The Need For Ethical Leadership in Africa -By Ezinwanne Onwuka

It would be needless to stress that the continent of Africa is blessed with many natural resources. The vast oil deposits in Nigeria, Sudan, and Angola; the diamonds and cobalt in Democratic Republic of Congo; the rich goldmines in Ghana and Democratic Republic of Congo as well as the timber of Cote d’Ivoire are some of the places that attest to the rich store of natural resources the continent possesses.

However, despite the richness in the deposits of natural resources, most people in Africa live in abject poverty amidst underdeveloped infrastructures.

The leadership crisis that has been a feature of leadership styles for about four decades in most African countries would seem to indicate that leadership in Africa is to blame for the underdevelopment of Africa.

Africa’s leadership crisis is manifested by trends of corruption, persistent abuse of power, lack of respect for the constitution, and failure to create an environment for the continuous evolution of succeeding generations of young African leaders with competence, integrity, vision, commitment, and skills for peacebuilding and social justice.
Due to bad leadership, Africa remains politically, economically and socially underdeveloped, with a legacy of poverty and hunger, civil wars and violent conflicts.

The reality of leadership failure in Africa seems to have driven the call for effective and responsible leadership on the continent.The baseline argument is that effective leadership, manifesting in the form of good governance, and sustainable development are inseparable.

Many scholars have suggested that the antidote to the leadership crisis in Africa is visionary, selfless, and integrated leadership. While I agree with this postulation, I’d like to make a case for ethical leadership.

I strongly believe that the search for effective leadership in Africa is a search for ethical leadership for post-colonial Africa.

Perhaps the need for ethical leadership may be seen in the many definitions that scholars have given to it. One of such is that ethical leadership stresses “good character and the right values or being a person of strong character” (Freeman & Stewart, 2006). Noting the core focus of ethical leadership, Greenleaf (1977) emphasized, “Service to followers is the primary responsibility.”

In other words, ethical leadership is the ability or authority to guide and direct others toward the achievement of a goal through the moral qualities of the leader. These moral qualities include honesty, integrity, reliability, modesty, trustworthiness, respect, conscientiousness, and fairness.

Ethical leadership suggests that the leader possess strong personal character; a passion to do the right; involves visionary leadership; has high value for the diverse interests that exist within their group; model the values of the group they lead; and creates a leadership atmosphere within which transparency and a critique of all actions, including that of leadership, become major features.

Thus, the basis of ethical leadership is a personal desire to be ethical and model ethical standards in ways that are visible for other individuals in the organization to see and emulate.

Sadly, the practice of such leadership principles is depressingly low on the continent. This is the reason we have bad leadership manifested by persistent human rights violation, bad governance, dysfunctional institutions, patronage, electoral fraud, manipulation of ethnic differences, corruption and personalisation of power which hinder the prevalence of peace and social justice.

The leadership is so bad that political elites feed on the state, prey on the weak, use national resources for self-aggrandizement, and deprive citizens of collective goods such as medical care, good education and employment.

Central to ethical leadership is the responsibility to respect people’s dignity, to be sensitive to their needs as opposed to egoistic self-aggrandizement, and to create an environment of nurturance, trust, empathy, forgiveness and reconciliation .

This model of leadership that focuses on the people and the community (country) first is a necessary antidote in combating our present leadership style in Africa that has been described as egoistic, parasitic, prebendal, neopatrimonial, predatory, praetorian, squandermania, hedonistic materialism, hypertensive materialism etc.
In the face of current events in the global community, Africa cannot afford to lag behind in pursuing a meaningful sustainable development in all strata.

The current crisis of relevance of the African societies in the comity of nations is traceable to the obvious poverty, under development, irresponsive and irresponsible governance, illegitimate political administrations, prolonged military administrations, martial social and economic systems, repressive policies, etc.

The survival of our continent, the restoration of the hope of the people in governance, the total sanitation of our society from corrupt practices rests on the shoulders of the leaders. And no leader can effectively correct this anomaly except that which is ethical.

Lack of ethical political leadership is holding Africa back. Strengthening ethical political leadership is key to rebuilding Africa as a powerful engine, given her natural resources and human capital.

Ezinwanne Onwuka writes from Cross River State and may be reached on ezinwanne.dominion@gmail.com.