Plato’s Idea of “Philosopher King” and Nigeria’s Leadership Crisis -By Ezinwanne Onwuka

In Plato’s Republic, a canonic centerpiece of all Western thought, the great thinker proposes an ideal state, a model of how the best political community should be structured and governed.

In the book, we first read of the “philosopher king,” an idea according to which the best form of government is that in which philosophers rule.

Plato, like all philosophers, is a product of his time and immediate environment. He sought a cure for the ills of society, not in politics, but in philosophy. It is because of the political instability in the Athenian society that Plato wrote his famous book, The Republic, and arrived at his fundamental and lasting conviction that those ills would never cease until philosophers become rulers or rulers become philosophers.

Thus, the key to the notion of the “philosopher king” is that the philosopher is the only person who can be trusted to rule well. This provides the rationale for one of Plato’s most startling claims that “the human race will not see better days until either the stock of those who rightly and genuinely follow philosophy acquire political authority, or else the class who have political control be led by some dispensation of providence to become real philosophers.”

Taking a look at the situation in Nigerian politics, it seems that we (Nigerians), like the Athenians, are faced with the same leadership problems. Having done away with military leadership, Nigerians thought that embracing democratic rule would bring to us a responsive and responsible political institution that would promote a government that is accountable, government that would prevent corruption, respect human and civil rights, and ensure popular sovereignty, but the reverse is the case.

The most urgent issue in Nigeria currently seems to be the issue on how to address the problem of leadership. And the leadership crisis experienced in Nigeria is largely a consequence of the kind of individuals we elect into office. individuals who can be described as selfish, wasteful, self-centered, inhuman, manipulative, corrupt and unpatriotic.

To Plato, it seemed natural that competence should be the qualification for authority. The ruler of the state should be one who has the peculiar abilities to fulfill that function.

In Nigerian politics, to the contrary, and despite an endless litany of past failures, we still measure our candidates according to their abundantly vague promises, and embarrassingly empty witticisms.

Many of our national heroes were once created by commendable achievement. Today, the successful politician is fashioned by a system that is refractory to all wisdom, a system that is sustained by banality, empty chatter, and half knowledge.

As Nigerians, there can never be any primary salvation for us in politics “until those who are really philosophers acquire political power or until those who rule and have political authority become real philosophers.”

When persons who fall way below the criteria spelt out in Plato’s Republic, find their way into the corridors of power and leadership positions, as we have seen in the case of Nigeria, their style of leadership is bound to become the reason why the state and its citizens suffer from the evil and chaos arising from wrong and poor policies which their leaders enact. They make anti-government decisions and inimical policies leading to cases and instances of fraud, corruption and leadership crisis,

Philosophers are suited to rule because it is in their nature to love truth and learning so much that they are free from the greed and lust that tempts others to abuse power.

Although, Plato’s “philosopher king” may not be a practicable standard for Nigerian politics in the twenty-first century, there is enough insight in it to help a serious seeker of understanding of politics to interrogate what have been happening in the Nigerian state. At a minimum, such a recollection could remind us of how far we have already strayed.

Ezinwanne Onwuka, Cross River State.

ezinwanne.dominion@gmail.com

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