An amazing article by Leadership Newspaper publisher Sam Nda-Isaiah on rebuilding Nigeria is worth reading and is post here for your perusal. Enjoy. The adjoining write is mine in response to the article which can also be found on Facebook.
REBUILDING A NATION
Last week, this newspaper started a discussion that, I am sure, will continue. The theme of the 2013 LEADERSHIP Conference was “Rebuilding Nigeria”; it’s about time. Our nation is totally in a shambles and this is the time to spark off a debate about rebuilding the nation among the different interests contending for power. The first place to start this discussion is to look at the examples from especially post-conflict nations.
As I will show presently, leadership is the first and most important thing any nation that wants to start the process of reconstruction must get right. There is no single route to rebuilding a nation and every route a nation elects will ultimately succeed as long as the nation gets its leadership right.
The natural country to start with is South Africa. Apartheid virtually brought South Africa to its knees and, by the time the white supremacist regime succumbed to world pressure, it really had no choice. But that’s only one side of the story. If a leader like Nelson Mandela had not emerged as the country’s first post-apartheid leader, South Africa would most probably not be where it is today. It would definitely not have remained Africa’s largest economy. If it were somebody like Robert Mugabe that spent 27 years of his active life in prison in his fight against the apartheid institution in South Africa, he would most likely still be in power today even if that would have ruined the economy as we see in Zimbabwe today. And, of course, he (Mugabe) would not have given “a damn” as he would have seen his presidency as his compensation for the 27 years he spent in prison.
Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria spent only three years in Abacha’s jail and, by the time he became president, he saw the office more as a compensation – a kind of gift for him for what “we had all done to him”, as someone once jocularly said. That was why he toyed with the idea of a life presidency in 2006. But not for a statesman like Mandela. Even before he accepted to run for president, he (Mandela) made it clear that he would serve only one term on account of his advanced age. Mandela started grooming his successor from his first day in office as president. Through fairness, justice and a large heart, he made the transition of his country from an apartheid system to one of majority democratic rule seem so easy that we now take many things for granted. It is experiences with people like presidents Obasanjo and Mugabe in power that should remind us that the right leadership for a post-conflict nation should not be taken for granted at all.
Because of Mandela’s maturity and leadership qualities, the whites in South Africa, who initially panicked with the collapse of apartheid and the enthronement of black majority rule and had started moving out of South Africa, stayed back and got re-integrated into the rainbow nation. During the transition from apartheid to majority rule, more than one million of the four million white South Africans then “fled” the country. Many went to Australia and some to the United Kingdom, but it didn’t take long for many of them to start returning home because of the leadership quality they saw in Mandela. Mandela promoted racial reconciliation, equality and poverty alleviation. He ensured that there was no reverse apartheid or racism as many of the new black leaders would have wished. He ensured that white supremacy was not replaced with black supremacy, and this took leadership.
Another leader of interest is, of course, Paul Kagame. As Mandela exits the public stage, many believe that it is Kagame, the president of Rwanda, that is set to put his feet in the very large shoes that Mandela would be leaving behind. Many of us remember the legendary civil war between the majority Hutu and minority Tutsi of Rwanda. In 1994, then Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana was assassinated when the plane he was travelling in was shot down near Kigali Airport, possibly by Hutu militants who perceived the president as too moderate. A civil war broke out immediately in which Hutu extremists killed an estimated one million Tutsi. Kagame, whose Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) had already invaded Rwanda in 1990 and by 1993 was already in control of a significant territory of Rwanda, ended the genocide when he successfully overthrew the weakened government in Kigali in 1994.
In a show of leadership and selflessness, Kagame appointed Pasteur Bizimungu, a renowned civil servant from the Hutu majority ethnic group, as president instead of taking over himself. He served as vice president, defence minister and commander-in-chief of the armed forces and was in effect the de facto leader. In 2000, he took over as president after Bizimungu resigned. He then started the transformation of Rwanda by first tackling corruption headlong. Today, Rwanda is one of the least corrupt countries of the world and foreign investors have continued to attest to the fact that they have never had to bribe anyone to get things done. That has subsequently improved the economy, which has steadily continued to grow at an average of 8 per cent per annum. Kagame has openly stated that he wants to make Rwanda the Singapore of Africa and he is well on his way there. He has worked heavily on ethnic reconciliation and harmony and has drastically reduced poverty by a massive job creation drive.
Even though Rwanda has very few minerals, Kagame has worked heavily on agriculture. Under Kagame, the service sector has also grown, contributing significantly to the GDP. The Rwandan president said he intends to make his country the information and communications technology (ICT) hub for Africa and he is already providing broadband facilities for the whole country to achieve that. Through Kagame’s leadership, Rwanda, once a flashpoint country for all sorts of ethnic wars, is now regarded internationally as a secure and safe destination. It took leadership to achieve this. Kagame’s government is very harsh on corruption and those who incite ethnic hatred. Many top Rwandans including former President Bizimungu had been jailed on account of these.
But there’s also a third route to rebuilding a nation and Jerry Rawlings of Ghana has shown the way. Rawlings, now 65 years old, staged a military coup as a young airforce officer at the age of 32. He was then a flight lieutenant. After taking over, he embarked on what he called “a housecleaning exercise”, and its objective, according to Rawlings and his fellow revolutionaries, was to purge Ghana of the corruption and injustices that had impeded the nation’s progress. He executed several top people including former heads of state. Many people remember only the execution of the former heads of state but several other top public officeholders were also executed.
Rawlings later transmutted into a civilian president and is today known as the harbinger of today’s very successful democracy in Ghana. Under Rawlings, the Ghanaian economy started to grow again because corruption was fought to a standstill and millions of jobs were created. Rawlings was fair and firm and tough. He reversed Ghana’s economic ruins which had led many Ghanaians to flee their country, many to Nigeria. Due to his efforts, Ghanaians started returning home with pride. Today, because of Rawlings’ efforts, it is Nigerians that are now relocating to Ghana in droves. Kwame Nkrumah may be the founding father of the Ghanaian nation, but it is JJ Rawlings that is the father of modern Ghana. Whether you like JJ’s style or not, he has been the greatest force in the transformation of Ghana.
Those who govern Nigeria today must simply know that things cannot continue like this. Jonathan has failed beyond words and he has been a total disaster for the country. Nigeria needs a new president in 2015.
Last week, this newspaper started a discussion that, I am sure, will continue. The theme of the 2013 LEADERSHIP Conference was “Rebuilding Nigeria”; it’s about time. Our nation is totally in a shambles and this is the time to spark off a debate about rebuilding the nation among the different interests contending for power. The first place to start this discussion is to look at the examples from especially post-conflict nations.
As I will show presently, leadership is the first and most important thing any nation that wants to start the process of reconstruction must get right. There is no single route to rebuilding a nation and every route a nation elects will ultimately succeed as long as the nation gets its leadership right.
The natural country to start with is South Africa. Apartheid virtually brought South Africa to its knees and, by the time the white supremacist regime succumbed to world pressure, it really had no choice. But that’s only one side of the story. If a leader like Nelson Mandela had not emerged as the country’s first post-apartheid leader, South Africa would most probably not be where it is today. It would definitely not have remained Africa’s largest economy. If it were somebody like Robert Mugabe that spent 27 years of his active life in prison in his fight against the apartheid institution in South Africa, he would most likely still be in power today even if that would have ruined the economy as we see in Zimbabwe today. And, of course, he (Mugabe) would not have given “a damn” as he would have seen his presidency as his compensation for the 27 years he spent in prison.
Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria spent only three years in Abacha’s jail and, by the time he became president, he saw the office more as a compensation – a kind of gift for him for what “we had all done to him”, as someone once jocularly said. That was why he toyed with the idea of a life presidency in 2006. But not for a statesman like Mandela. Even before he accepted to run for president, he (Mandela) made it clear that he would serve only one term on account of his advanced age. Mandela started grooming his successor from his first day in office as president. Through fairness, justice and a large heart, he made the transition of his country from an apartheid system to one of majority democratic rule seem so easy that we now take many things for granted. It is experiences with people like presidents Obasanjo and Mugabe in power that should remind us that the right leadership for a post-conflict nation should not be taken for granted at all.
Because of Mandela’s maturity and leadership qualities, the whites in South Africa, who initially panicked with the collapse of apartheid and the enthronement of black majority rule and had started moving out of South Africa, stayed back and got re-integrated into the rainbow nation. During the transition from apartheid to majority rule, more than one million of the four million white South Africans then “fled” the country. Many went to Australia and some to the United Kingdom, but it didn’t take long for many of them to start returning home because of the leadership quality they saw in Mandela. Mandela promoted racial reconciliation, equality and poverty alleviation. He ensured that there was no reverse apartheid or racism as many of the new black leaders would have wished. He ensured that white supremacy was not replaced with black supremacy, and this took leadership.
Another leader of interest is, of course, Paul Kagame. As Mandela exits the public stage, many believe that it is Kagame, the president of Rwanda, that is set to put his feet in the very large shoes that Mandela would be leaving behind. Many of us remember the legendary civil war between the majority Hutu and minority Tutsi of Rwanda. In 1994, then Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana was assassinated when the plane he was travelling in was shot down near Kigali Airport, possibly by Hutu militants who perceived the president as too moderate. A civil war broke out immediately in which Hutu extremists killed an estimated one million Tutsi. Kagame, whose Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) had already invaded Rwanda in 1990 and by 1993 was already in control of a significant territory of Rwanda, ended the genocide when he successfully overthrew the weakened government in Kigali in 1994.
In a show of leadership and selflessness, Kagame appointed Pasteur Bizimungu, a renowned civil servant from the Hutu majority ethnic group, as president instead of taking over himself. He served as vice president, defence minister and commander-in-chief of the armed forces and was in effect the de facto leader. In 2000, he took over as president after Bizimungu resigned. He then started the transformation of Rwanda by first tackling corruption headlong. Today, Rwanda is one of the least corrupt countries of the world and foreign investors have continued to attest to the fact that they have never had to bribe anyone to get things done. That has subsequently improved the economy, which has steadily continued to grow at an average of 8 per cent per annum. Kagame has openly stated that he wants to make Rwanda the Singapore of Africa and he is well on his way there. He has worked heavily on ethnic reconciliation and harmony and has drastically reduced poverty by a massive job creation drive.
Even though Rwanda has very few minerals, Kagame has worked heavily on agriculture. Under Kagame, the service sector has also grown, contributing significantly to the GDP. The Rwandan president said he intends to make his country the information and communications technology (ICT) hub for Africa and he is already providing broadband facilities for the whole country to achieve that. Through Kagame’s leadership, Rwanda, once a flashpoint country for all sorts of ethnic wars, is now regarded internationally as a secure and safe destination. It took leadership to achieve this. Kagame’s government is very harsh on corruption and those who incite ethnic hatred. Many top Rwandans including former President Bizimungu had been jailed on account of these.
But there’s also a third route to rebuilding a nation and Jerry Rawlings of Ghana has shown the way. Rawlings, now 65 years old, staged a military coup as a young airforce officer at the age of 32. He was then a flight lieutenant. After taking over, he embarked on what he called “a housecleaning exercise”, and its objective, according to Rawlings and his fellow revolutionaries, was to purge Ghana of the corruption and injustices that had impeded the nation’s progress. He executed several top people including former heads of state. Many people remember only the execution of the former heads of state but several other top public officeholders were also executed.
Rawlings later transmutted into a civilian president and is today known as the harbinger of today’s very successful democracy in Ghana. Under Rawlings, the Ghanaian economy started to grow again because corruption was fought to a standstill and millions of jobs were created. Rawlings was fair and firm and tough. He reversed Ghana’s economic ruins which had led many Ghanaians to flee their country, many to Nigeria. Due to his efforts, Ghanaians started returning home with pride. Today, because of Rawlings’ efforts, it is Nigerians that are now relocating to Ghana in droves. Kwame Nkrumah may be the founding father of the Ghanaian nation, but it is JJ Rawlings that is the father of modern Ghana. Whether you like JJ’s style or not, he has been the greatest force in the transformation of Ghana.
Those who govern Nigeria today must simply know that things cannot continue like this. Jonathan has failed beyond words and he has been a total disaster for the country. Nigeria needs a new president in 2015.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
HOW I WISH
How I wish wishes were horses, beggars would ride, an old saying right, but I wish it to happen now more than ever. Every week the master crafter Uncle Sam brings out thought provoking subjects, which should evoke a deep sense of apprehension in every “patriotic” Nigerian. With the nation already at its lowest ebb on all fronts the subject of rebuilding should be paramount on the hearts and mouths of all. This ideology of leaving the political elites with the task of shaping this nation has to be discarded, as it has shown that they are not only half baked but also oblivious of how a nation should be run. However, in their defense if this seems not to be the case then they are fiends to the Nigerian cause. How else can one give reason to the policies and actions they churn out every minute, which are always crooked and selfish? One can’t pin point to just one elaborate effort made by this government to lift the spirits of its citizens. If there is any, which doesn't seem as a tactical ploy to further enslave us all in the chaos already ravaging the land, I oblige anyone to point it out please? With the way things are, I often ask myself what system of government we run in this country, because this is certainly one odd version of democracy.
The call for rebuilding is apt at this moment. Although, I don’t subscribe to the Kagame and Rawlings route, as we have had our own fair share of that experience, and we are currently having flashes of these gory events in Plateau, Yobe and Borno states, where another 200 lives have just been frittered away. These anomalies won’t just fizzle out as Jonathan wishes, and unless we all pitch in towards berthing a constructive dialogue and reconciliation process the situation would remain unabated. Nevertheless, the steps the government is presently towing by granting amnesty is commendable but that is just postponing “doomsday.” Amnesty has shown that it is a quick fix strategy which only heals at the seams, and due to the “Nigerian factor” of possessing a knack of turning good things bad, a mischievous few would always see it as an avenue to make quick money. Therefore, this current line would only give birth to more aggrieved groups who perceive that they are being marginalized one way or the other, as we have rightly seen in NDVPF transmuting into MEND et.al (of which they have seem to lose the reason why they took up arms in the first place), MASSOB taking cue from MOSSOP, Bakassi Boys duplicated into OPC, and Afenifere regenerating into Ohaneze Ndigbo and Arewa Consultative Forum. I apologize if anybody is hurt by this, but truth be told for all I see is another GRQ (get-rich –quick) scheme. They would all surely leave us distraught, more disorganized and disunited. As their names signify, they all project a selfish cause at the expense of one Nigeria.
It is therefore wise to beckon that all hands, be it technocrats, laymen, students, academicians, professionals etc. should be on deck to re-diagnose, re-dissect, re-construct, re-evaluate and rebuild this “nation” of ours that our founding fathers envisioned for us. Once again Uncle Sam you are on point.
It is therefore wise to beckon that all hands, be it technocrats, laymen, students, academicians, professionals etc. should be on deck to re-diagnose, re-dissect, re-construct, re-evaluate and rebuild this “nation” of ours that our founding fathers envisioned for us. Once again Uncle Sam you are on point.
Do follow me on twitter @anreaeryck
No comments:
Post a Comment