If you are a graduate management student whose major is not organizational leadership, you are still mandated to take some leadership courses. There are many books on leadership, but two books stand out: these books are Leadership by Peter G. Northhouse and Leadership Challenge by Kouzes and Posner. What I am going to do in this essay is not academic exercise, but a practical guide to leadership and its challenge. For me, there are two dimensional arms of leadership: technical skill and human relation skill and a good leader has to score 9, 9 on Blake Mouton scale. 9, 9 means a mathematical coordinate of X and Y axis, high in technical knowledge and high human relation. A score of 10, 10 mean 100% in those two dimensions, but because of human fallibility, this may not be all that easy to achieve.
Whenever I am in a class to teach my students, in any thematic approach, the first thing I do is the definition of the term, so that we would not miss the mark; this may be too elementary, but the problem with problem solving is starting the solution of anything from a wrong definitional datum. If a wrong diagnosis is given to a disease, all medications will be zilch and no effect.
Call the name of what a problem represents, then you will hit a harmony in all that you do from there to proffer its solution. A classic example is the myriad of problems confronting the Nigerian nation; and since we refused to define the problems clearly, the solutions will elude us forever. We have to define what Nigeria is and what she is not. Peter Drucker said that organization should clearly state the business that defines it and that, that does not define it. Our problem in Nigeria is a leadership problem, and it is no more a news.
Now, what is leadership? A according to Northhouse, leadership is a process whereby an individual influences a group and motivates that group of individuals to achieve a common goal. The adherents of Northouse’s school opine that leadership is a process, it connotes influence, and the context of leadership is the group or people and there must be a common goal. For the fact that leadership is a process challenges the school of thought that leadership is a trait, which is if you are not born with it, you cannot lead. This does not mean that some people are not born with extraordinary leadership traits. Leadership is an influence; this seems to be the pivotal of leadership.
Without an influence and motivation of the subjects, you can never succeed as a leader. Leadership derived from coercion does not last and that is an aberration of leadership. A leader has to do things right, be upright and be above board to court respect and influence. Leadership occurs in a group of people, the people are the followers, so in the leadership process, there has to be leaders and followers. Leadership runs smoothly when there is a common goal uniting the people, and if there is a division, leadership will fail unless people are held together by force, and that will be for a moment.
Though leadership is a process, and some people can be trained to be good leaders, but Northhouse enumerates five factors that can enhance leadership qualities: they include intelligence, self-confidence, determination, integrity and sociability. The American President, Barack Obama has all these five traits. This is it and any president anywhere that lacks any of these five leadership qualities will not make an excellent leader. George Bush was not an excellent president because his intelligence was in doubt, despite being a graduate of Harvard.
If the chicken comes home to roost, no matter how we bury our heads like ostrich, Nigeria is one thousand years behind in leadership process. The North-South divide on terms and acceptance of what leadership is and what is not will make Nigeria the worst country in the leadership process. I like Buhari, but my only grouse with him is his lopsided appointments as if other ethnic groups do not exist; and he is turning out to be the problem confronting Nigeria at the moment. When we have leadership that will be defined by Arewa Consultative Forum or the Sultan then we have missed the leadership process and we as nation will never succeed no matter how we try.
Voting for a leader in Nigeria, especially in the center will always be driven by ethnic coloration, and with this, Nigeria is a failed marriage before going to the altar. Another obstacle is, so far religion is not placed away from the Nation state; our dear country will be doomed forever. Some of the adherents of Islam and Christianity are the purveyors of problems in our country, especially some intolerant Moslems, who think that everybody has to be Islamized for peace to reign.
Check out that Pastor killed by Muslim fanatics in Kubwa, Abuja and the Igbo woman killed in Kano. A Japanese foreign minister once said that Americans would not march them in technology because the American intelligential squad was diluted by Blacks and Hispanics. In the same vein, Nigeria will always drag herself behind because of the likes of those idiots that kill innocent Nigerians without a cause in the name of religion. These fools do not contribute anything positive to our nation except showing us the ways of ISIS and Boko Haram. There are many reasons why the North opposes restructuring; it is not in their favor.
Everybody knows that the Igbos are marginalized, the Niger Delta are eating from the master’s table, in the oil that is dug at their fathers’ backyards and collectively, the South, but it is all right with the frontiers of Arewa soldiers. Nationhood is not built this way and we are deceiving ourselves. Buhari cannot vote with his conscience that the Nigerian state is not due for negotiation and restructuring. WARNING!!. Buhari, let Nigeria not disintegrate under your watch.
What we have is a forced marriage and negotiation will be ongoing until every group feels good to be in the union, otherwise agitation and secession will never be things of the past. Our union is not strong, it is flawed and there must be negotiation on how we shall live together. This was articulated in the last Confab report organized by Jonathan administration. How can the Secretary to the Federal Government of Nigeria describe the Confab participants as boys who were paid off? This comment can only come from ignorant and arrogant Nigerian, and he spoke the minds of Arewas. Again, how can the learned professor, Osibanjo said that Nigeria needed no restructuring. Is this what politics has done to the former Redeemed pastor, lying through his teeth?
If we don’t change our ways of doing things, if we don’t wean ourselves off the rustic religious and ethnics fabrics and if we don’t practice true leadership in which a leader who possesses the five leadership traits enunciated by Northouse is voted into power, Nigeria will continually lack a leader with the appropriate competencies which will prevent us from joining the comity of progressive, civilized and economic stable nations.
I know my name is not known in Nigeria for respect and honor, but what I am writing here is that unless a leader emerges who can unite the country and be the president all and rejects any form of corruption, then agitations, criminal intents, destruction of infrastructures, ethnicism and threat of succession will weaken the Nigerian state; and one day, the country will disintegrate for good. A nation in which all appointments are cornered to the caliphate and others can go to hell will soon ceased to be a united country.
We are no more in the 1960s; we are in an era ruled by Internet, Facebook, twitter, Google WhatsApp and MySpace. People always say that Igbos like business; they do so because when they graduate, no person helps them to locate a job in the Nigerian state even when they are qualified more than others. Biafra cause is championed today because those youths are frustrated and they are treated like strangers in their own country. But who cares to engage them and to know their grouses.
Danger is lurking around, the Niger Delta, the Igbos and the Middle Belts are gathering together for a common cause. The progressive elements in the Oduduwa will soon join the forum. Remember, Niger Delta and the Igbos are the former old Eastern Region and marginalization is bringing them together again as the line that divides them is almost gone; something catastrophy may happen if their problems are not addressed. The seismic fault line is Hausa/Fulani verses the rest. I like Nigeria to be one. But Buhari, if your mission is to conquer the rest of the country to protect the Caliphate, you may be surprise! Change your ways and listen.
Chukwuma Iwuanyanwu writes from Los Angeles (Romnna@stu.argosy.edu)