The role of dedicated followership in participatory democracy – Part 2

To be sure, the difficulty in defining the term employed from the dual perspective of a leader or a follower (Crossman & Crossman, 2011, p. 483) speaks to the connexion between leadership and followership.

However, there is a preponderance of mangement-inclined definitions of followership. John S. McCallum, a Professor of Finance, at the I. H. Asper School of Business, University of Manitoba, defines followership as “the ability to take direction well, to get in line behind a programme, to be part of a team and to deliver on what is expected of you. It gets a bit of a bad rap! How well the followers follow is probably just as important to enterprise success as how well the leaders lead” (McCallum, 2013). In a management focused scholarship, Robert Kelley (1988) observed the absence of attention or focus on follower in management’s obsession with better leaders. In his words, “… Leaders matter greatly. But in searching so zealously for better leaders we tend to lose sight of the people these leaders will lead. Without his armies, after all, Napoleon was just a man with grandiose ambitions. Organizations stand or fall partly on the basis of how well their leaders lead, but partly also on the basis of how well their followers follow.”

Kelley (1988) goes further to provide a typology of the qualities of what he has called effective followers. These include self-mangement, that is, they are able to manage themselves well; commitment to the organization, goal, and to principle; competency in terms of skill and disposition to further learning; and courage expressed in honest, and credible behaviour. Bjugstad et al. (cited in Crossman & Crossman 2011: 483) articulates a leader-centred view of followership “defined as the ability to effectively follow the directives and support the efforts of a leader to maximize a structured organization.’

While there is glut of literature on the phenomenon of followership in the management sciences, there is a lack in respect of followership in Nigeria, especially in the sphere of politics. Discourses on followership thrive in the public sphere in terms of rhetoric, propaganda and buck-passing by political leadership. One very old assumption about followership in Nigeria is the saying that the Nigerian people are very docile and that when beaten to the wall, instead of a fight back, they will jump the wall. Omorogieva Liberty Omoruyi (2022) argues that followership not leadership is the core problem of Nigeria in ways that underscore the charge of docility or apathy.

He stresses the “‘It doesn’t matter’ syndrome that causes matters to arise.” He further argues that over time the masses compound the Nigerian condition due to their nonchalance attitude towards politics that ensures that the people neither scrutinise leadership aspirants nor vote for the right candidates. There is near-abdication of the business of governance to those in position of authority who employ it to aggrandise themselves. As he puts it, “The majority of the citizens leave the business of governance to the few who are in various positions of authority or in government and this is one of the chief reasons politicians are not accountable to the people. Governance becomes a secret business and shady deals are made; loans are taken without citizens’ consent (Omoruyi, 2022).”

Omoruyi further notes that the negligence of the followers to participate in public affairs has only perpetrated enduring hardship. According to him, politics “affects almost all human endeavors and workings in society.”  He expresses the belief that “if the people rise, things will change for the best because evil and illegitimate government prevails because the people choose to be ignorant or are kept in ignorance.”

Two, Nigerians suffer from partial amnesia; we forget easily, therefore, we allow history to repeat itself. Wole Soyinka (1994, p. x) speaks to this reality in his justifications of his book, Ibadan, The Penkelemes Years, “Underlying it all is also agonising, truly lamentable brief memory span that appears to bedevil my society. Well, perhaps, it is not so much a matter of mental retention as the seeming inability to extend meaningfully the affective span of memory.”

Three, the population, especially the youth are lazy. Instead of seeking productive engagement they are vegetating in action and seeking easy way out of their hapless position. In relation to the third assumption President Mohammadu Buhari can be credited for voicing ex-cathedra at the Commonwealth Business Forum in far away London in April of 2018. According to him, “ More than 60 per cent of the population is below 30, a lot of them haven’t been to school and they are claiming that Nigeria is an oil producing country, therefore, they should sit and do nothing, and get housing, healthcare, education free” (Ogundipe, 2018).”

Earlier in February 2016, in an interview with UK Telegraph, the President said some Nigerians in the UK, mostly youth, were disposed to criminality and should not be granted asylum there. These charges underline the continuing relevance of the discourse on followership.

Indeed, the followership question has attracted the attention of many Nigerians and organisations. The Nigerian Guardian Newspaper in its editorial of May 7, 2018, while operationalising the relations of roles between leadership and followership notes that “Recent happenings have come to query the leadership quotient of this country. Smarting from a carry-over of inept leadership and deliberate planlessness, Nigeria seems to have gravitated into a helpless state of inertia… Thus to avert the cascading mediocrity that is so deleterious to leadership, there is need to build the capacity of Nigerians for leadership. It is not that this country does not have good forward-looking and result-oriented leaders, the problem is their absence from the political class… The problem of leadership does not rest with public office holders alone. The vast majority who see themselves as followers also have a role to play. To paraphrase an old maxim, the surest way for evil to thrive is for good people to do nothing…That Nigeria finds itself in the leadership quagmire is partly traceable to the followership that condones maladministration and lawlessness, and is also apathetic of the state of the nation.”
To be continued tomorrow

Prof. Akhaine delivered this paper at the 46th annual conference of the Institute of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators of Nigeria, at the Muson Centre, Lagos, recently.