Leadership is the lifeblood of governance, yet Africa bleached for decades with unimaginative, inadvertent leadership. This, Chinua Achebe succinctly brought out in his book entitled; The Trouble with Nigeria when he proclaimed that; “The trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely a failure of leadership.” This failing is not figural; it is planned – or rather not planned, since there has been no systematic effort to groom managers.
Bishop Matthew Kukah’s observation that many African leaders stumble into power underscores the central problem: It is for this reason that African governance tends to be more of a gamble than a well orchestrated endeavor within the leadership process. This has made merit and competence to Pale into insignificance with partisan loyalties and patronage dominating the system and slowing progress and entrenching poor systems across the continent. However, for Africa to be faithful to its promise, structured, deliberate efforts at developing leadership among the youths needs to be done immediately.
A – clear example of this is what has become popularly known as “Accidental leadership,” – which refers to leaders who have been propelled to leadership positions without the requisite vision, and more often than not, those with no clear agenda for the position. At its worst, it is a recipe for mediocrity; at its worst a national disaster!!! These leaders do not have any prior formal training or a proper mentoring on how to steer an organization and worst of all these people do not have a long term vision; thus they end up managing organizations in the most natural way possible – by responding to emerging problems.
Take the cautionary tale of Haiti: to represent years of leadership failure that have condemned the nation to poverty and political insecurity. Thus, Africa has inherited the problem of accidental leadership since its inception: today, institutions are underdeveloped, corruption flourishes, and policy is frozen. Aspiring political leaders will be unable to ‘ignite the framework of the nation’ let alone plan and pursue the course of national development, and accordingly make their countries susceptible to internal anarchy and external manipulation.
The consequences of this failure are huge. Each chance we miss to invest in things like roads, schools, or hospitals makes inequality worse and slows down economic growth. Instead of planning ahead, governments are always dealing with emergencies.
Reactive governance becomes the pattern through which governments are constantly put out rather than constructing fires. This can no longer be the case.
