique history is not an excuse for the peculiar mess nearly 50 years after our independence from the British. Between the 1500 and 1800, much of modern Nigeria existed as kingdoms and city-states that can be identified with contemporary ethnic groups: Yoruba, Igbo, Edo, Efik, Ibibio, Kanem-Borno, Nupe, and the various Hausa city-states. Following the Napoleonic wars, and without the slave trade that had been the economic bane of the British Empire, Queen Victoria encouraged the expansion of trade into the Nigerian interior. By 1914, the areas north and south of the River Niger, which had been British Protectorates since January 1, 1901, were formally united as the Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria – Nigeria, a name that was coined by Flora Shaw, the wife of Frederick Lugard who became Nigeria‟s first governor-general. To effectively administer these two very different territories, the Islamic North and the Christian South Frederick Lugard, in what was his most famous work, 'The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa,' advocated indirect rule. In his writing, which he effectively put into practice, first in northern Nigeria and then in the south, Lugard outlined reasons and methods which helped a handful of British colonize a massive area like Nigeria. Some of his justifications included the controlled spread of Christianity into the northern part of the country, even though like the queen and parliament that he represented, Lugard considered Nigerians as a barbaric people who could not govern themselves. Realizing that there were vast profits to be made for the British government, Lugard pushed for „native‟ administration by granting „limited‟ autonomy to Obas, Emirs and Councils of Chiefs, as the case maybe or by appointing 'Warrant Chiefs' as officials to act as middle managers in the colonial governance. By so doing, the British governor-general and his lieutenants in the protectorates, which had become known as provinces, still exercised decision-making powers. They avoided revolt from the „natives‟, since they (the natives) perceived that they were being governed by the people that looked like them, spoke their languages, and shared their customs. This technique of administration by „proxy‟, using stand-ins, untrained and sometimes uneducated, hand-picked rulers to govern, which was employed successfully by the British, was the birth of mediocrity in Nigeria. While the Emirs, and sometimes the Obas were revered by their subjects, and opposition to their rule viewed as an affront to divinity, many of the 'warrant chiefs' were not always supported by the local populace. Also, not only were many of the traditional rulers, Emirs, Obas and Elders not educated, they were often not familiar with the task of governance and the complicated tax laws they were charged with enforcing. Some of the so-called administrators were very conservative, and indirect rule further fostered this conservatism, thus marginalizing the young intelligentsia – any form of dissent to British rule and domination was resisted by the indigenous population. How could true leadership have emerged in such a system? To further cement their „stranglehold‟ on the people of Nigeria, the „colonial masters‟ did very little to promote education during the colonial period. Until the early 1950s, most schools were operated by Christian missionary bodies, first the Methodists, then the Anglicans, before the Catholic Church joined them. Rather than invest in education to develop the abundant human capital in Nigeria, the British colonial government funded a few schools, with a deliberate policy of giving grants to mission schools rather than to create and/or expand its own system. With little to no involvement by the colonists in the education of the „natives‟, three fundamentally distinct systems of education emerged: the indigenous system, Quranic schools, and European-style formal institutions. Whereas the indigenous system emphasized all forms of apprenticeships in the trades, Quranic schools provided education, mostly in informal settings, while the children of the „elite‟ had the benefit of more structured learning in schools that were set up and run along European lines. These schools, found mostly in major cities, were notable in Kano; it was these schools that produced eminent Nigerians like Aminu Kano and Abubakar Tafawa Balewa. The European-style schools that developed mostly in southern Nigeria and the Middle belt produced such eminent Nigerians like Nnamdi Azikiwe, Obafemi Awolowo, Anthony Enahoro and many others, who, following the end of World War II and the end of the British Raj in India, started clamoring for Nigeria‟s independence. Even with the three distinct educational systems in colonial and post colonial Nigeria, the common thread that ran through them was that they emphasized learning by rote. The educational system inherited from the British, which has not undergone any transformation to this day, was not designed to encourage critical thinking. It is, therefore, not a surprise that Nigerian education has not been able to produce leaders for the 21st century. Instead, we have so-called leaders who have no concept of ethics and national interests. The actions of all the people that we have elected to leader us speak volumes about our concept and perceptions of leadership: 'you chop, I chop, and the country can burn.' Just like the British created, or rather encouraged and supported an educational system that was designed to serve the „master‟s‟ interests, so did the civil service that they created. Lugard and his cohort created a civil service, an off-shoot of the „proxy‟ administrative structure, which tried, unsuccessfully, to incorporate so called European style systems with the customs and values of the different regions. The disparity between the north and the south became very evident in the judicial systems – the north embraced Sharia Law while the south had a potpourri that included the customary laws of the various communities – a judicial system, again, that divided the country along regional lines. It should be noted that, like Lugard, most of the British administrators that were sent to Nigeria, indeed, to all the regions where the British claimed dominion, had previously served in the military, and most of them were graduates of the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. An oversea posting was then seen as a reward for military service and an opportunity for budding administrators to cut their teeth in the territories before more lucrative positions in England. Because these administrators had military backgrounds, it was therefore not a surprise that the one area where they helped to develop local leadership was the military; they trained Nigerians, mostly the children of the elite in Sandhurst for leadership positions in the armed forces that had its origin in the Royal West African Frontier Force. By the time Nigeria became an independent country in 1960, we had our share of Sandhurst trained military officers, who, although had not received university-level education in leadership, saw themselves as the „saviors‟ in a country where national leadership was absent. Since I do not intend to chronicle the post colonial history of Nigeria, how we fought a civil war and how our country, through bad leadership has become the object of ridicule the world over, I am merely commenting on how the leadership maze, the Labyrinth, was carefully designed and systematically constructed by the British. It is 2009, more than 100 years after the amalgamation of what we now call Nigeria, we still have a leadership vacuum; we cannot seem to navigate our way through the maze to kill, or in this case, take charge of our own destiny as a nation. Who will be our Theseus? It is very obvious that in this global economy that, especially as we, as a country have not been invited to join the comity of nations, we need the right leadership to steer the ship in the right direction. How can we develop and groom all the Ariadnes who will provide the clue for solving the problem? Don‟t get me wrong, several leaders have tried to navigate this maze, and the one thing every Nigerian agrees on, is that we are a difficult people to govern, and that we have all the answers to our problems except implement these solutions in an ethical manner. In discussing the web that the British created, I mentioned the educational system we inherited and how, to this day, this education system is not purposeful and intentional; it does not encourage critical thinking and, thus stifles creativity. I was having a casual conversation with a professional colleague about Nigeria‟s penkelemesi, and he said to me, 'Nigerians are some of the brightest people that I know. They are in every school here in America. They are in every industry and business, why can‟t they make their country a model for all of Africa?' Without knowing it, this colleague, an African-American, was echoing my sentiments. It was, at that instance that I realized that my country is going to stay on the present course until we change how we educate our future leaders, a total overhauling of our educational system. The present system, as it exists, is producing crops of entitled professionals who lack the sense of responsibility and accountability; a system that continues to produce ethical leaders who will put the country above personal and sectional interests. Of course, like everything that has a good ending, there must be commitment from the present leadership of the country, from the president down to the janitor at the local elementary school. Until we completely revamp our system and educate our children to be, first, citizens, we will, 100 years from now, be a country where we still are not able to feed all of our citizens, provide the basic amenities of water and electricity. The people to change Nigeria are not the people that were trained in the present educational system, it is the Nigerians in the Diaspora, trained in some of America‟s best institutions, who will have to return home to join in a revolution, political, social, educational and economic! I am aware that it is almost ludicrous to suggest that many of us return home, but this clarion call is not the first in human history. Many countries have had to call on their citizens to return home in times like this. I would have been the first to resist such a call, however, after two trips to Nigeria in less than 3 months I can see that our country needs us. Is anyone going to join me? Excerpt of an article submitted to a peer review journal by Dr. Austin Yekpabo, a professor of Organizational Leadership in a university in Philadelphia.