As Nigeria marks 49 years of independence, a Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chieftain, Professor Julius Ihonbvere has laid the blames for the myriad of problems confronting the nation on the leadership of the country.
Professor Ihonbvere, a former gubernatorial aspirant of the PDP in Edo State stated this in an interview with Daily Sun in Benin City.
The PDP chieftain who was former Special Adviser, Project Monitoring and Implantation to former President Olusegun Obasanjo said the Nigerian leadership has being everything but inspiring.
According to him, in any society, the leadership inspires the people to reach to the highest point of their potentials. Besides, he said a leadership ought to create the path to growth and open up new avenues for the citizens.
The academic turned politician said it is also the duty of the leadership to mobilize and effectively deplore resources to every segment of the society. As well as provide security and other basic needs of the majority of the people. All these he said the Nigerian leadership has not being doing.
In his words “look at the Nigerian leaders and tell me why they are doing that. No way. And even the islands of integrity in Nigeria are constantly contaminated and denigrated and harassed by vast majority of criminal elements that are masquerading as VIPs. What Fela will call vagabonds in power?
“So, for me I think the failure of leadership is the failure of Nigeria. There is total lack of vision. Lack of commitment. Lack of sensitivity. Lack of the ability to critically analyze and understand and prioritize the future path to growth and development. “They don’t read. They don’t even read newspapers. How many newspapers in a country of 150 million people? Over 200 universities if you take all of them together. Is there any newspaper in Nigeria that produces 500,000 copies a day? So, what are we talking about? How many publishers are publishing academic books in Nigeria. How many? Go to the library. The best libraries are ten years behind the relevant literature. How many bureaucrats in this country, including politicians can operate the computer and get on the Internet. We have not started. We better start taking ourselves seriously. So if there was a fourth world that is effectively where we belong now. And the better we work to get out of it the better for this country. The opportunities are there. The resources are here. The skills are there. The energies are there. But the leadership is lacking.”
Excerpts:
Visions and aspirations of the founding fathers
Definitely not. I am a patriot. I believe in Nigeria, I fought for democracy. I spent years in self-exile. I have done my part in government as an intellectual, as an activist, as a bureaucrat, as a consultant and you name it. But the good part is that I have traveled to over fifty countries in this world and I see what other nations have achieved. By that measure Nigeria has not lived up to the expectations of the people.
Come, lets look at it. The poverty in Nigeria is embarrassing. The rate of infrastructural dilapidation is a shame. The rate of institutional decay, you can’t even talk about it. Is it bureaucratic inefficiency or is it corruption? What area are we going to say? We can’t even set up a football team that can win matches on a consistent basis out of 150 million people. Hospitals are still consulting clinics or mortuaries. So, if I could pick one area and say yes, Nigeria has succeeded here, others should come and learn from it, then I will say no problem. But I can’t say it. Maybe there is something I am missing. But as a student of Nigeria political history, I cannot say it.
So, the leaders should ask themselves the question. They still go abroad on holidays. How many people from those countries come here on holidays. The countries we go to, how many people from there come to Nigeria on holidays? They have no shame. They have all their children schooling abroad. If the schools here were that good, why do people there not bring their own children here. When they steal money, the first place they run to is abroad. They steal more money in America than in Nigeria, why don’t the Americans bring the money here. We have no self-esteem, no self-respect, and no self-dignity. No sense of vision and no sense of mission and no sense of nation. And when you have that combination, there is a fundamental problem and unless you address it squarely, at the level of leadership, at the level of follower ship, we just keep moving around, like motion in a barber’s chair. A lot of motion but no progress. We are in the same place.
The problem with Nigeria
The problem with Nigeria as academic, I will say begins from the inherited distortions and dis-articulation of the system. But that has been consolidated and reproduced by bad, very bad, extremely bad leadership. In any society, the leadership inspires the people. They create the path to growth. They open up new avenues. They generate and guide national discourses. They inspire people to reach the highest point of their productive and creative abilities. They mobilize resources and carefully deplore these resources to productive segments of the society. They defend the security of the people; they address the provision of the basic human needs of the majority of the people.
Look at the Nigerian leaders and tell me where they are doing that. No way. And even the islands of integrity in Nigeria are constantly contaminated and denigrated and harassed by vast majority of criminal elements that are masquerading as VIPs. What Fela will call vagabonds in power? So where do we go? Where do we go? Look at contracts. Look at the number of abandoned projects in Nigeria, over twenty thousand of them. Everywhere littered with abandoned projects. Somebody awarded those contracts. Somebody claimed the money. Nobody is in jail.
You know the citizens don’t trust the police. Tenants don’t trust landlords. Landlord does not trust tenant. Students don’t trust teachers. Drivers don’t trust the passengers. Everywhere there is distrust. So where is the leadership going to tell us that they have succeeded.
So, for me I think the failure of leadership is the failure of Nigeria. There is total lack of vision. Lack of commitment. Lack of sensitivity. Lack of the ability to critically analyze and understand and prioritize the future path to growth and development. They don’t read. They don’t even read newspapers. How many newspapers in a country of 150 million people. Over 200 universities if you take all of them together. Is there any newspaper in Nigeria that produces 500000 copies a day? So, what are we talking about? How many publishers are publishing academic books in Nigeria. How many? Go to the library. The best libraries are ten years behind the relevant literature. How many bureaucrats in this country, including politicians can operate the computer and get on the Internet. We have not started. We better start taking ourselves seriously. So, if there was a fourth world that is effectively where we belong now. And the better we work to get out of it, the better for this country. The opportunities are there. The resources are here. The skills are there. The energies are there. But the leadership is lacking.
Where do we go from here?
To where?
Where does Nigeria go from here?
We will go to Oba Market (General laughter)
I have just told you of the contradictions. I have told you of the crisis of institutions and leadership. The crisis of politics. Crisis of resources. The contradictions in primordial attachments. Now we can only hope that the masses of the people themselves. The workers, the women, the youths, progressive communities, the professionals and intellectual, will begin to organize again. The only answer that the elite believe in, that they fear is mass action. Because they don’t want to lose the millions that they have looted and stored somewhere.
They don’t want to lose the beautiful houses that they have spent money on. They don’t want to lose the beautiful cars. So, when they see that the people are getting organized, speaking with one voice and struggling together, they begin to sit up and make concessions. If we all begin to pray, this people they are not afraid of prayer, they are not afraid of God, so, when you are praying they are happy. Because when you are praying, you don’t disturb them, you don’t complain about them. And they believe that God will not punish them. So, to me I will not say let all of us go and pray. We must organize first. Strategize. Fashion out alternative policies and programmes. Build new institutions and structures. Prepare for battle if and when necessary. Then we pray to God to give us the energy to succeed in the forthcoming engagement.
A mass action?
Historically all over the world that has always been the only solution. The only thing the bourgeoisie respect. Otherwise they are happy when you pray or when you say you want to do siddon look. They will encourage you to do siddon look. Because that means they can do what they like.
In fact, good people must get into politics. This is not the time for unnecessary theory. All those people who say they are progressives, socialists, communists, trade union leaders, let them come into politics and engage those who refuse to work for change. That is the only solution. If you like write two thousand books, if you don’t translate it into active politics of organizing, mobilizing people and engaging in direct electioneering and using your intellect to outsmart those illiterate criminals, we will be in the same spot. So, mass action. Serious political organization, because if you don’t have power you can’t change anything. Power builds schools. Powers deploys resources. Power ensues security. Power ensues you can build markets, hospitals, give voice to the voiceless. And we must all struggle for that power.
Vision 2020
With all due respect, I am a member of the PDP. But I am a political scientist. We are not on the road to any vision 2020. 2020,how is that going to happen? Lets not deceive ourselves. There are some fundamental elementary transformation that needs to take place first. We are not working there. We can’t get agricultural policies right. We can’t get our banking policies right. We can’t get electricity supply right. We can’t get public transportation right. We can’t get health policies right. We can’t get foreign policies right. We can’t even organize a soccer team to win matches. We can’t control armed robbers. People are building personal prisons and calling it houses. We can’t even get our students in school to graduate and learn how to read and write properly. And we are talking about being among the most industrialized countries in the world in 2020.
How is that going to happen? How?
If I say that is a possibility, then my parents have wasted money in sending me to school. It is not possible. But if it happens, I will be the first to commend those who make it happen and enjoy it with them. I am ready to work to make it happen. But based on the contradiction, the conflicts and the crisis that I see right now in the country, it is not possible.
Corruption and 10 years of democracy
There is a difference between selective and not doing anything at all. It is better to be selective than not to do anything at all. Those who are saying they are being selective is because they have been selected or they have not been selected. That is why they are complaining. Ribadu did excellent work. Yes, there may have been some political pressures on him. But he laid a good foundation. And I think if we do not take the battle against corruption very seriously, all the other government policies will be undermined, subverted and totally derailed. Because corruption is a huge challenge. When you are talking of industrialization, you are talking of bureaucracy, security, you name it. We must take corruption seriously.
But you see corruption cannot be tackled by preaching about it. If you like keep arresting corrupt people, you will only fill up the prisons with people. Corruption can only be challenged, one, through social security. When the people are socially secured, they have no reason to steal to guarantee a future for themselves and their children because they know those children can go to school even whether they are around or not. Number two, massive industrialization with a special focuses on small and medium scale industries.
When people have jobs and they are secured in their jobs, they have no reason to want to tamper with available resources or engage in criminal acts in order to move on in life. The third is leadership by example and the strengthening of the necessary institutions and agencies to check corruption and criminality. Suddenly, the police no longer deal with corruption; it is only EFCC, why? Before EFCC, was police not dealing with corruption? Why did they remove it totally from the police and hand it to EFCC, because the Police has being run down as institution. It has lost its credibility. And it is seen to be part of the problem of corruption.
Now we have moved it to EFCC, already we are beginning to have problem with EFCC. I think our social priorties are just totally misplaced.
In Nigeria, a vehicle is not a means of mobility. It is a weapon of oppression. So it has been as big as possible. A house is not to provide an accommodation; you see a man and his wife and three children have a twenty five-room house. When the three children leave, the two of them move to the boys’ quarter. Because the big house is so lonely. The wife is even afraid to stay there when the man goes to work.
By NDUBUISI ORJI
Thursday, October 1, 2009
More Stories on This Section
Professor Ihonbvere, a former gubernatorial aspirant of the PDP in Edo State stated this in an interview with Daily Sun in Benin City.
The PDP chieftain who was former Special Adviser, Project Monitoring and Implantation to former President Olusegun Obasanjo said the Nigerian leadership has being everything but inspiring.
According to him, in any society, the leadership inspires the people to reach to the highest point of their potentials. Besides, he said a leadership ought to create the path to growth and open up new avenues for the citizens.
The academic turned politician said it is also the duty of the leadership to mobilize and effectively deplore resources to every segment of the society. As well as provide security and other basic needs of the majority of the people. All these he said the Nigerian leadership has not being doing.
In his words “look at the Nigerian leaders and tell me why they are doing that. No way. And even the islands of integrity in Nigeria are constantly contaminated and denigrated and harassed by vast majority of criminal elements that are masquerading as VIPs. What Fela will call vagabonds in power?
“So, for me I think the failure of leadership is the failure of Nigeria. There is total lack of vision. Lack of commitment. Lack of sensitivity. Lack of the ability to critically analyze and understand and prioritize the future path to growth and development. “They don’t read. They don’t even read newspapers. How many newspapers in a country of 150 million people? Over 200 universities if you take all of them together. Is there any newspaper in Nigeria that produces 500,000 copies a day? So, what are we talking about? How many publishers are publishing academic books in Nigeria. How many? Go to the library. The best libraries are ten years behind the relevant literature. How many bureaucrats in this country, including politicians can operate the computer and get on the Internet. We have not started. We better start taking ourselves seriously. So if there was a fourth world that is effectively where we belong now. And the better we work to get out of it the better for this country. The opportunities are there. The resources are here. The skills are there. The energies are there. But the leadership is lacking.”
Excerpts:
Visions and aspirations of the founding fathers
Definitely not. I am a patriot. I believe in Nigeria, I fought for democracy. I spent years in self-exile. I have done my part in government as an intellectual, as an activist, as a bureaucrat, as a consultant and you name it. But the good part is that I have traveled to over fifty countries in this world and I see what other nations have achieved. By that measure Nigeria has not lived up to the expectations of the people.
Come, lets look at it. The poverty in Nigeria is embarrassing. The rate of infrastructural dilapidation is a shame. The rate of institutional decay, you can’t even talk about it. Is it bureaucratic inefficiency or is it corruption? What area are we going to say? We can’t even set up a football team that can win matches on a consistent basis out of 150 million people. Hospitals are still consulting clinics or mortuaries. So, if I could pick one area and say yes, Nigeria has succeeded here, others should come and learn from it, then I will say no problem. But I can’t say it. Maybe there is something I am missing. But as a student of Nigeria political history, I cannot say it.
So, the leaders should ask themselves the question. They still go abroad on holidays. How many people from those countries come here on holidays. The countries we go to, how many people from there come to Nigeria on holidays? They have no shame. They have all their children schooling abroad. If the schools here were that good, why do people there not bring their own children here. When they steal money, the first place they run to is abroad. They steal more money in America than in Nigeria, why don’t the Americans bring the money here. We have no self-esteem, no self-respect, and no self-dignity. No sense of vision and no sense of mission and no sense of nation. And when you have that combination, there is a fundamental problem and unless you address it squarely, at the level of leadership, at the level of follower ship, we just keep moving around, like motion in a barber’s chair. A lot of motion but no progress. We are in the same place.
The problem with Nigeria
The problem with Nigeria as academic, I will say begins from the inherited distortions and dis-articulation of the system. But that has been consolidated and reproduced by bad, very bad, extremely bad leadership. In any society, the leadership inspires the people. They create the path to growth. They open up new avenues. They generate and guide national discourses. They inspire people to reach the highest point of their productive and creative abilities. They mobilize resources and carefully deplore these resources to productive segments of the society. They defend the security of the people; they address the provision of the basic human needs of the majority of the people.
Look at the Nigerian leaders and tell me where they are doing that. No way. And even the islands of integrity in Nigeria are constantly contaminated and denigrated and harassed by vast majority of criminal elements that are masquerading as VIPs. What Fela will call vagabonds in power? So where do we go? Where do we go? Look at contracts. Look at the number of abandoned projects in Nigeria, over twenty thousand of them. Everywhere littered with abandoned projects. Somebody awarded those contracts. Somebody claimed the money. Nobody is in jail.
You know the citizens don’t trust the police. Tenants don’t trust landlords. Landlord does not trust tenant. Students don’t trust teachers. Drivers don’t trust the passengers. Everywhere there is distrust. So where is the leadership going to tell us that they have succeeded.
So, for me I think the failure of leadership is the failure of Nigeria. There is total lack of vision. Lack of commitment. Lack of sensitivity. Lack of the ability to critically analyze and understand and prioritize the future path to growth and development. They don’t read. They don’t even read newspapers. How many newspapers in a country of 150 million people. Over 200 universities if you take all of them together. Is there any newspaper in Nigeria that produces 500000 copies a day? So, what are we talking about? How many publishers are publishing academic books in Nigeria. How many? Go to the library. The best libraries are ten years behind the relevant literature. How many bureaucrats in this country, including politicians can operate the computer and get on the Internet. We have not started. We better start taking ourselves seriously. So, if there was a fourth world that is effectively where we belong now. And the better we work to get out of it, the better for this country. The opportunities are there. The resources are here. The skills are there. The energies are there. But the leadership is lacking.
Where do we go from here?
To where?
Where does Nigeria go from here?
We will go to Oba Market (General laughter)
I have just told you of the contradictions. I have told you of the crisis of institutions and leadership. The crisis of politics. Crisis of resources. The contradictions in primordial attachments. Now we can only hope that the masses of the people themselves. The workers, the women, the youths, progressive communities, the professionals and intellectual, will begin to organize again. The only answer that the elite believe in, that they fear is mass action. Because they don’t want to lose the millions that they have looted and stored somewhere.
They don’t want to lose the beautiful houses that they have spent money on. They don’t want to lose the beautiful cars. So, when they see that the people are getting organized, speaking with one voice and struggling together, they begin to sit up and make concessions. If we all begin to pray, this people they are not afraid of prayer, they are not afraid of God, so, when you are praying they are happy. Because when you are praying, you don’t disturb them, you don’t complain about them. And they believe that God will not punish them. So, to me I will not say let all of us go and pray. We must organize first. Strategize. Fashion out alternative policies and programmes. Build new institutions and structures. Prepare for battle if and when necessary. Then we pray to God to give us the energy to succeed in the forthcoming engagement.
A mass action?
Historically all over the world that has always been the only solution. The only thing the bourgeoisie respect. Otherwise they are happy when you pray or when you say you want to do siddon look. They will encourage you to do siddon look. Because that means they can do what they like.
In fact, good people must get into politics. This is not the time for unnecessary theory. All those people who say they are progressives, socialists, communists, trade union leaders, let them come into politics and engage those who refuse to work for change. That is the only solution. If you like write two thousand books, if you don’t translate it into active politics of organizing, mobilizing people and engaging in direct electioneering and using your intellect to outsmart those illiterate criminals, we will be in the same spot. So, mass action. Serious political organization, because if you don’t have power you can’t change anything. Power builds schools. Powers deploys resources. Power ensues security. Power ensues you can build markets, hospitals, give voice to the voiceless. And we must all struggle for that power.
Vision 2020
With all due respect, I am a member of the PDP. But I am a political scientist. We are not on the road to any vision 2020. 2020,how is that going to happen? Lets not deceive ourselves. There are some fundamental elementary transformation that needs to take place first. We are not working there. We can’t get agricultural policies right. We can’t get our banking policies right. We can’t get electricity supply right. We can’t get public transportation right. We can’t get health policies right. We can’t get foreign policies right. We can’t even organize a soccer team to win matches. We can’t control armed robbers. People are building personal prisons and calling it houses. We can’t even get our students in school to graduate and learn how to read and write properly. And we are talking about being among the most industrialized countries in the world in 2020.
How is that going to happen? How?
If I say that is a possibility, then my parents have wasted money in sending me to school. It is not possible. But if it happens, I will be the first to commend those who make it happen and enjoy it with them. I am ready to work to make it happen. But based on the contradiction, the conflicts and the crisis that I see right now in the country, it is not possible.
Corruption and 10 years of democracy
There is a difference between selective and not doing anything at all. It is better to be selective than not to do anything at all. Those who are saying they are being selective is because they have been selected or they have not been selected. That is why they are complaining. Ribadu did excellent work. Yes, there may have been some political pressures on him. But he laid a good foundation. And I think if we do not take the battle against corruption very seriously, all the other government policies will be undermined, subverted and totally derailed. Because corruption is a huge challenge. When you are talking of industrialization, you are talking of bureaucracy, security, you name it. We must take corruption seriously.
But you see corruption cannot be tackled by preaching about it. If you like keep arresting corrupt people, you will only fill up the prisons with people. Corruption can only be challenged, one, through social security. When the people are socially secured, they have no reason to steal to guarantee a future for themselves and their children because they know those children can go to school even whether they are around or not. Number two, massive industrialization with a special focuses on small and medium scale industries.
When people have jobs and they are secured in their jobs, they have no reason to want to tamper with available resources or engage in criminal acts in order to move on in life. The third is leadership by example and the strengthening of the necessary institutions and agencies to check corruption and criminality. Suddenly, the police no longer deal with corruption; it is only EFCC, why? Before EFCC, was police not dealing with corruption? Why did they remove it totally from the police and hand it to EFCC, because the Police has being run down as institution. It has lost its credibility. And it is seen to be part of the problem of corruption.
Now we have moved it to EFCC, already we are beginning to have problem with EFCC. I think our social priorties are just totally misplaced.
In Nigeria, a vehicle is not a means of mobility. It is a weapon of oppression. So it has been as big as possible. A house is not to provide an accommodation; you see a man and his wife and three children have a twenty five-room house. When the three children leave, the two of them move to the boys’ quarter. Because the big house is so lonely. The wife is even afraid to stay there when the man goes to work.
By NDUBUISI ORJI
Thursday, October 1, 2009
More Stories on This Section
Talk of telepathy!
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