Profiling Nigerian Leadership

This column has made a conscious decision not to comment on the Yar’adua Presidency until December 2007, by which time the regime will have been in office for more than six months. By that time a clear direction should have emerged (and if it has not, that in itself will have clear implications) and some patterns of actions would have been discernible. I believe in the validity of a conception of strategy as the pattern that is observable from a stream of actions. Patterns are created due to consistency of actions and behaviour, presence of some set of competences and skills, and perspectives and world view with which an entity responds to the environment around him.

While we allow President Umaru Musa Yar’adua to create his own patterns of policy, implementation, people and leadership however, perhaps we can profit from reviewing Nigeria’s past leadership, in order that we can see what may be learnt from them. In pre-independence Nigeria, the locus of leadership was not national but regional. Chief Obafemi Awolowo led the West along with his colleagues in the Action Group with strong support from the intellectual and traditional elite. He was leader and Premier of the Western region, but had his sights and heart set firmly on national leadership. Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto was also a leader with his centre of gravity in Northern Nigeria. Indeed his party made no pretences about who it represented.

While Awolowo attempted to maintain an (admittedly artificial) separation between the Egbe Omo Oduduwa and the Action Group, the Sarduana’s party unabashedly declared itself to be the Northern Peoples Congress. Ahmadu Bello was also Northern premier but unlike Awolowo he had absolutely no desire for national leadership, preferring to remain in the north, where he could remain proximate to his ultimate dream-Sultan of Sokoto. Dr Nnamdi Azikwe was somehow different from Awo and Sardauna. He was the foremost pre-independence national leader and had managed to forge a follower-ship that transcended his eastern region, although this may have been due more to the liberal political culture prevailing in Yoruba politics rather than any other factor.

Dr Azikiwe’s National Council of Nigerian Citizens (NCNC) was strong all over Nigeria, but particularly in Western, Eastern and the Mid-West regions of Nigeria. Many of Zik’s most loyal followers-TOS Benson, JM Johnson, Adeniran Ogunsanya, Olu Akinfosile, Adegoke Adelabu were from the West and Zik won elections in Lagos, and could have become Premier of the West but for the re-awakening of Yoruba consciousness created by Awolowo and his colleagues. Zik unlike Awolowo and Sardauna was a more consensual, less forceful and more diplomatic leader. That of course often has the corollary of being sometimes less principled.

If Chief Awolowo had chosen like Ahmadu Bello to stay and lead the West (perhaps sending the very slippery SLA Akintola to Lagos) leaving easy-going fellows like Zik, Akintola and Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, (Sardauna’s deputy who he delegated to go down to the federal capital in Lagos), perhaps the journey of Nigeria’s federalism would have been different. The regions would have remained the real sources of power, and we may have been spared the bitter power struggles which short-circuited Nigeria’s first republic. The first republic thus unwittingly started a trend towards having weak, leadership at the federal level. Unfortunately the subsequent development of Nigeria’s federalism engendered a massive transfer of power from the regions to these often weak leaders at the national level.

Gen Aguiyi Ironsi was purely a soldier with no views about political leadership. When the first January 1966 coup led by Ifeajuna and Nzeogwu failed, power fell on Ironsi’s laps. He did not know what to do with it and appeared to be dependent on civil servants of Eastern extraction for advice. Ironsi’s prevarication continued for six months until he was overthrown by Murtala Muhammed and Theophilus Danjuma leading a Northern response to the murder of their political and military leaders. In what was now becoming a Nigerian tradition, the real coup leader Murtala however did not take power. His colleague Yakubu Gowon, the friend of the British and another diplomat took power. Gowon of course lacked real power and shared authority with everyone-military governors, members of the Supreme Military Council, federal commissioners and senior civil servants.

Soon Gowon’s military colleagues got tired of the absence of clear direction and a group of younger military officers led by Shehu Yar’adua, Ibrahim Babangida, Joseph Garba and Fidelis Ochefu took power in July 1975 and handed over to the triumvirate of Murtala Muhammed, Olusegun Obasanjo and Theophilus Danjuma. This trio was committed and action-oriented. They had observed Gowon’s drift and visionless-ness and had thought about power and what they would do with it. So Nigeria experienced a burst of activity and perhaps for the first time since independence had decisive leadership. Unfortunately many of their solutions were poorly thought-out and it fell to one of them Obasanjo to reverse virtually all their actions in his second coming. To compound matters, Murtala was killed in the February 1976 abortive coup, and Obasanjo became Head of State “against his personal wish and desire”.

Alhaji Shagari who took over from Obasanjo was another reluctant leader, and in spite of being elected executive president under a Presidential system functioned like a leader of cabinet in a parliamentary system! The 4 year Shagari rule turned out to be an interlude of drift and soon the soldiers were back in December 2003 to take their power back. Buhari and Idiagbon were strong leaders. But what was their grand vision for Nigeria? Where were they going? Beyond talking tough about discipline and jailing politicians, it soon became apparent they had little to offer in terms of policy and leadership. Moreover they were very divisive and repressed human rights. Soon the real power behind the throne, who actually organized the coup that brought Buhari to power, but had chosen to stay as Army Chief, General Ibrahim Babangida took power for himself in August 1985.

Babangida had an excellent opportunity to transform Nigeria. He planned for power, had a strong power base, took the title of President and understood the economic issues. But he failed the twin tests of character and succession. Shonekan was an unelected interim administrator and sooner than later Abacha was bound to strike, which he did in November 1983. Abacha had neither intellectual nor moral grounding in leadership, and relied on force and brutality to sustain his rule. Abdulsalam was an interim leader, in the reluctant ruler mode, and he swiftly handed over to a leader the military could trust-Obasanjo-in 1999. In many respects, Obasanjo was the best prepared for leadership and could have done so much better; he did well with macro-economic reform, but not so well overall; and he finished somewhat diminished. What will be Yar’adua’s testament?