Poor Leadership; Bad Followership -By Abdu Abdullahi

What is influencing what? Is it bad leadership influencer or bad followership receiver and vice versa? If the stewardship is poor, what is the state of the discipleship? Are we puritanical to view poor leadership as a great sin when our followership is also an abomination? This is a parable of the two contrasting, yet symbiotic variables poisoning the soul of our democracy.

For long, we have been witnessing how decadent governance has been serving as the engine room of our underdevelopment. From 1999 to date, this wretched phenomenon has escalated and continued to generate serious concerns across the country. Is this not the reason why it is generally believed that most of our leaderships at the three governmental domains are unimpressive and dismal in fulfilling our yearnings and aspirations?

 The recurring theme of poor leadership has attracted the attention of the media and academics through agenda-setting reportage and expository writings, but with a lesser focus on bad followership. In his famous book, The Trouble with Nigeria, the late Chinua Achebe argues that bad leadership is the major trouble with Nigeria. But how many of us will believe that bad followership is also not part of the predicament with Nigeria? To our dismay, the two negative concepts are not discerningly addressed to enhance good governance. One peculiar reason behind both leadership and followership failure is the ideological demolition of Nigeria’s politics. An informed and invulnerable leadership can be a catalyst for improving the quality of governance just as formidable followership can provide the same standard.

Nigeria’s leadership and followership are substantially two sides of the same coin seen in a direct connection with material infatuation in our contemporary politics. While most leaders are into politics to amass ill-gotten wealth, the mass followers are also political apparatuses with the primary objective of forfeiting their freedom in exchange for naira.  In a nutshell, money is an opium of Nigeria’s democracy. It defines our dysfunctional leadership as well as followership and they relate to each other to give us an ailing democracy. Both the failed leadership and followership are parasites of democracy. They consume from democracy what they cannot give to democracy to prosper.

When political parties act the ritual of primary election, the corrupt delegates are fanatical followers always willing to sack their conscience and that of the nation for the sake of money. It is the period of political lockdown of patriotism and the biggest casualty is the nation. Parading themselves as the gods of politics, their loyalty to the nation and conscience is dead when fund can fix their selfish politics in disarray. Mark Twain teaches us that loyalty to the nation is always mandatory but fidelity to the leader is optional and only when he deserves it. Unfortunately, our delegates are always subservient to the politics of stomach infrastructure to glorify unwanted leaders, unmindful of the fact that their unjingoistic attitude can consume them as well.

 Any leader that tries to woo voters and win election through fraudulent means such as buying votes is not an exemplary leader. Likewise, any follower who casts his vote for the sake of money and other mundane items is not a trusted follower. To the debasement of political morality, the last gubernatorial and state assembly elections saw how bad followership manifested overtly and with a great sense of affront. In many instances, indomie and spaghetti were the two weapons deployed by unscrupulous politicians to gain victory. This prompted Senator Shehu Sani to gloomily declared the victims of banditry as having ‘ate their freedom’ by succumbing to the enticement of the food items.

 Poor leadership was also consolidated during the concluded gubernatorial and state assembly elections when the incumbency factor reared its ugly head with billions of naira squandered by those who were desperate for power to alter the voting behavior of the followers. We should therefore celebrate an association of corrupt leadership and corrupt followership on the next democracy day, while democracy is left to go asunder without nexus of structural elements. 

We have seen the blind adherents who sing the song of bad leadership just to make temporary ends meet. In the core north, morality is fiercely attacked by institutionalizing hatred through the channel of the radio to discredit good leadership. Impliedly therefore, some media organs contribute to bad followership under the pretext of freedom of expression. These moral deviants are not even aware that they are infringing the right of others. Their pseudo patriotism begins where someone’s character is assassinated.

The political thugs are a giant class of their own political dislocation in terms of followership. Mainly composed of energetic and unemployed youths, they are the deficient products of the poor leadership they are now protecting and promoting. They spoil their own future by enacting their own tragedy through organised violence and other nefarious acts. While we are still battling with low level of awareness in many communities, it is very cheap to convince an average Nigerian to vote for a person who is bankrupt in community development participation. Yet, a deceptive character with the poverty of community development but is pompous to champion his myriad of certificates and appointments will make a hot cake to be elected. The mainstream followership is therefore easy to undermine its very essence .

Democracy is therefore sadly shifting away from the school of Abraham Lincoln’s resonating vision that for every selfish politician there is a dedicated leader. Will the followers bring back dedicated leaders? Can the followership do away with selfish politicians before they become poor leaders and breach the peace of democracy? Unfortunately, the people’s democracy is descending too low to a cultists association of ‘lead’ and ‘follow’ mentality with the collapse of fundamental structures that unites leadership and followership relationship for acceptable governance. 

It is worthy of mentioning here that poor leadership and followership are not only confined to national politics but are all encompassing. For instance, in the civil service domain, there is what is called office politics. It follows the same pattern as conventional politics, bad leadership influencing bad surbodinateship and vice versa. In many spheres of life, the same negative trend exists.

This piece is dedicated to an elderly compatriot Oluwole Victor Macarthy who resides in the USA and has been critical of my writings. He motivated this writing by suggesting to me to focus on the menace of bad followership after reading my article entitled: ‘Buhari’s failed leadership: we are all casualties’. I remain greateful to him for his profound vision.