Earlyface

What many opulent Nigerians term as
leadership is the exhibition of their exotic
cars, power bikes, mansions, companies,
pictures from foreign lands they went for
holidays, their glowing wives, husbands,
children and concubines. They show-off
these on the internet, newspapers, TV and,
make commentaries on the radio for self-
exaltation. They see leadership as titles and
not, how many of their loved ones and
followership they have positively influenced
or would do. They see their gallery of wealth
as the influence they are giving to those
who look up to them. Since the wealthy in
the society see these things as leadership,
there has been tremendous leadership
shortage in the country.
Because of this type of mindset to
leadership, the consequences are where we
are at present: virtually everybody is
shortcutting what used to be the gradual
process of living to attain a height of
financial wealth. While many are doing this,
they do not know that they are like those
who ignorantly use pills to reduce weight,
oblivious that they are digging for more
danger to their lives than the natural weight
they had thought was unbecoming.
Shortcuts have consequence. A critical look
at it would attest to the fact that it’s this
reason that governments at all levels in
Nigeria have not gotten anything right. They
implement policies that are not formidably
executed; they read yearly budget that do
not commensurate with the on ground
works, and so on. Due of leadership
shortage in Nigeria, many things are now
worse, than any emergency approach given
them.
Gaining influence is just the meaning of
leadership and not, showing of influence.
Many Nigerians do not think about the next
step to take in order to uplift humanity here,
but the next exotic car to paint the street
red, the next mansion to build in order to
intimidate the next neighbour, the next
holiday picture to post online in order to
compel family and friends to begin to bite
their fingers.
Those the leaders want to cheer them are
hungry and many do not even have hope of
where their next meal would come from,
where money for their next house rent
would be raised from. What some of these
leaders define as leadership is just the
addiction of showing their wealth to their
hapless followership, as if they are
employees working very hard for
promotions.
While they want the financially poor masses
to be promoting them, the only agenda they
have for them, are those intimidating
outings they make for the poor to be lavishly
glaring at and admiring them, without a
twinge of conscience of where they placed
the poor in life. Their acquisitions mean a lot
to them and not, the welfares of the
subjugated masses.
Leadership shortage has made many
Nigerians to be sitting on the bare ground
today. The leaders want the led to see
Nigeria as a country that should mean a lot,
without them leaders seeing the poor to
mean anything to them. Rarely is there any
opportunity that would enhance the growth
of the poor individual like it is wont in the
so-called developed world, where the level
of opportunities to school appropriates the
level of corruption in Nigeria.
In Nigeria, many people’s understanding of
the concept of “God” is just political. They
use ‘God bless you’ in order to make people
accept them as godly people, whereas they
find blessing anybody really good somewhat
hard thing to do. Apart from their gallery of
wealth, the next thing they so much show in
the public is “God”. They do not have a more
realistic view of theirselves. They see the act
of leadership as a correlation between
wealth and amassing of it; not a relationship
between leading and the masses.
Because leadership has been assumed to be
the position of those with much wealth, the
poor would no longer guarantee self as one
capable of being a leader. The poor has
been so much intimidated by the rich to
always believe that leadership has a
residence with those that call the shots in
the society. This is a widely misunderstood
fact. Leadership is not a position, but an
activity, not like the idea that the highest
bidder goes with the prize, but an act of
showing comprehensive examples for
others to follow in the promotion of
humanity and not, when there is something
that has to do with politics and business
alone.
Perhaps, this could be the reason a Vikas
Swarup, the author of The Accidental
Apprentice (and Slumdog Millionaire), was
quoted as saying: “Leadership is the one
competency that cannot be learnt in
management school. A manager is trained
to do things right; a leader does the right
things. It is not a matter of training and
preparation, but one of instinct and
conscience.”
Therefore, the conscience of leadership has
to be reborn; not the everyday reborn of
titles and showing-off of acquisitions.
Nigerians at all level must make the citizenry
better by eschewing the love to
obsequiousness. It is a killing behaviour,
when anyone sees the promotion of exotic
cars as leadership or those who purchase
such cars for the simple purpose to
intimidate others as leaders.
It is time Nigerians began to see these types
of leaders who do nothing but to exhibit
their numerous wealth as persons who
have limited contributions to make for the
wellbeing of Nigeria. Remove those material
items from them and be amazed how empty
they are. Everybody can have positive impact
and become a leader. Against this backdrop,
leadership must be seen as an art for
influencing another in direction for the
wellbeing of the society and not, for the
individual buttering. We must take the
advise by a John Izzo, PhD, whose write-ups
suggest that Leadership is not about what
your business card says, what your title is,
or where you sit on the organizational chart
in your company. Leadership is a posture, it
is a decision that you want to have influence
over others in a positive way.