JESUTEGA ONOKPASA
If you randomly sampled one thousand Nigerians and asked them what is the problem with Nigeria, at the very least, probably no less than ninety percent of them would immediately tell you that it is “bad leadership”.
The funny thing is that while Nigerians are always complaining about “bad leadership”, they forget that these leaders they keep complaining about did not fall from the sky, do not come from other countries, and, are not a separate tribe, caste or race from the rest of them, but actually emerge from within their midst.
They forget the leaders they keep complaining about are from their very homes, their families, kindreds, lineages, hometowns, villages, tribes and ethnic groups.
They forget that these leaders they keep complaining about are effectively their very own products.
I actually agree that Nigeria has largely suffered from rather very poor, indeed, dismal leadership over decades since our Independence – we certainly wouldn’t be where we are today if that were not the case.
Except that in Philosophy, we insist that you must follow wherever the argument leads in order to rendezvous with Truth.
So if these leaders, over these many decades, continually prove to be rather clumsy, incompetent, uncaring, unimaginative, greedy, self-centred, corrupt and otherwise unfit to lead, then there just has to be something very, very wrong with the very masses from whom they emerge.
So, over to you my dearest fellow Nigerians.
– Onokpasa, a lawyer, writes from FCT, Abuja.