IN THE SPECTRUM OF AFRICAN LEADERSHIP: NIGERIA

Preamble

Our quest will trail the three faces of time.

Yes! You might wonder how time has come about having faces. Many people will question if time has eventually become so human as to have face or even faces. This amounts to the question of the meaning of the statement which attributes face to time. Do not think too far for things that find themselves very simple.

It probably might be the cause of my upbringing. As a growing little child, my mother told me that time has different faces. I grew up with that in mind till a time when I could think as you must be doing at the moment; what face has time got?

During the days when I was not born many events took place. Sure! I have no doubt that I have no consciousness to associate with such happenings. But one day, stories and histories will bring them to my knowledge as a piece of such. It is eventually going to form a part of my epistemic wealth. Thinking about this, I also remember that I used to read and sing the lines of stories handed us by gone occurrences or events. Some of such came as things really within our experiences of that time but not now. I could still bring such happenings and experiences alive once again by either thinking of them or calling on them through memory.

But now I am writing so that you can read this little idea. Now I am thinking what happened in the years ago. Now I am doing, acting, performing, pondering, forming and remembering. This eventually might be one of the things that define me as an organism. By organism I mean that independent unit of life, the living piece of matter or that organ with life in it. If I have life, it essentially will have great meaning only by actions that actuate effect or effects. It may be otherwise defined in terms of motion. For sure, life has got a lot to do with the doing fact. It is for this particular reason that I think, I am, I reason, I do, I behave, I act, I live and ‘may’ die.

My mother always told me I will grow old. And I clearly remember that very first day I was leaving the rural community of Ikenga Eziudo for the circle of walls located in the city of Calabar where learning is done, I told myself that one day I will be a great man. I also had something in mind; that soon this journey which started from this particular face of time will end at the other face of time.

Oh! Time again, with faces? We would have by now seen how we saunter across time and maybe forget to mark its species of faces. It is all about the past, the present, and the future. Yes it is that simple thing; the faces of time. Be reminded that the present is central since it coordinates all – the past and the future. The present calls the past into itself through memory, it calls itself to itself by experience, it also calls the future to itself by means of foreshadowing.

Then the problem that confronts us is such faces of time within the leadership realities of Nigerian national beingness in the vast land of Africa. Wait a minute. I will be right back…

I needed leisure to summon ideas about the leadership of Nigeria in the Trinitarian fragments of time. Sure I did and am back to it again.

In this compartmentalization of time especially about Nigerian leadership reality, taxonomy of some sort that pictures the pre-nationalist, nationalist and post-nationalist periods will not be out of place.

A time as such did exist when elders gathered around huts and under tree-shades to reach consensual grounds for cases and issues that mattered to the progress and administration of the general will (in the parlance of Jean-Jacques Rousseau). Agreements were reached, judgments were passed, motions were processed, diplomatic armistices were drawn, disputes were settled, wars were staged, fought and won or resolved and lots more.

They were all happening till the Whiteman came into our land from Europe and the rest of their parts. At their arrival values lost essence, rulers were stripped off authority, gods were chased afar and deities defiled, the laws lost coercive tenor, and cultural honours vanished into oblivion. Nothing was left that could be seen as a signpost of a progressive and successful historical leadership. This is the beginning of the horror of leadership that we have come to bear. After the Whiteman’s unholy incursion on our land, after their wanton and unjustifiable de-sacralisation (sic) of reverenced pastures of this abundantly blessed land (of Africa in general and Nigeria in particular), our past has hitherto been seen as a curse and our present a plague of that woe while our future is a nightmare we dream of even while wide awake.

Years to come are so bleak and opulently austere and the stories untold are sore frightening. Our leaders are so rich in material but absolutely poor in knowledge. The gravest of it all is that those who rule us sick opinion from those who are either many centuries behind in knowledge or those who are vehemently opposed to the successes achievable by any being from the black race.

What a wonder to think and see leaders who are unabashed to their lack in the consciousness of their history. Leaders on African soil even beyond Nigeria have amidst them a great number of those who cannot cast minds back to extrapolate facts guidable of futuristic judgement. Many of them do not have any background of any sort thinkable of leadership in micro-frames let alone to paddle the giant responsibilities of state-ship.

This is contrary to those in the time past. The relics of our rich leadership portents could be glimpsed from the actions and engagements of the nationalists. When I mention nationalists, I intend to refer to those who engaged their thoughts and intellectual will-powers to the pursuit and attainment of our worthless independence.

Shockingly it was all worthless. This also makes it more logical to call their wisdom relics of the past. In being relics I assure you that they are ruins of archaeological pointers to possibility of good thinking in terms of selfhood or consciousness as human persons. But remember also that whatever good they represent and stand for, they are merely indications of likely return to the viable past. Here one can appreciate them in being a central point to the life and conditions of Nigeria and Africa. The little striking ingenuity to crave for self-definition especially in matters of headship and organisation shows that they would have had some hereditary sparks of selfhood. That same idea also hints that they might also project frontally into the future with producible mentality.

If the foregoing is the case, one would heavily bother to ask what has gone wrong. I could hurriedly utter that very many things went wrong. The psychology of a race saddled with slavish living over a long period such that it took a larger portion of their being as such. Never the less, none among them was lucky with teachings that could strongly liberate the mind. Those who came close to that only got there unprepared or unawares. Many of our leaders wandered into the corridors of power and when they finally occupy the throne scamper tirelessly to acquire knowledge to thrive but as the nature of leadership permits, they usually run out of time. The next is left for them to strive to perpetuate themselves in office or maybe remain governors for the rest of their lives.

It therefore becomes so ridiculous to think of such thinking which runs contrary to the tenet and rubrics of leadership. Leadership is time-bound, it is knowledge demanding, it is an investment of temporary wisdom which lasts just for a moment. The wisdom that plays within leadership highlights itself as the servant of time. It can be likened to a water container which when it empties itself into use goes off. But the only difference is that while water jars can be refilled, the political wisdom lives its usefulness and dies off; it expires.

How many of our leaders know this?

You now start to appreciate how abject they are in the required knowledge to lead a people as ours, a people who have a history of yoke and colonialism, a history of slavish psyche and oppressive lifetime. If there is anything we need as a people in Nigeria and Africa as a whole, it is sound leadership with nicer comprehension of the timeful nature of existence. Where can you find this? Just take a look all around us! There is no one except Nelson Mandela of South Africa. Again, you can admire him a bit more as a hero and a legend in the midst of this desert of leaders.

Perhaps we are handed systems contrary to our given nature. It will be self-defeating and escapist to throw up excuses in this perspective. Let me be if you find me autocratic for this! Do you think I am shutting the doors against those who would have reasons for always failing? There is no other reason for lack of success within the precincts of Nigerian or African leadership except for frail knowing. The twilights of their wisdom vanish at the slightest test. They have not known themselves. The world of leadership is such that can be likened to warfare. There are no more isolated nations, no more secluded cultures, no more mono-value societies. The world has become, in the cliché of our time, a global village.

What would ordinarily have passed for the best within a minute circle no more does since it has to go through rigors of telling professionalism and learned population within the committee of leaders. You now can evaluate the mental strength of our leaders. Permit me to state the obvious in this manner even if I have to stop so far. But think about it.

The leaders in Nigeria over time are those who do not understand the realities of her race. Many of them are those who have done greatly and exceedingly well in professions that deal with the organisation of inorganic matter. Many of them are really wise in their various chosen areas of work; physicians, mechanical, civil and electronic engineers, chemists, zoologists (administrators of lower animals), geologists etc. Very many of them came best in their various professions and that may have made them grand authorities in the organization of humans.

We have all the while been appealing to wrong authorities and the fabrics of our social welfare, national development and uplifting are now bleeding profusely and frantically. How can an authority in mathematics pilot the professional doings of a hospital and anticipate success? This is part of what has happened in Nigeria but not all.

I heard very many blaming our woes on corruption (or what I will prefer to refer to as altered form) and its assortments or strands. As truthful as it sounds, we will be on its best comprehension when we make reference to it as a symptom rather than the illness in itself. The metaphysical physicians teach us how sickness is an unseen, conceptual and intangible bit of reality. Of course, no one has ever boasted of seeing sickness except its manifestations. What we see are the manifestations of sickness which come in varying forms such as symptoms. This goes to corroborate why many cures for symptoms are audaciously worthless if nothing is done about curing the sickness itself. This is just to say that symptoms are not one and the same thing with sickness; no one suffers symptoms without a causing sickness.

Just to shorten the foregoing is to state that corruption is a manifestation of a sick system or society.

If a man knows that all he needs to live a wondrously enjoyable lifetime is just a million shekels, I am very sure such a man will not toil so much as to acquire a billion shekels knowing the wasteful nature of the surplus. This is merely addressing corruption. I have no doubt in my mind that so many people will argue against this position of mine concerning knowledge and action. To address the complex nature of Nigerian leadership ills and by extension African political management summersault, I will adopt a principle or socio-philosophical axiom which will attend to the overarching predicament at a wider plain. In other words, instead of trying to cure such symptoms as corruption, greed, lack of safety, insecurity and the likes, we are going to employ a methodology of solution which will encompass all aspects that are abnormal to equitable collective existence.

It was the great Greek philosopher – Socrates – who averred that knowledge is virtue. It is for this his assertion that he admonished self knowledge. We have severally heard it about Socrates having said ‘Man know thyself’. Adding to this submission he declared that ‘An unexamined life is not worth living’.

From the foregoing postulations of Socrates we extract and expound the thrust of our preferred social solution to leadership problems in Nigeria and Africa as a whole. Did Socrates say that knowledge is virtue? This might sound so imprecise and woolly to cursory consideration so we need a closer attention to this averment of that giant Greek sage thinker.

Let us make a little attempt into conceptual clarification or some form of definition of terms. ‘Knowledge is virtue’. Just as the highlights in the statement, the two important words for our deliberation are knowledge and virtue. Let us therefore ask ourselves the following simple questions;

a)    What is knowledge?

b)   What is virtue?

These two realities of life are in the middle of the core aspects of philosophical intellectualization. In their consideration, we refer back to the science and study of knowledge which is known as epistemology and the science of virtue/value which is axiology. Axiology covers a very wide range of human undertakings that are fastidious to the crux of virtue. Such areas of relevance to our present discussion are socio-political philosophy and ethics.

Pondering on knowledge!

In trying to define knowledge, we are at liberty to invoke its features as precision/clarity, indubitability, unchangeability, certainty and we may add conviction. In probing into the features of knowledge, it helps us to avoid verbose descriptions and explanations by very many authors that have dealt on the reality of knowledge. This allows even the layman to appreciate what it means when we say that we know.

At all times we mention or claim knowledge of a case or situation, it simply implies that we are very sure of the case in question, we have no doubt about it and no one should doubt us about that, that same issue should also be very clear to us. Of course, if a situation is utterly lucid to us it avoids us from any form of doubt. Another ingredient of knowledge is that whatever we claim knowledge of should always be that same at all circumstances of such. This means that we do not assert knowledge claim of a thing as orange today and say of it as maize tomorrow; it should be unchanging and the same.

For a clearer understanding of knowledge, let us consider the scale offered by Edmond Gettier. According to Edmond Gettier, knowledge is defined as ‘Justified True Belief’. This therefore means that for anything or experience to qualify as knowledge it must be true, we must believe it, and we must be justified for believing that it is true. In this vein, if we make any knowledge claim for example to say that it is raining, it should be true that it is raining, we must also believe that it is raining, and we must be justified for believing that it is raining.

Knowledge therefore engenders responsibility and avoids regrets. If something is true, the same thing is believed to be true, and those who believe it to be true are justified for believing so then they can be said to know. When we arrive at knowledge through this understanding, it then follows that knowledge gives no grounds or space for regrets. The implication of knowledge not allowing for regrets is that knowledge makes room for responsibility. This will mean that knowledge precedes responsibility. We always say one is responsible for his or her well thought out action or actions. What this entails is that no one is held responsible for what he does not know. The reason for this is that responsibility is a consequence of action and such action for which one can be said to be responsible is a product of knowledge.

If we look deeply into our consideration of the concept of knowledge above, we will find knowledge as an action word. Knowledge has to do with truth, belief and justification. It also has to do with conviction which necessitates action. But here, our question bothers on the type of action to be considered. This takes us to our next concept which is virtue.

What therefore is virtue?

Virtue can be synonymised with such terms as ‘desirable quality’, ‘good value’, ‘good worth’, ‘high merit’ and moral. Associating with morality therefore, we can define virtue as that quality by which an action can be adjudged to be good or bad, right or wrong, acceptable or unacceptable, praiseworthy or blameworthy, etc. In this case as well, virtue is a practical word. Virtue has to do with action or is an action.

Exemplifying virtue in the society, we see those who are upright in their dealings as virtuous. Those who are courageous to confront evil or wrongdoings in the society/community, those who abide by rules of engagement and obey agreements, those who are faithful and sincere, and those who find time to always strive to do the right things are usually perceived as being virtuous people. We might hereby ask if any act of virtue can come out of persistent ignorance. Can we say that one is virtuous if one is not practically and consciously performing his or her actions as such? If one did not pick the money on the floor just because he or she did not see it early enough to guarantee anyone not catching him/her, can such a person be acclaimed or celebrated as a virtuous being?

Obviously our answer will necessarily be NO!

On the other hand, a thief is convinced (if he/she knows) that he will be caught and eventually be killed on his escapade, will such thief continue on such adventure? But severally we have seen thieves, especially our political leaders in Nigeria and Africa, making proclamations of regret when caught. Many of them make confessions of sincere mind condemning their own practised actions. The wonder upon which we should ponder at this juncture is the thief’s knowledge (which has to do with his conviction and clear understanding) that he will be caught and killed. If he/she really knew am sure he/she would not engage in such.

Knowing and being virtuous

Many people will also quibble that there are also some very bold and courageous thieves who even at the point of death claim responsibility for their actions and never give an eye for regret. Some of them will tell their judges that if given an opportunity to live again, that they will repeat same acts. This may sound as a viable argument against the idea that knowledge is virtue.

In response to the preceding attack on the view of knowledge as virtue, one may hurriedly submit to the notion of wrong knowledge. One might argue that the person or the thief is acting on the basis of wrong knowledge. But we need to clarify here also that wrong knowledge is not knowledge at all. So there is nothing like wrong knowledge. One might be foolhardy. Some persons live their lives without a tincture of knowledge. That someone is standing firm on his or her position does not really mean that he/she knows. Such are extreme cases which are also found in our leadership here in Nigeria and Africa.

If therefore knowledge is virtue, how does it solve the problem of leadership plaguing Nigeria? How does it address the problems of greed which make way for other corrupt and perverse actions of Nigerian leadership such as embezzlement of public fund, diversions, electoral rigging, aiding and abating miscarriage of justice and lots of such acts?

Knowledge is virtue. Do Nigerian politicians know that the next candidate is better than them? Do they know what the people want and what is good for the people? Do they actually know what it entails to be in positions of authority? Do they see leadership as service or mastery? Do the leaders of Nigerian state or African continent know and understand the time-bound nature of knowledge in governance? Do they know what good life is? Do they even know what the goal of life is? Why are we humans and what do we do to remain so; do they appreciate or ask themselves such questions? Do they know the difference between good and bad, right and wrong? Do they really know what leadership is and entails?

There are many more questions for the Nigerian leadership and by extension African leadership.

If any leader knows what the goal of life is, what the people sincerely pray for, can differentiate between the good and bad, right and wrong, if they know what leadership entails and that it is more of servant-hood than lordship, only if they know how time plays within the purview of leadership and service they would have also performed their honourable duties of service in such manners that depict high merit and desirable qualities.

Is it not clearer to us that if leaders know all that have been hinted above in terms of good and bad, right and wrong, acceptable and unacceptable, praiseworthy and blameworthy they would have been virtuous than vicious.

Many of them are killed by their horrendous acquisitions. Very many of them leave a family of failure and disgrace behind owing to their unguarded avarice. Imagine how many of their children and descendants manage the wealth they left behind. Can you easily remind yourself of great men and women from their households? 

It is until our people and her leadership come to knowledge of human reality which invariably transforms into virtuous lifestyles, our society will be under the yoke of bad governance, poor quality of life, and low value of life which are the consequences of ignorance or lack of good consciousness.

Until our people and her leadership come to the knowledge of the goal of life as not money and sheer material acquisition but quality of impact on posterity and the service to one another, our conditions will remain the same.

How we got here

It seems to me that passion has overtaken me in this enquiry. But it definitely will not be the case since we are interested in knowing how and where it all went wrong in our leadership system. I therefore will return to properly chew over the faces of time in the Nigerian leadership experience.

Our nations were human enough and were faithfully administered prior to the coming of the whiteman. Our forefathers consulted amongst themselves, took decisions of collective wellbeing, settled disputes among nations and individuals, distributed resources equitably and ascended thrones in harmony devoid of bitterness and rancour. I could read and listen to elder tell us about communal lifestyle. We saw remnants of such way of life in community farming, in marriage, in celebrating childbearing, in festivals and even in burying the dead. Service was seen as honourable and a virtue. Leaders were upright as guided by the gods and ancestors. There was fear and respect for values and norms. Then came the men and women from Europe.

They came with all manner of destruction; killing good senses and raping values. They obliterated knowledge and established ignorance. What used to be knowledge ceased to be so and the new values were either not deeply enshrined or they were cheaply waning. Knowledge suffered death.

During the nationalist period, we saw men and women who have been mentally weakened by bad values, who were battered by infighting and implanted enmity. The enormity of these aberrations were overlooked and underestimated. Remember they have no more values for guidance. Remember they have lost all to times of colonialism and imperialism. Remember these are men who have lived under subtle and overt psychological slavery and have been made to accept inferiority as a consuming inseparable attachment. They went headlong into vying for self-rule.

Just in the past

In this impulsive crave to be leaders of their own consciences, they on the spur of the moment took up an identity which will only have a very short life span; the experience of colonialism. There were no other preparations and no clear knowledge of what to do with leadership when it is finally got. When colonialism was conquered and vanished there was no other identity around which to gather and chart a course for the new life in independence. There were no other established body of knowledge to fall back to. Everything got even worse as the leadership was in sore confusion. It was as though it were better to allow the colonialists back.

Owing to the conceivable relics from the far past, the nationalist leaders who eventually became the new colonialists, went into mishmash of the past with present. However bad it was, something a bit commendable resulted. This did not happen without the developments of that time. The world then was turn into two hostile camps – socialism/communism and capitalism.

The traceable wisdom in their heritage guided the nationalists (turned leaders) in making vital policies. In international politics they adopted the policy on non-alignment while in economic structuring they assumed mixed-economy. This could sustain the time but not to last too long. Everything here now is makeshift and wishy-washy.

What about the present

From the above is the background to this ruling class. What else would we have been right to expect from the present leadership? Will is not amount to abnormality to see better than we have in such a land administered by lack of knowledge. The ruins of ancestry are so bleak to the present political headship. Do not even remind me of religion; they are the same if not worse. Current religions abhor African history. Though our history has been distorted, their decimation has further provoked horrific rebuff, disparagement and has internalised derogation as an unavoidable fundamental sub-portion.  Unfortunately our recent leaders have this poor reading as the exclusively available political bible and they read it with obedient faith.

Now that bipolarism has collapsed, the world is on the verge of cluelessness. Many values compete at the world stage and very many nations have gone back to their value archives to dig out their past. Very many other nations are about reinventing themselves through cultural revival. This should be a function of knowledge especially of one’s history and essentially of the past.

The Americans, the Russians, the Chinese, Indians, Arabs and the rest of the world are working hard to fix the feelings and heart of their cultural heritage into the bulk of globalization. The leaders of Africa are busy with looting, embezzlement, political thuggery, terror breeding, militancy implantations, electoral malfunctions, ailing wealth amassing, and vast wrongs. When the world finishes the new crafting of the new world order, we will wait to be engulfed by Americanization or Europeanization as the case may be. From the banks of River Niger to the shores of River Benue, down to Lake of Chad there is no leader on that vast soil who is ready with the trend of this time. They are busy with themselves and we know what engages them.

The swamps of the Niger Delta are tirelessly in ceaseless production of black diamonds, the dry lands of the Eastern Nigeria are in great production of men and women with wondrous skills of minds and fingers to overawe the firmament, and the immense fertile earth of the Northern Nigeria keeps raising foods beyond measure. The South-West in charge of the great commerce of African states garnished with cultural and intellectual productivity is greater move of development. But what are the leaders doing?

The news of the land is consistently of either death or maims, damage or catastrophe, fragmentation or collapse. Disease and poverty are the order of the day. But the leaders are dancing.

Where are our own thinkers? Where are our real histories? Where is our future?

Is there any hope for the future?

Maybe the generation to come will salvage the situation and place Africa and Nigeria back on its rightful footing. A sigh of relieve at last.

Was that sigh of relieve based on knowledge or on blatant emotion? We shall find out.

If the appropriate leadership we clamour for must come through knowledge as we have expounded all along then we will need to go through our educational system to know how the future is being crafted. Like a thousand thunders it clapped with unbending chagrin of hopelessness and helplessness. Let us mull over the teaching class. Who are the teachers that we have employed to drive home the dream of our expectations? What dream have we put in place to pursue for the assumed prospect? What systems and methods have we put in place through which we can get at our target?

Let us play down a little on the aspect of learning. I take this path for reasons given to us in our circles of academics that education has to do with character and learning. The conjecture here is that learning can always be handled or let us also suppose that it is all well with learning in our educational institutions. But the realm of character will preoccupy us here a lot as we intend to enquire how the future leaders are being formed in terms of character.

We no more need to wait for time to tell us if we are getting it right or wrong. The realities are here with us. The love of money has taken over everything and everywhere and the teachers are the worst of all. Bright scholars who do not have money to pay up immediately are sent out of the schools even when we know that the future needs them. In the time past, we used to know that the public schools are owned, run and financed by the federal government. In those schools were found children of the poor who cannot afford the luxuries of other institutions. The public schools were all they needed to reach their dream of being educated. But now this opportunity has been shut out. Public schools have suddenly been commercialised and their fees hiked.

It might gladden your heart to know the reason why the public schools are being muscled out of existence. The war of the rich against the poor will never come to an end. The knowledge of the leaders needs serious attention and questioning most of all. Job morals are far gone and code of conduct is merely a grammatical vocalisation. Values are nowhere virtue has turned farce. Presidents, Governors, Ministers, Local Government administrators, Commissioners – federal and state – and all public servants now own schools. How then do we expect them to better the public schools?

There is no more marked difference between the public sector workers and the private sector players; everybody is now in the marketplace buying and selling. Public servants are just awarding contracts to themselves. How morality has died in our own climes is so brazen and agonizing. Gone are the days when they (public servants) gave such contracts to their allies and relatives and have summons to answer. They now award contracts brazenly to themselves as bona-fide business people in public service. There is no more control for what should be for the public servant and what should be for the private sector participant. Everything has gone wrong!

Public servants whose salaries range between One Hundred and Fifty Thousand naira to Two Hundred Thousand naira and who have not worked for four years are owning property worth fifty, hundred and two hundred million naira and no eyebrows are raised. The vices of the last millennium are the virtues of the current lifestyle for lack of parameters to measure value. There are no more strictures of conduct and no knowledge signposts at sight. It is all good and rosy. The party is not over yet.

The students in school have lost focus as they keep peeping out of the windows to see how useless what they do in class are. There is no hope of work after school, no provisions for independent practices after the classroom sessions, no more structural ladder to follow towards life from the academic walls. Out there, they can foresee their frustration so concentrations in the classrooms are disappearing and vanishing fast away.

Do we say of their teachers within the walls of learning? If you must know, that is a nightmare. The frustrations of the students – the future leaders – are so many. The teachers are now serious book merchants who must sell by force. Buying the books is a vital part of the assessment with a mark to pass. Once you can afford the price of the scraps (the said books), you do not have any need of reading to know anymore. You can see how the future is formed. Nice one indeed.

Are we still asking of examinations? Parents now pay teachers to write exams for their wards; it has gotten that bad. Fathers and mothers now encourage their children to cheat and not read. They either write the exams in private offices of their chosen teacher(s) or in the bushes under trees with their textbooks handy to copy word for word. If you cannot meet up with all this, there is yet a chance for you if you have gathered enough money to pay the teacher. You can wait till after the examination to go in for a bargain of marks and scores; they have price tags on them. This is not a make-up story, it is real!

Oh! Can we forget about the dull and unintelligent ladies in the class? Hell no. These are waiting prey for some of the many bad teachers. The language is either cash or kind. Yes! Cash is the money and kind is your private part as a woman. They can make do with some rounds of sex. Sure! How do you see this future?

Very well! Can we talk about student leadership? From kindergartens to the universities, there is no merit for positions of student leadership. It is either the teacher likes your face or gains one or two things from you or the government of the day is interested. Student Unions in the higher institutions have been doused that bright and intelligent students are no more interested in them. There is no need for good reasoning, no time to listen to any wise point from the students who are taught not to be reasonable and contributively positive to society. If by any means you participate in terms of confronting the ills of the sphere, you are doomed to a greater frustration. Such students are made to fail examinations, have different traps set here and there for them to go down and ultimately rusticated from the school. Remember parents have gone morally sick and poverty has taken over grounds so there is no need to think of redress or justice anywhere. Do not think about that please because it will fetch you more cries.

Hooliganism pays more!

Have you heard about the yahoo boys? Have you heard about the Niger-Delta militants? Have you heard about the Boko-Haram? Have you heard about the kidnappers? Have you heard about the highway armed robbers? Have you heard about the political thugs? Do know about cultism? They all earn big and live very large here. These are the young ones and they are leaders of tomorrow. Now you can see how the future leadership is graciously formed.

The First-Class graduates, the Best-Graduating students and a lot of the best brains who devoted time to read and research in order to know are roaming about the streets in abject poverty. They are frustrated from self and independent engagements by lack of infrastructure. No access to credit or capital to start up businesses of sorts, no post-education formations to engage their services and tap from their knowledge and acquired skills. They are also frustrated from public service for systems built on deficiency and want of merit. You need to appreciate such a future.

All youth are surreptitiously directed towards wrongdoings. It is demonstratively made clear to them that they have no air of survival if they do not join the bandwagon of the vicious, criminal, immoral and perverse leadership of the moment. The prominent language from all tongues now is; if you can’t beat them, you join them. Judge for yourself such a future.

Can the future gain remedy?

Without gainsaying the fact, this is one of the most difficult questions to answer. From left, right and center you can see a shame of failure, the burning desire to destroy, the flame of ignorance and the devastation against knowledge. But in all, there is an array of hope. Many have defied joining the crew of infamy and indignity. Despite the high wind of social ills, the wide range and speed of condemnation of the deeds of the ruling class give succour that there is hope. Many of those who perform such actions sometimes turn back to condemn their actions even openly and this ignites joy for the future. It seems that after all, one day that highly desired knowledge will come.

Knowledge is permanent, indubitable, unchangeable, immutable, one, and I must add ‘indestructible’. If knowledge is indestructible then it must one day find its way into the leadership of our land. But this will not come easy.

Time shall come when the wind of wrongs will blow sour and tasteless. It surely will anger good reasoning into actions. The uprooting of the strong holds of vice shall become inevitable. It might come now, it might come soon, and it might come later. The spirits of our ancestors and the wills of the gods of the land would have regained their freedom from the long captivity and will surge for value reinstatement. The torrents of good will sweep away all lovers of dark doings. This will not come easy.

Goodbye to my stories!

Now in your own thinking after all this, you have the right to make your judgement of the leadership of Africa; the past, the present, and the future.