Bring back our country: Courageous followers to the rescue by: Dr Ekundayo, John M. O Reading Segun Ayobolu’s piece on Saturday is always a welcomed delight. However, the edition of 10th May 2014 depicted the abyss to which Nigeria as a country is heading to if the mass of followers in Nigeria decide to keep frolicking in the status quo ante. Presently, the attention of the international community is focused on how to “bring back our girls” abducted in Chibok by the Boko Haram insurgents while writing an examination in their school. The Federal Government is seemingly overwhelmed or overrun by the increasing brutish and bestial antics of the Boko Haram insurgents. This is further compounded with overt lack of tact in command, control and compliance within the rank and file of the nation’s armed forces especially with the widely publicized mutiny resulting in the apparently premeditated attack on the General Officer Commanding (GOC) the 7th Division of Nigeria’s army. What is happening in 21st century Nigeria? Nigeria Army known to win laurels in Regional and United Nations Missions over the years has now been reduced to lily-livered mass of people taking flight at the hearing of Boko Haram as a child will be scared at the sight of a ragamuffin bogeyman! What Went Wrong? It is high time followers in Nigeria began to ask pertinent, salient and succinct questions if we are to see and savour the effective and exemplary leadership practice that would usher in the real change that most of us desire. This change must not just be a cliché hanging in the air a la transformation agenda of the present government at the centre that most people cannot see, feel, touch or embrace! It is against this backdrop, I am concurring and chorusing same “Bring Back Our Country” stance of Segun Ayobolu before it will be difficult to salvage Nigeria from failing even as some do not want to hear or read that Nigeria is a failed state. If Nigeria must not be overtly seen as failed, then, we need a gargantuan number of unique class of followers in Nigeria to leverage the change from clueless to credible and competent leadership that will steer the ship of the state to an envisaged haven. According to Robert Kelly, a professor of leadership and researcher in followership studies, there are five types of followers in organizations and polities. These are: Alienated, Passive, Conformist, Pragmatist and Exemplary. Kelly, in his research studies on followership, distinguishes followership typology by utilizing the lens of engagement and independent thinking. The former trait ensures followers participate while the latter engender a challenge of the system by speaking truth to power when the need arises. To him, the worst type in ranking is Alienated and the best for organizational performance and effectiveness is Exemplary. Who are Exemplary Followers? Exemplary followers exercise independent, critical thinking, separate from the leaders or group-making them to challenge or question the status quo ante, and they also actively engage the system while Alienated Followers think freely and critically; but they do not participate in the groups and organizations of which they are members. They score high in independent thinking and low in active engagement. It is my stand and stake that Kelly rightly describes the dominant traits inherent in majority of followers within Nigeria’s polity. Most Nigerians like to talk, argue with less number coming out to criticize; worse still, very few engage or participate in the system. If you doubt this assertion, pause and ponder on these for few minutes: how many enlightened citizens partake in the political process of becoming eligible voters. Going forward from there, how many would come out to vote on election days? Are most elites not leaving voting on election day for the likes of National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW) or Road Transport Employers Association of Nigeria (RTEAN) members, Market Men/Women, Petty Traders, Artisans, Okada Riders, etc? No wonder politicians are habituated to curry the favour of these classes of people as election approaches while simultaneously jettisoning the elites! Is anyone still amazed that the worst of us is ruling the best of us in the words Pastor Tunde Bakare? Catalogues of Issues Exemplary Followers Need To Concentrate on: The list presented here is not exhaustive but few cases of exhibition of seeming corruption and impunity necessitating courageous followers’ persistent, painstaking and proactive engagement: -Alleged 20 billion dollars oil money missing! What steps are few exemplary courageous followers taking to ensure this is not swept under the carpet? We need to keep asking questions. The forensic auditing must be published as our image is daily going down in the comity of nations. Hilary Clinton, America’s erstwhile Secretary of State lately opined concerning our country: “Nigeria has made bad choices, not hard choices…they have squandered their oil wealth, they have allowed corruption to fester and now they are losing control of parts of their territory because they wouldn’t make hard choices.” -Alleged Aircraft Lease costing a whopping 10 billion Naira by Minister of Petroleum Resources. It is appalling that even the Committee in the House Representatives probing this indecorum has been halted by the Honourable Speaker of the House of Representative. Where is Nigeria heading to? -Pension scam perpetrators running to billions of Naira forgotten, forgone or forgiven?: Are Nigerians asking where is Abdulrasheed Maina, Chairman, Pension Reform Task Force (PRTF) and his heinous acolytes under whose nose 400 billion Naira took flight and disappeared leaving myriads of pensioners languishing in undue impecuniosities? -Immigration Job Recruitment Scandal with attendant 16 lives of precious and promising Nigerians lost: there is now criminal silence! Has this been thrown into the shredding machine of history to forgotten as others before it? As at now, no one has been officially indicted or sanctioned. It is business as usual. Some of us are waiting, watching and following this government as February 2015 beckons when Nigerians will throng the polls again to express their preference for who they long and yearn for in the saddle at the centre. -The power sector stinks with epileptic service pervading Nigeria’s landscape even with billions of Naira exchanging hands between inept private investors and the government at the centre. The investors apparently are acolytes and sycophants of people in the corridor of power. These investors now need a bail out as virtually all of them do not have the financial wherewithal and the competency required to lighten the seemingly incurable darkness pervaded Nigeria! -Is our defence spending justified when viewed against epileptic and clueless performance of our ill-equipped armed forces in the faceoff with the Boko Haram insurgents? At least an exemplary courageous follower, Sam Omatseye, in his column on Monday, May 19, lamentably declared: “…about N2.7 trillion of security budget has gone unaccounted for since 2011. The U.S. Congress lashed the Nigerian military as ill-equipped and ill-trained. ..Foreign powers are now giving us technology that we could have acquired with the princely security budget allocations.” Hogwash! Yet, many Nigerians are not asking questions even when in the Boko Haram’s latest video, there was the display of Armoured Personnel Carrier (APC) at the background. Has it been the norm to see in any Al-Qaeda video anything of such? Hopefully, another courageous exemplary follower, Femi Falana, the cerebral and sagacious legal icon and civil right leader urged leaders at the National Confab to probe the gargantuan budgetary allocation to the security agencies in the country which runs to three trillion Naira, a fraction away from Omatseye’s. It was his postulation that this would shed light on how the security vote has been expended. Who will bell the cat? As we are approaching the season of another electioneering campaign, it is my opinion that Nigeria needs more of not just Kelly’s Exemplary Followers, as depicted earlier, but what I will refer to as Exemplary-Courageous Followers. In Nigeria’s context, this is the unique typology of followers that can usher this country into the glorious future the mass of followers hope, long and yearn for. In the write-up of Segun Ayobolu he stated inter alia: “But how do we bring back our country? No one can do it for us. The responsibility is ours. We must be determined to hold our governments accountable and ensure that our votes count in free and fair polls.” Well stated. Who will bell the cat? Presently, in Nigeria, there is the palpable and pervading atmosphere of fear of kidnapping, assassination, ritual killing, armed robbery, insurgency, militancy, terrorism, etc. This is worrisome for democracy to thrive as in orderly, decent and developed climes. This is the precious moment for Exemplary-Courageous Followers within the polity in all the six geo-political zones; 36 states and federal capital territory; and 776 local government areas to step up their ante and find ways and means of procreating themselves. In essence, it is high time; this class of followers were mass reproduced, indoctrinated or mentored through education, enlightenment, empowerment and encouragement. The Civil Societies have a big role to play in this direction. We need more Civil and Human Rights leaders to do more of community organizing in all the nooks and cranny of Nigeria especially zeroing on the need to fully partake in the electoral process thus ensuring the followers’ vote count and that ultimately it is One Man, One Vote! Why are we not asking questions in Nigeria? Why are many followers in Nigeria alienated? Why are many followers not courageous enough to talk truth to power at local, state and federal level? The fear of being sanctioned, stigmatized, or severed permanently? It is high time followers arose and shove aside all kinds of fear including that of death to ensure our country is governed by competent, credible, capable and cerebral minds. Barbara Kellerman, a professor of public leadership at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government christened this category of followers as “Diehard”; according to her, these followers are ready to lose “lives and limbs” to usher in the needed change as we have seen in Ukraine, Thailand, Tunisia, etc. I think we need this typology of followers, albeit in few numbers, to embolden and encourage mass of Exemplary-Courageous Followers to initiate passionate, proactive, progressive and peaceful change in our polity. We shall get there by the grace of the Almighty God, not far from now! -Dr Ekundayo, John M. O, author and researcher in Followership studies, lives in Lagos John M. O. Ekundayo, PhD (Management); R.Eng; MNSE
Posted on: Sun, 20 Jul 2014 21:05:11 +0000