Laying Foundations

“Leadership is not about the next election, it is about the next generation.” These were the words of Simon Sinek - a British-American author, motivational speaker and marketing consultant.

If there is any desire burning hot in many hearts in Nigeria right now, it is for this country to work again. Many now might be too young to know when it did, but this country used to be the envy of the West. We had it all - industry, people, export, resources, economy, growth. We had everything. But a plan. There was no plan to conserve what we had. There was no plan to make our wealth work for us. There was no plan to institute a system. There was no plan to live for the coming generation. Simply, no plan for the future.

All we did was live in the moment. We wallowed too long in the glory of self sufficiency and now that glory seemed like a lifetime ago. We had too much of everything, we began to misbehave and turned everything to waste. One of our past presidents was even quoted to have said "money is not our problem, our problem is how to spend it."

Because of the seemingly endless possibilities we thought we had, we let control slip from all of us into the hands of a few. That is why the names we heard many decades ago are still the names keeping the reins over us. It is almost impossible to comprehend that a "leader" sees himself so good that nobody else can occupy a position better than him. Whereas, the true value of a leader should be a measure of how many copies of himself he has been able to make; and not how many years he has been waiting in the corridors to step into power, or how many times he has tried unsuccessfully to mount the stool. If by now, there is no head fresh enough to steer affairs and aim to turn individuals into leaders that can affect positively their immediate environment, and influence a mindset that will liberate their generation from mental slavery, then those who steered us to this point should hide their heads in shame. But their matter is for discussion in the not too far future.

Our democracy is relatively still very young but one thing we can all agree on is that in this current dispensation of less than a quarter of a century old, one thing that has been conspicuously absent but we desperately need is leadership. We have not had anyone that we all can look at and see a hope of restoration. All we see are the “same of the same”. No matter what shape, size or color they portray themselves in, the similarities are astounding. By now, we should be fed up with our lack of choices. We should decide to want to live differently.

However, one of the problems we have is that we seem to know what we want but we do not seem to have any idea how to get there. In our private corners, we have been hoping for a Messiah, a superhero that will appear and take control of the destiny of this generation. We all have been thinking on a grand scale. But the bigger picture will not form without the tiny little details. The issue is with the fine details: causing them to come together, and making them align into formation. A builder does not begin from the roof. Without a foundation for the building to sit on, all efforts will be in vain.

Right now, the concern of all should be to sustain this awareness that has been awakened. Over the last few months, there has been an awakening. Many people have realized how important it is to be participatory in deciding how leadership is appointed. It takes an awakening in an individual or a group of people for a seed to be planted. And like it is in the natural world, seeds take time to emerge from the soil. The emergence however, will be determined by deliberate concerted efforts to care for and see the seed germinate and flourish.

If we hope to one day influence a larger society and take charge of our own destiny as a generation, we need to first affect those that are around us.

Those in our nuclear and extended family.

Those in our immediate environment.

Those in our circle of friends.

Those in our workplaces.

And this influence should never be a one-time thing. It should be a way of life. There should be deliberate concerted efforts to encourage people to see beyond the smokescreens of petty handouts at four-year intervals.

Whatever happens in the coming months, the biggest victory from it will not be who sits on the rocky throne at the end, the biggest victory will be that this awakening is sustained beyond the four years ahead of us. If we lose steam, we will then have to begin over again in another four years. One thing we should never stop reminding ourselves is that the power has never stopped being in our hands, we just did not know how to wield what we have.

Besides learning how to wield it, we need to show to others how to wield it too. Only when we do this will we break their stranglehold on the vulnerable among us who by their sheer numbers have been making the choice of weak values for us. If we can get the multitude on the right side of the divide, we will truly be able to positively actualise the words of George Will, an American author and political commentator which says: "Voters don't decide issues, they decide who will decide issues."