‘Nigeria is old enough to develop its own leadership system’

Toye Sobande is the author of The Leadership Myth: Why Leadership Development Principles Do Not Work in Sub-Saharan Africa. Sobande, who holds a PhD in Strategic Leadership from Regent University, Virginia Beach, U.S., is a strategic leadership expert, lawyer, conference speaker and trainer. He is also the President of Stephens Leadership Consultancy LLC, a strategy and management consulting firm offering creative insight and solutions to businesses and leaders. In this interview with IJEOMA THOMAS-ODIA, he shares his thoughts on the preparations for the 2023 general election, the role Nigerians should play and leadership qualities needed to improve the country’s economy.

What kind of leadership do you think Nigeria needs at this time?
In this part of our world, we have not had sufficient experience as to what leadership is about. So, it’s actually very difficult for people to describe what kind of leadership we want. This is because we are used to our form of governance that I call ‘rulership’. What we have under the current governance system in this country is ‘rulership’ not leadership.

A leader communicates vision, which is the desirable future. When you appoint, elect or select a leader, the first responsibility is to map out a strategy for a better future and to communicate that vision. A ruler does not communicate and does not draw a vision; there is no vision as to where you are going. So, when you watch the kind of people we have produced overtime in this country, how many of them have shown visions that involve and encompass all Nigerians?

We want a leadership that talks to the people and empathises with them. We want a leadership that is able to look into the eyes of the people and give them hope and encouragement in the midst of uncertainty; a leader that helps those who are in despair to understand that tomorrow will be better. We want a leader who makes sacrifices and encourages people to do so as well to better the future of our country and that of our children’s children.

Is it then safe to say Nigerians have rulers and not leaders at the helm of affairs?
We have been pretending to have leadership, but we have never had it. We have been pretending to produce leaders but we have never produced leaders because for you to have leadership, you need a leadership development system. For you to have medical doctors, you need a medical school, same for lawyers and other professions. How many leadership schools have produced leaders who are political office holders that certify them as credible leaders? It is dangerous when a pilot doesn’t go to an aviation school and is allowed to fly a plane. He will most definitely crash the plane. So, it’s equally the same experience when you have people pretending to be leaders who have never been to a leadership or governance school.

The problem is that it is not being in a position that makes a leader; becoming a political office holder does not mean you are a leader. When most Nigerians are discussing leadership issues, they become so emotional and agitated. This is because they mix it up; they are confusing political office holders with leaders. They are not the same. The fact that somebody holds a political office does not mean that the person is a leader; there is a big difference. The leader takes responsibility for the people as well as for their future. When you look at our experiences in this nation, they don’t fit into the class I have mentioned. A ruler talks to the people as if he is doing them a favour. That is why you hear things like, ‘I gave you road and pipe-borne water’. But all these things were done using the money of the tax payers. So, when you measure the performance of leadership by what I have highlighted as against what our guys are doing in the government today, you will see that we have been having pretenders as leaders.

So what exactly is Nigeria doing wrong compared to other nations where leadership works?
One of the things we started doing wrong was that after independence, we copied a system of government from our colonial masters – the parliamentary system. We practiced it for a while and jettisoned it and borrowed the presidential system from the United States. So largely, what we have been doing wrong is copying and pasting different systems of government and trying to apply it here without understanding that the copying and pasting is contextual. There is a context to which what you have copied works.

Our governmental structure looks like a federal structure but it is not. You can tell by looking at the provisions of the constitution on the exclusive and concurrent lists. It gives more power to the centre and makes the federating units very weak. That is not a federal structure. Systemically, we are deficient, such that the system cannot produce the kind of leadership that Nigerians are aspiring to have until we change the system. We don’t need to copy anymore.

Nigeria has grown to an age where we can develop our own leadership system that is peculiar to our orientation and our prevailing model, which is our culture. We need one that is peculiar to the kind of future we want to have for our nation. We have never had that opportunity since independence when the government was handed over to us. Our emphasis over the years has been on ethnic, cultural or tribal diversity. Nobody thrives on diversity anymore. What we need is a collective identity.

Our educational system is not designed, in terms of its curriculum, to produce an exceptional Nigerian that can think creatively and innovatively. What we have been doing is just copy and paste. We just attend lectures. On exam day, they give you questions and you answer them and you go. There is no practical application to people’s lives. So, those who designed the curriculum and handed it over to us designed it in such a way that it was to produce clerical and administrative staff who could interpret what the white man was saying and help them write letters. And the curriculum has not changed till date. So, looking at it theoretically, our policies seem to work in the books. If everything is done according to the way they are written down, everything should work out. Why is it that in the practical sense it doesn’t work? People don’t trust leadership or politicians; that’s why there is this apathy towards politics, the political parties and elections.

Why do you think that leadership development principles in Nigeria don’t work?
That is principally what I captured in my book, Why Leadership Principles Do Not Work In Sub-Saharan Africa. With the peculiar attitude known to us as Nigerians, what leadership style will be best suited for us based on our prevailing mental model? You can’t come and implement lofty ideas and principles in an environment without being mindful of our culture; you can’t build that kind of principle on a lawless Nigerian. The average Nigerian is lawless. You can test this by driving on the streets of Lagos. You will see traffic and wonder why there is traffic only to get to the end of the road and find out that it’s because people are crossing the road when there is a bridge in front of them. So the government wasted money to build a bridge to save lives. Government installed barricades to discourage people from crossing the road but people pulled the barricades down and chose to cross the road. With that kind of prevailing mental model, you can’t build a sustainable leadership principle in a place where people would rather pray than think. They are more religious than to obey the law. They go to church, do anointing services and vigils. And then at the end of the service on the way to the car park they are quarreling over who is going out first. They are not nice enough to themselves; so you now begin to wonder what kind of religion we are practicing where there is no love, compassion or empathy. The value systems have been largely eroded because of the quest for survival and money.

So what would you proffer as a solution to the leadership challenge in the country right now?
We need a long-term solution but people want a quick fix. And I always say this – you cannot discuss a new Nigeria with the hungry Nigerian. They won’t listen. So whatever solution we have to proffer, we have to break it down into different parts: The immediate solutions that can help cushion the effect of poverty and suffering; the medium one that gets results in the short term and a long lasting one where we should focus our attention on.

For us to solve our political problems, crisis and leadership issues, the institutions that are still standing should live up to their responsibilities. The religious institution is one. The leadership model demonstrated by those in leadership offices in our churches and mosques will go a long way to inform how people behave in the society. When we go to our churches and our pastors are sitting on gold-plated thrones, looking expensive and flamboyant, we are communicating something to the people. That has to be corrected. That is an institution that should model justice, simplicity and humility for people to emulate. But when people go to church and they see that kind of lifestyle, they want to desire that kind of lifestyle. A lot of churches are doing a lot of amazing works in schools and community charity projects but we need to do more.

There are still institutions that have the trust of the people, and that is what we should use to help Nigerians develop a sense of obedience to the law and do away with lawlessness. People who go to church still cheat; they falsify documents and their age. You cannot be a religious person and yet practice those things. You must be the light of the world to change things. We have a way of conditioning people’s minds. If we condition the mind of the people to ensure that they believe in the value of honesty, things will work out.

But we need more investment in the educational system to develop quality, creative and innovative minds that will carry out research and development and produce products or services that can serve Nigeria instead of importation. Our young Nigerians are very entrepreneurial; they just need an enabling environment. So, the institutional framework has to be restructured in such a way that whatever solutions we want to bring on board are going to sustain whatever we are doing.

Another issue is that Nigerians analyse politics from their bedrooms a lot. They mock the government on all social media handles and yet they are not members of political parties and they want change. We cannot transform our country if we are not members of the political parties. In politics, you cannot be a spectator and expect governance to succeed. People complained about the convention of one of the political parties that there were a lot of impositions and consensus, but those people were not involved. They are not members of the party. They didn’t go there to express their dissatisfaction. So Nigerians themselves are not even taking responsibility for their own lives. People should go to the political parties and join them en mass, and not just as a card-carrying members. They should attend political meetings, be part of the agenda and the activities of the political party. That is where you can influence decisions. Go there and participate in the meetings, do the amala politics with them.

Most of the people being used as pawns by politicians are the jobless people and those who are economically down. So, the dimension of political parties in Nigeria is that a good number of them are not established on clear ideologies.

When we are involved in politics, the professionals among us will help them develop a sustainable ideology, which will be the core engine room of the political party. We should be able to pull resources together so that nobody will be able to attack our political party because we are all contributing.

And we need to encourage and force the government by starting a campaign to ensure that there is a regulatory framework towards the funding of political parties. It is now that we are reacting to 2023, when the key players in the electoral process have done their work 10 or five years ago. If you were not part of it then, you cannot be part of it now. Politicians don’t rig elections anymore; they now rig the system against the people. Then it becomes easy for them to impose their own candidates. They are strategic about it, so we also have to be very strategic. We respectfully follow the rules of the party and honour the elders, no matter how archaic the ideas are. We have to go there and study the language on the streets. People join political parties and the first thing they want to do is to run for office. What you should be fighting for is to ensure that the party develops an idea that is suitable for Nigeria, and can secure a future for Nigerians.

That is where the fate of leadership of the political party will be felt in the grassroots. That is where the masses really are and that is where we can take governance closer to the people.

Also, let there be an auditing process of the political parties in Nigeria. There is need to publish the audited financial reports of all the political parties for us to see who gave what, who are the donors to the political party and what was the money spent on. We should also compel politicians to submit audited reports of their political spending and earnings. When we follow the money, we know where the crime is. If you want to solve a problem, in this case, just follow the money and trace the money. A lot of them who are in political offices today used the state’s resources to fund and hijack their political party structures.