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Education and leadership recruitment for a plural society: A case for Nigeria

By Editor
27 October 2015   |   2:01 am
Text of a lecture delivered by Bishop Matthew Hassan KUKAH, at the Third Convocation Ceremony of the Afe Babalola University, Ado Ekiti on October 20, 2015 Preamble LET me make a public confession: I am not an educationist. Therefore, my concern is not to attempt to bore you with any analysis of the state of…
Buhari

Buhari

_Bishop-Mathew-Hassan-KukahText of a lecture delivered by Bishop Matthew Hassan KUKAH, at the Third Convocation Ceremony of the Afe Babalola University, Ado Ekiti on October 20, 2015

Preamble
LET me make a public confession: I am not an educationist. Therefore, my concern is not to attempt to bore you with any analysis of the state of education in our country today. We are all in agreement that like almost every facet of our national life, education is also lying prostrate. We are nowhere on the radar of the top ten Universities in Africa not to talk of the rest of the world. The irony however, is that somehow, without Nigerians, the state of education in the rest of the world would be totally different. Despite not being an educationist, I believe that as we say of politics and other areas of human survival, education is too serious a business to be left to educationists.

This is the right environment for us to explore the theme of leadership, because of the prospects that lie ahead and also because of the urgent need to find answers to the huge treasure that is our teeming and highly sophisticated youth. As I will show, it is in our interest as parents and as a nation to fall in line with the hopes, fears and aspirations of the youth today. They are far better skilled than we could ever have dreamt of, and increasingly, they no long rely on the conventional ladders of opportunity that worked for the old generation. They are becoming leaders in their own way and on their own terms.

The story of ISIS and Boko Haram today, are evidence of the capacity of the youth to exploit the possibilities that are open to them, albeit negatively. The emergence of ISIS and their creation of a cyber state, using the sophisticated technology that the earlier generation of extremist groups like Al-Qaeda could never have dreamt of, is a warning to us. For ISIS and its murderous agenda marks a major generational shift in strategy and focus. Therefore, for the sake of self-preservation, we need a generational conversation, and quickly too.

Many things conspired against us and led to the leadership conundrum in Nigeria. First, we inherited a convoluted colonial legacy that left behind a country hurriedly put together by the British colonialists as they opted to cut their losses when they realized that running empires was no longer a profitable and sustainable enterprise. Second, a hurriedly assembled and inexperienced bureaucracy and political class that were ill prepared for the challenges of managing a plural society were put in place. Despite their relative inexperience, this first generation of men and women were devout, dedicated, patriotic, honest and loved their jobs. Third, the military interrupted this journey, destroyed the foundation of our politics, poisoned our dreams and stained the banner of our national pride. A rapacious and predatory military elite propelled into power by greed and lust for power, engaged in an endless orgy of fratricidal coups and counter coups. A coup culture destroyed both the military ethos of spirit de corps, took us to a civil war and left us as a nation, severely wounded by the trauma of violence. Therefore those who praise the Asian Tigers and denigrate us must understand that had their Democracy been encumbered by military coups as we had in Nigeria, their fate would have been similar to ours. And, had the military left us alone, I am convinced we would have been standing shoulder to shoulder with the Asian Tigers in almost every sense.

I argue that it is a combination of the cumulative effect of these distorted experiences with leadership that accounts for Nigeria’s state of anomie. By the time the military left, a culture of coups had turned access to power into a violent preoccupation, based on the laws of the good, the bad and the ugly. Survival depended on who pulled the gun first. The military would over time diminish due process and integrity as a basis for access to power, and assign to themselves the right to decide who would govern and who would not. Thus, as General Babangida eloquently stated, the military could set up an election still and say: We do not know who will succeed us, but we know who will not. By narrowing this entrance of access to power, the military saw politics as a long, intricate, tiresome and negotiated exercise in co-optation and exclusion. It was somehow uncanny that in the same transition where General Babangida had said he knew those who would not succeed them, he was wrong footed by the decision of the people of Nigeria. The abortion of that process did not derogate its significance or lessons. The rest is history, but ordinary Nigerians had, by their action in those elections issued a yellow card to the military.

I believe that we must have a society where the race for any office or position has clear finishing lines. Just pause for a moment and imagine: If today, I were President Buhari, Senate President Saracen, Speaker Degaru (please ignore the height disadvantage or advantage), or any Governor and a young man said to me: “I would like to occupy your position one day, what should I do?” what answers would I or any of us here give to such a young person? Would we tell them what courses to study, what friends to make, what war chests to build, what god fathers to seek for, or would we just say,

It is the Lords’ doing?
The most dangerous thing in our politics is not so much the issue of our electoral body and its competence or lack of it. Thankfully and happily, my friend and my brother, Professor Attahiru Jega, the patron saint of Card Readers, is Chairman of this event. The qualities of electoral bodies are necessary but they are never sufficient conditions for ensuring the right electoral outcomes. However, the real issues remain the questions around who qualifies to contest elections, what machinery or qualifications should they have, how much money should they have, and so on? The political class remains the culprits because it is their action or inactions that determine the outcomes.

Among the worldwide commendations that the National Peace Committee for the 2015 Elections received, that of the Office of the Secretary General of the United Nations was quite salutary. In one of our many interactions, the Special Representative of the Secretary General, Dr Ibn. Chambas, stated how impressed the UN had been with the contributions of the Peace Committee. In a meeting with the Committee, he suggested the idea of a replication of this initiative around West Africa at least. As he said: Conducting elections in Africa should not be left to the major contenders in the contest. Our people require a mediating institution such as the NPC.

The point I am making here is that yes, we are turning the corner and we are all proud of what Professor Jega and his team achieved. However, the challenge now is how to ensure that there is really a level playing field that does not exclude anyone on any grounds whatsoever. We need to pose more questions. For example, in a plural and highly divided society like ours, how do we prepare the youth for a role in public life? It is not enough that a group of men simply sit around in the middle of the night and appoint a few women and elderly people to serve as Women or Youth Leaders. Why don’t we have Adult Leaders too? In most cases, all that these groups are expected to do is to merely serve as members of a Supporter’s club with no sense or hope of direct participation. Our challenge is to knock and insist that the doors of opportunity are opened to everyone in the freest and the fairest manner possible.

Managing Diversity: Education as a Foundation
This is not the place for me to attempt a review of the educational policies of our dear country, Nigeria. Suffice it to state what is already well known, namely, that we owe what we are today in the area of education in most parts of southern and mid-Northern Nigeria largely to the work of Christian missionaries.

In northern Nigeria, missionary presence was fraught with tensions due to the colonial policy of non-interference with Islam. This found expression in the segregatory decision to create Sabon garis1 among other divisive policies. The colonial state may have gained some measure of peace to enable it continue its exploitation of a colony and its people. However, in the long run, Nigeria has had to pay the price as the notion of a united and strong nation has remained a dream deferred. Sadly, we have not found a leader with enough vision to rouse our nation from slumber and to find a way of gently breaking the eggs of miniature nationalisms so as to make a national omelet of unity.

For example, when the colonial state stepped in to take on the challenges of providing western education in northern Nigeria, they targeted the ruling classes and saw education as a means of consolidating the hold of the feudal classes. In his book, An Imperil Twilight, Sir Gawain Bell, the last colonial Governor of Northern Nigeria noted among other things that although education came late to the north and was open to all children with character, there was always a bias in favour of: a boy whose father was an Emir or District Head, and who was likely to succeed to the responsibility of his father’s office2.

The substance and thrust of the colonial narrative focused on the fact that we were a dark continent infested with paganism and sorcery. Their mission, they said, was one of civilizing and taming the African mind. To acquire this education or civilisation required that our hearts and minds be emptied of the demons that had held us down. The asymmetrical nature of the relationship was never in doubt. The perception or assumption of the superiority of the white man was also taken for granted.

Rudyard Kipling’s, epic poem, The White Man’s Burden, remains one of the most cited pieces of writing that sought to legitimate imperialism. Although written for a different context, the essence was the same. Kipling wrote his poem in 1899 as a paean to imperialism and although the United States had itself been a victim of British colonialism, he nonetheless recommended this bitter pill to them. The United States had already signed a treaty which brought Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines and Guam under American control. The words of the poem had power and resonance and even President Roosevelt confessed that although it was not a great poem, still, it was a historic piece of writing. Some lines of the poem went as follows:
Take up the White Man’s burden—
Send forth the best ye breed—
Go send your sons to exile
To serve your captives’ need
To wait in heavy harness
On fluttered folk and wild—
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child
Take up the White Man’s burden
In patience to abide
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride.

This is not the time or the place for us to review the history of colonialism and the literature that accompanied it. The challenge now is not so much the need to dwell on how we were wronged by colonialism. It is not even to pose the sterile question of whether it was good or bad for us. The real challenge is, what lessons have we learnt? How have others risen from the rubbles of colonialism to build great nations while Nigeria still remains at the bottom of the hill? How do we manage diversity in an age of globalisation or shall we remain weighed down by the yoke of our own internal slavery, driven by constant self-flagellation and self-doubt? Globalisation is now before us like a broken dam and we either learn how to swim, fish or be drowned by it.

Clearly, Nigerians generally decided to make peace with the colonial state and accept it as a necessary evil. Indeed, even when the first generation of Nigerians rose up to clamour for independence, it was based on the new tools that western education had given to them either through the missionaries or the state. The struggle for freedom was also tied to the privilege to move to the European quarters or the Government Reservation Areas, GRAs, taking over the offices and the paraphernalia of power. Not much has changed. Check out the location of the big boys, those who live in Asokoro and those who live in Nyanya and ask why the Nyanya of this world have become the fault lines of death.

Understandably, the focus on education was largely to ensure the quality of personnel required to run an efficient civil service. Some scholars have argued rather controversially that the prestige of the civil service attracted some of the best brains while those who could not compete went into the Army or politics. This may not be the case in reality, but it definitely has fitted into part of the popular narrative. If we reject all of this, then we must find an explanation for why it took us almost fifty years to have a University graduate as a President and why we actually did not have any as a military head of state!

It is difficult to identify any clear evidence that we had leaders who really thought through very clearly the challenges of managing a plural society. At a gathering of African bishops in Rome some two years ago, we had to discuss the issues of Religion and Violence in Africa. Understandably, since it is an area in which we have achieved optimal notoriety most of the attention turned to me and our endless crises with Boko Haram. As it is with these issues, you try to put up a brave face. However, two bishops from Tanzania and Zambia intervened giving account of their experience with managing diversity. They both came to the conclusion that although they were materially poor, ethnic violence had not been much on their menu. They all explained the fact that both President Nyerere and Kaunda had developed policies that deliberately sought to create a united and peaceful country. Therefore, they ensured that senior civil servants were sent far away from their areas of birth. In this way, they argued, most of their educated elite and their children spoke at least three languages, namely, those of ethnic origin, those of their adopted homes, along with Swahili and English. Here, we did not seem to have had a language or cultural policy and this is why language and culture have become weapons of war among our people today. Sadly, we have been left neither rich nor peaceful but victims of self-immolation, violence and death.

The founding fathers did not do enough to address the issues of education as a tool for national integration. The idea of a sound education as a basis for entering public life was not given much attention. The north which was, then as now, still far behind on the ladder, had come to rely on civil servants from the south to fill in for such jobs in the civil service, Education, Health care and the Judiciary especially. With time, the presence of southerners would later be seen by politicians as a threat to the north.

The pursuit of the Northernisation policy of the Sardauna would later set the northern political elite against their southern colleagues and then prepare the ground for the events that led to the civil war. Still, not much has changed today because there is hardly any single State or Federal University or Hospital in the north that has enough local manpower to sustain itself. There are therefore still rumbling complaints about professionalism and sons or daughters of the soil taking over the tables of power because they have arrived. The result is that we cannot meet international standards because the only qualifications people often have are that they have arrived to take over their commonwealth. For a diverse nation, this is dangerous to growth and diminishes national cohesion. What could we have done differently? To answer this question, let us see what others have done differently.

Some tales from Elsewhere: Education for Managing Diversity
Nigerians like to argue that, somehow, our problems lie in the pluralism of our ethnic and cultural differences. We focus so much on these differences that we do not see their possibilities and prospects for uniting our peoples and countries. Managing pluralism requires some clarity of vision, purposeful commitment, discipline and sacrifice on the part of the leadership. How these leaders are recruited, the platform from which they emerge, the development of an internal culture and the succession plans are the key drivers. It is the vision of a leader or leaders that shape the goals to be achieved and the individuals or groups required to drive and achieve these visions.

All of this, or most of this is tied to the nature of the choices a nation makes in its educational policy choices. If a man has five children, four males and one female or vice versa, something is likely to give. The girl with four brothers is likely to end up as a tomboy. She will likely play games like football and so on. Conversely, four girls and one boy will probably give you a spoilt brat who believes that he has five women looking after him, or, he could end up loving netball! A family with a disabled child will have to help the siblings understand how to deal with their brother or sister. Nothing is precise, but just to say that managing differences requires diplomacy, skills and honesty. Mere good will is not enough. There have to be policies to integrate and support the weak or the vulnerable so as to ensure that everyone can make their contribution.

For a nation, the challenge is not too different, only bigger. It requires that a leader possesses deep knowledge of his/her environment and then set about mobilizing the people to a collective vision. Our question here is, how have other countries managed diversity, develop and achieved national cohesion? The issues here fall under what our historians and social scientists have often referred to as the national question. The national question is an aggregate summary of the visions, the dreams, fears, hopes and the imagination of a world that is possible but not necessarily in sight. Such visions are often captured in speeches made by leaders. Let us take two examples.

The timeless Gettysburg speech of Abraham Lincoln, delivered literally against the backdrop of the debris of the destruction caused by the civil war over one hundred and fifty years ago, captured a vision that has continued to drive the very philosophy and being of the United States of America. In the speech, he announced the birth of: a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are born equal. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here …..It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us….that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain….that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Taken together with its Constitution, along with the notion of a people under God (the Bible), successive American leaders have emerged to build the greatest country on earth with the adoption of the principles of Democracy captured in the last line of the speech. The vision of the founding fathers of a city on a hill has been kept alive and has continued to guide the leadership of that great country. For over two hundred years of its history, it was an unwritten dictum that aspirants to the White House had to be White, Anglo Saxon Protestant (WASP) and of course male!

• Kukah is the Bishop of Catholic Diocese, Sokoto

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