Leadership: a conscious business

The miracle of institutional veracity

Just to get the curiosity over our current blog picture out of the way, this post asks Nigerians to think of a country like Taiwan as they head to the polls in the next few days. You will see why this may be a very smart idea soon enough. As we count down to Nigeria’s coming elections, it seems most appropriate at this point to give a lot more weight to the question of return on a nation’s leadership investment. Certainly, it is on this front that developing nations either begin to emerge towards the developed zone or continue to whirl around in the circles of underdevelopment. Institutional leadership makes all the difference here.

 Democracy in action – more than honchos in trendy gears

To effectively lead a nation and its governance institutions is much more than to dress well and make speeches. Great leaders preside over processes and institutions that have structural integrity and deliver strong results. At the executive branch of government, the key to institutional integrity is the capacity to vision and execute with know-how. An administration structured along this line is best positioned to ensure that its governance vehicles are process-based and mission-focused, regardless of the vagaries of  politics. Service (civil service) must stay civil and value-enhancing, even in precarious political settings. Think about this. What Nigerian institutions would you consider first-class, average, weak or utterly scandalous? Think for instance of the governance institutions that manage Nigeria’s oil wealth, power supply, security, healthcare, and infrastructure. Think perhaps of systems such as the police, customs, or immigration. Wherever these score high in terms of process integrity and service delivery, credit must accrue primarily to the executive branch. Should any of these be judged weak or scandalous however, the buck also rests squarely with the executive branch.

On the legislative front, the largest body of elected representatives of the people, the core question is on intellectual and emotional commitment to the national call. As a very prestigious governance arm, a legislature must be educated and savvy with regards to the capacity to ‘check and balance’ the executive branch. It must also be super patriotic and dignified with regards to putting the nation first in all matters. A legislator who does not act in ways that inspire confidence and pride in the citizenry is at best a thug with a government expense account. In Nigeria, the risk of the national call being drowned out by the primordial sectional ‘flu virus’ that tends to significantly afflict many unschooled legislators remains exceptionally high. Here is a question that sums this up. Do the candidates and legislators you support unequivocally demonstrate their belief in a corporate Nigeria? If not, are they perhaps part of the carpet-bagger brigade that has so far served Nigeria so very badly? For instance, if your legislators work productively for fewer hours than you do to earn a living, and yet make money off your country in multiples of what you earn as an upstanding professional in your own right, this can only mean one thing. Your so called champions of the grassroots have their feet in the clouds. You can then imagine where their heads are. Such folks are out of touch with the reality faced by regular citizens, drawing remuneration from the people’s purse that is way more than the worth of services rendered. Who pays government employees, or any service provider, this way? Additionally, in terms of real identity and standing, a legislature with a profile that is substantially skewed in this direction is no more than a secondary arm of the executive. As such, it is a drain on the nation’s resources since it will be weak at checking or strengthening its supposed co-branch of government. What we have, thus becomes a mafia system that unconsciously serves to under-develop the country.

In a democracy, a judiciary with backbone stands in position as the people’s most abiding line of defense, with integrity and independence as its sword and shield. Yes, you heard that right. Without integrity and independence, the judiciary can easily be reduced to an elevated but unholy platform for brewing and dispensing black magic in the name of justice. Here are some questions for testing the maturity of the judiciary as a vital arm of governance. Is the judicial sword active and upright against injustice on all fronts? To what extent does the judicial shield protect the nation and its citizens against the unlawful acts of both the small and the mighty? What do the best legal minds think of the judges and the systems they preside over? To what extent do money and influence cloud the integrity of the judiciary? If you have significant reason for discomfort on these scores, you can bet that the problem here is much bigger than what you sense, especially as an outsider.

The real price of a vote

In terms of return on leadership investment, it is estimated that no less that 95% of Nigerians agree that their country still has enormous pending construction work on all  three of its governmental floors – executive, legislative and judicial. This is the necessary and urgent work required to shift from a personality-based and self-centered governance approach to a people-centered, process-based, and value-driven system. To the extent that this work is pending, too many Nigerians remain victims of governmental justice delayed. While we will devote some time to this in future posts, the main focus of this piece is on the immediate economic consideration that should serve as food for thought as Nigerians begin to cast their votes in a matter of hours.

When Nigerians go out to vote this time, perhaps the greatest service they are called by the love of country and pride of purpose to render to their nation and loved ones, is to give more than a cursory thought to the value of their votes. What are we are asking the candidates we support to do with our collective destiny?  Get even richer by further impoverishing most Nigerians? What will Nigerians who vote for Goodluck Jonathan be asking him to do, and what will they be asking that he ceases to do? What will Nigerians who prefer Buhari want him to do, and what should he not do?

The question on what voters want is always an IMPACT and SUBSTANCE question. Candidates can easily be prepped to say the right things and dress in the right gears to IMPRESS voters, but until they are consistently doing the right things to IMPACT citizens’ lives, you might as well flip your television to the comedy channel and have fun with something brilliant and authentic. It is the ‘higher-ground’ national appetite for governmental justice that compels the executive, the legislature, and the judiciary to govern for IMPACT, from transparency and accountability to infrastructure, and from education and rule of law to human rights. Conversely, it is the inclination to govern on the unconscious floors that allows leaders to get away with both the social and economic sabotage of their nations, from dismal return on the people’s leadership investment to the large scale abuse of office. The point here is that the folks voters vote into offices are automatically handed power in the same way a gracious host may throw his/her doors open for a guest. This temporary power in the hands of committed captains can be alchemized to make a nation super strong, thus enriching citizens’ lives. On the other hand, the same power in the hands of dodgy actors is sure to be misused to further weaken the land, thus fueling mass disempowerment. Can you imagine your supposedly honored guest stealing toys, food, furniture and fixtures from your home? How is this different with executive, legislative, and judicial leaders who steal from their people? Whether the overall outcome of votes will result in positive or negative returns cannot be taken for granted anymore; Nigerians must really begin to think from higher ground now.

 Rethinking leadership – lesson from Taiwan

In economic reckoning, a country can be resource poor but make rich choices and become very rich. Taiwan is rich in this sort of way while Nigeria is not. Described as a barren rock in a typhoon-laden sea with no natural resource endowment, Taiwan still qualifies with ‘A’ rating as a conscious choice-making country. It has been said that the country even imported sand and gravel from China for construction, yet it makes no excuses about its conditions and circumstances. Rather than the luxury of mining deep down the earth for material resources, as Nigeria has had the rare privilege of doing, Taiwan mines its 23 million people; their talent, their energy and their intelligence. As a result, here is Taiwan’s economic leadership scorecard:

• 17th largest economy in the world
• Third largest holder of foreign exchange reserves
• 14th largest exporter
• 16th largest importer

Can you see the picture? Can you see why voting means more than sentiments and cheerleading? Imagine for a moment that Nigeria’s elected and appointed leaders were adept at investing single mindedly in getting good at mining the talent, energy and intelligence of over 160 million Nigerians. What dreams do you see coming true?

The problem with misused minority power

To look at what is possible for Nigeria through the lens of Taiwan’s uncommon leadership success, let us indulge in a necessary detour at this point. The goal is to reinforce the case that every-day citizens and well-oiled governance institutions matter much more than successive Nigerian governments and governance habits have tended to appreciate. For want of a tag line, we will borrow from a previous post and label this issue the .5% versus 99.5% case.

In governance, the .5% that constitutes the leadership class is to deploy its resourcefulness to unleash the genius of the over 99.5% that forms the majority block. Where the 99.5% is organized and engaged, this leadership-citizen ballet is an awesome value-minting marriage. The leadership has little choice but to be smart and focused, and the people serve as the cache of a nation’s renewable resources. On the other hand, where the leadership is substantially unconscious, much can go wrong. For one thing, if the 99.5% fails to engage in order to achieve the constant course correction that is an inherent requirement of every citizen-leadership contract, the nation itself remains severely undervalued. If the people habitually go on a ‘long vacation’ until the next election cycle, it is easy for the leadership to go rogue, acting as a class of overlords presiding over a conquered territory. The salient point here is that informed and engaged citizens challenge their leaders to be smart and sensitive to their needs, and that smart and focused leaders mine the talents and energies of their people, all for the greater and continuing good of the nation.

When over 99.5% of a population has not figured out an effective way to constantly challenge the members of the .5% to deploy their know-how in the service of the homeland, a nation is never as smart and strong as it can be: not its armed forces or law enforcement system, not its infrastructure or service standards, and not its public accountability or global weight. It cannot be smart and strong on any sustained basis because there is no compelling urgency for exceptional results. And there is no compelling urgency for such results because the enabling institutions are buried under the weight of an unconscious leadership culture. The result of this upside-down authority disarticulation is power shortage. No, this is not the power shortage often addressed by pumping more oil or generating more electricity. This is another story by itself, one that most Nigerians readers know quite a lot about already.

 Power trips and power shortage

Power shortage is often more about leadership hubris and blurred public service consciousness than about any real lack of material resources. It is a disease of the mind fueled by a level of poverty consciousness than cannot be cured by even the injection of more resources. Such additional resources simply go down the same economic drainage channel that is the reason for the power shortage. This is the biggest problem international donor agencies face when seeking to help countries with poor institutional frameworks. In the interplay of governance and citizenship, power shortage is the foundation for lingering corruption. Power shortage occurs when .5% of the population, with no inherent power except as is granted by the people, lives permanently on a power trip. This class is only able to do this where the real owners of a nation’s power orchestrate and exaggerate their own powerlessness. Of course this happens mostly involuntarily, propelled as it were by the often debilitating fear of the unknown and the real and immediate need for survival. This state of affairs is particularly troubling because, for a nation not at war, except perhaps with itself, ‘made in heaven’ citizen-leadership marriage is about thriving, not surviving. The real job for a 21^st century Jonathan or Buhari administration is thus to lead Nigeria away from the destructive fast lane that is paved with the fear and doubt of learned survival mindset, towards the thriving vast lane that is paved with leadership impact.

When a nation’s leadership, or any leadership class for that matter, operates on a prolonged power trip, the nation or entity and its people seem to perpetually exist to serve their leaders. The leaders in turn begin to rest on their oars, expecting to be served while doing less than their best in the service of the people and the nation. Whatever services and products that continue to disappear in this value-depleting arrangement must then be imported from elsewhere by those who can afford to – finished goods, talent, essential services, etc. In this mediocre paradise without a name, there is no firm platform for the battle of ideas, the dominant pastime being the perpetual musical-chairs shuffling on elite floors. As the advantaged and the connected jockey endlessly for vantage points from where to pluck the spoils of privilege, the business of leadership is quickly reduced to personal transactions. The idea of who should create what value is no longer the thrust of governance. Here, unlike the case of Taiwan, even with the abundance of resources, a blessed nation seems cursed. This subsists even as such a nation perpetually throws resources at officially declared wars against corruption.

Never enough jail space for the corrupt

The first reason a nation may repeatedly lose its war against corruption is that without institutions structured on a long-term corporate view of nationhood, such wars are often strategically set up to fail. For one thing, while these wars tend to suddenly spring from executive fiat rather than evolve from shared governance principles, they tend to be meant for ‘them, not us.’ Such wars are  often waged against targeted individuals, while the institutions and business cultures that form the breeding ground for corruption remain largely unaffected. This is akin to firing the cashiers in a public bank with serious internal control lapses, without remediating the control failures and getting compromised executives to step aside. The second reason losing is guaranteed in such dysfunctional dramas is that these so called wars are often waged with institutions and/or players either tainted or elevated by the same corrupt processes. This means that witch-hunting and misplaced loyalties must necessarily combine to crowd out genuine quest for justice. At best, the end product seems more like justified injustice. Will Jonathan reincarnate as a more inspiring and responsive leader, as well as a courageous warrior against corruption and mediocrity? Will Buhari re-emerge with a more inclusive and national outlook, less inclination to pious indignation, and a deeper understanding of economic justice?

 Rich country, poor people

Against the forgoing background, Nigeria’s current state amply makes the case that a country can be resource rich, make poor choices and become poor. Nigeria is rich where Taiwan can hypothetically be described as poor, but embarrassingly poor where Taiwan is actually rich. With a resilient and enterprising population and natural resources such as gas, petroleum, tin, iron ore, coal, limestone, niobium, lead, zinc, etc as its foundational working capital, those interested in leading Nigeria must spend more time working on how the country ceases to make the news as a prime example of a nation cursed by the fact of its blessings.

For Nigeria to stand any renewed chance of relevance in global affairs, as many votes as possible (for either Jonathan or Buhari) must be premised on the question of how Nigeria ceases to linger in global economic consciousness as a rich country with poor people. Even more importantly, win or lose in the coming elections, both candidates must return to the school of governance and, like serious students of leadership, begin to do some intense homework. For one thing, they must seek to score at least a ‘C’ grade in understanding why Taiwan seems blessed by not having God-given natural resources and Nigeria seems cursed by being blessed with natural resources. And they will do well to begin to take some advanced classes on why Nigeria is known to be the 12th largest exporter of oil and yet ranked among the 15 poorest nations in the world? Then they need to go back to our .5%/99.5 power shortage equation and really understand how both Nigeria’s problems and solutions are hidden there in plain sight.

For the longest time in Nigeria, the focus has been on the country’s natural resources and the welfare of the .5%. This time, the focus needs to shift to the 99.5% and the creation of enabling institutions. For too long, it has been widely acknowledged that a public institution can be blatantly corrupt without embarrassing the appointed chief executive or quickly prompting political leaders to raise enough questions to create the fear of real repercussions. The malaise is in full color as if on a large smart television screen, but we see neither collective outrage nor the institutional horsepower to do the necessary sanitization. If we take a lesson from Taiwan, here is how much better things can be.

We have seen that rather than digging in the ground and mining whatever comes up for its .5% to scramble over, Taiwan mines its 23 million people and thus invests astutely in its citizenry. Nigeria can also invest in its human resources and mine its citizens, their talent, energy and intelligence; men and women alike. For the simple reason that Taiwan’s leaders do this, we wonder how they did the magic. With no oil, no iron ore, no arable land, no diamonds, and no gold, we wonder how the people of Taiwan got so lucky. Well, they did not. They orchestrated their own luck and the laws of citizen-centric leadership seem to have bent completely to the force of their national desire. Taiwan built the underlying institutions for development and developed the habits and culture of honing its people’s skills. This has made all the difference. This is the lesson Nigeria must now imbibe. It is at this level that as many Nigerians as possible should be reasoning as they cast their votes. Developing the habits and culture of honing the people’s skills is the most valuable leadership trait of today, as well as the only truly renewable resource in this 21^st century.