Chapter 5

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indeed a poverty of leadership in desperate proportions. I argue however, that the problem of poor governance in Nigeria is more with followership than it is with.
Chapter 5 Between Leadership and Followership: Determining the Character of Conflict “Toute nation a le gouvernement qu'elle merite (Every nation has the government it deserves)” -

Joseph de Maistre (1753-1821)

The Nigerian leadership over the years has been blamed in many fora and debates for the poor corporate governance of the country. This is understandable. There is indeed a poverty of leadership in desperate proportions. I argue however, that the problem of poor governance in Nigeria is more with followership than it is with leadership. A bad followership is simply, and without equivocation, that followership that tolerates bad leadership. Sometimes a people may understand that their leader is bad, but due to the fact that they are in some conflict with other groups in a union, prefer to go with such leadership. As long as there is apathy in followership or a tacit approval in the face of bad leadership, leaders will continue to obey the Freudian psychoanalytic principle that man primarily seeks pleasure and avoids pain. In the face of general apathy, the only thing that keeps a leader in check is his conscience. In Aristotle’s treatise “Politics”, the classical philosopher argues that human conscience does not go far where there are little or no institutionalised instruments, de facto, of checks and control. The author even describes man as worse than an animal if unchecked (Aristotle, 2016 p.3). There are some pertinent questions that need to be asked about followership. Why are some followers docile and others opinionated and even fractious? Why was it easy for Lord Lugard to get 160 volunteers in Northern Nigeria in 1900 to beef up the RNC constabulary he was inheriting, and for the purposes of subjugating the people; yet a similar call for volunteers in the Gold Coast failed miserably?32 Neoclassical philosophical teachings such as those of Jean Jacques Rousseau 32

See: Colonial Reports-Annual op. cit.

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distinguish between the sum of the total will of a people – such as expressed in an election – and the General Will of a people which is simply that decision, that choice that is in the best interest of the people. One important value of Rousseau’s teaching when applied to leadership is that the mere fact that a people tolerate a leadership or even accept it, does not always mean such is in their best interest. In other words legitimacy of a leadership can, to this extent, be relative. A people may accept a leadership when they are completely cowed, held hostage by those who rule them. And this can only happen when the people permit it because as demonstrated by the work of Ackerman & Merriman (2015) not even the biggest of guns can cow the mettlesome spirit of a determined people. When a people remain at this (lowmettlesome-spirit) level, good leaderships can never emerge, because even when individuals or vanguards take an initiative for change the people would not come along and the initiative soon whittles away. This particular order of things most singularly, compromises the capacity of conflict to positively occasion the reordering of things (Coser, 1957). Indeed the scientific way to understand the concept of leadership is to put the subject in an evolutionary context. Leaders do not occur in a “bang”. They emerge as products of social systems (Turner, 2013 pp.34-36). History is yet to record a systemic change carried out by any leadership that is not backed by the people. On the flip side history is replete with changes in social orders galvanised by the people. Yes, individuals and, or vanguards must take the initiative for good leadership and such individuals and vanguards are always in every society where there is bad leadership. They only stand the test of time and eventually triumph when the people support them. Indeed to support this position, historical and historic instances abound. For example on July 14, 1789, a spontaneous revolt in France against the price of bread by a large mob that invaded the Bastilles prison and later the king’s palace at Versailles was ‘hijacked’ by a vanguard, culminating in the famous French Revolution; one of the most devastating of an old order, of all times. Again on August 14, 1791, a certain voodoo priest named Dutty Boukman called for action against the French slave masters in Haiti. In spite of the fact that slavery was lawful and the slave 100

system in Haiti was strongly protected, the famous Saint Domingue Slave revolt began on July 22, barely eight days later. By early August over a hundred thousand black men and women, boys and girls, had risen up in arms against the French. France’s swift response by way of Napoleon Bonaparte’s 6000-foot-soldiers-strong force could not subdue the mettlesome spirit of the bruised African. By early 1792, the slaves controlled a third of the Island of Haiti and about 4, 000 whites and slave masters were dead. In addition, over 180 sugar plantations had been burnt or destroyed. When the smoke cleared, far reaching slave reforms culminated in the declaration of freedom for Haiti slaves in August 1793, making Haiti the first settlement to abolish slavery in the four hundred years history of Trans Atlantic Slave Trade. This development snowballed into the abolition of slavery in the colonies of the Hispaniola by the following year 1794. The rest of Europe and America were to follow nearly 100 years later. The great Saint Domingue revolt was also the inspiration that began the domino wagon that brought Trans Atlantic Slave Trade to its knees all over the world. It was arguably the first real humiliation the war monger Napoleon Bonaparte suffered before he eventually met his Waterloo in Belgium on June 18, 1815. The Russian experience provides a peculiar and interesting variant of people’s involvement in change. By the turn of the 20th Century things had come to a head in the Eastern European country. Food scarcity was widespread. Corruption was the order of the day. There were strikes, uprisings and violent disapprovals of the inept leadership of Tsar Nicholas II. To assuage the spirit of the nation, the monarchy created an advisory parliament the Duma in 1905. But the people were not deceived. The creation of the Duma was rather diversionary as it did not address the salient issues of poverty, scarcity, inflation, disease and brigandage. The Tsar superficially resorted to changing guard at the Duma repeatedly to no avail. When the First World War caught up with the country, the ill-prepared “peasant” army of Russia was no match for the modern army of Germany. As civil disturbances continued, the Police and the rag-tag Army were so disgruntled that they began to defect to the side of the people. As things continued to get out of hand, the Tsar

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was forced to abdicate the throne for his brother Michael who promptly rejected the Greek gift of the throne. The Duma, controlled by the Menshevik Party formed a provisional government in the wake of a close rivalry with the socialist Bolshevik Party led by Ilyich Vladimir Lenin in March, 2017. That same year the Petrograd Soviet of workers, and soon after including the military was established; an administrative body which shared power with the Duma and to which representatives of workers and the military were appointed, ending the 304 years of the Tsarist dynasty. It was thus easy for the socialist party to mobilise the people through the Petrograd Soviet where the army which had since defected to the side of the people, was represented. In November that same year the Bolsheviks toppled the Mensheviks and established the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR); the Soviet Union, which lasted for 75 years. The events in China were equally spectacular. By 1930, there had been so much unease with the oppressive government of the nationalist Kuomintang which had overthrown the Manchu dynasty in 1912. The political situation in the immediate post Manchu China needed a change initiative that would mobilize a large vanguard outside the Northeast seat of government, and the revolutionaries looked at the Northwest. But there were threatening issues. Between 1930 and 1934 when the famous Long March began, there had been a plethora of conflicts in the leadership vanguard. Mao Tse-Tung who arguably began the struggle was replaced by Zhou Enlai in 1931. Zhou was replaced by the Soviet-trained duo of Bo Gu and Otto Braun in 1933. The two Soviet immigrants actually began the famous March in 1934. In January 1935 the Soviets were toppled by Mao and Zhou. Zhou became the new leader and Mao his deputy. In November 1935, Mao toppled Zhou to emerge the new leader and Zhou became his deputy. In all these tussles the over 130,000-manstrong followership was unshaken. The people marched over 6, 000 miles in about 370 days to found the new China in 1949 which stands till this day. The flip side of the events leading to a successful Russian Revolution and the establishment of modern China is provided by the Argentine experience. In the 1950s Ernesto R. Guevara de la Serna better known as Che Guevara, arguably one of the strongest revolutionary leaders the world has ever known, occurred in 102

Argentina. Yet no revolution happened there in his homeland in his time. He could only find expression in Cuba where a vanguard had the requisite followership. The failure of a revolution in Argentina can be traced to the huge chasm of disconnect between the people and the revolutionary vanguard. This was occasioned by both the elitist character of the vanguard and their approach which made it difficult for the people to trust them. Added to this was the pattern of response from the government forces. Firstly Guevera whose cult figure was the bastion of revolutionary agitations in Latin America, had a Trotskyist vision of spontaneity of action across several national borders. As such rather than concentrate on his native Argentina, he looked across the whole of Latin America. However by the time he left Argentina for Cuba in 1958, he had planted a seed which later morphed into the Guevarist Youth Group and, especially, the Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo (ERP); the People's Revolutionary Army; the military wing of the communist Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores (PRT); the Workers' Revolutionary Party. It was however the ERP that ran a protracted revolutionary movement between 1965 and 1977 without being able to connect with the people. Although the ERP as a vanguard was as dedicated and ruthless as the Bolsheviks in Russia or the Chinese veterans of the Long March, the rebels in Argentina fought all of the government, the rich and the poor. While for example, the Russian rebels raised funds by robbing banks, the Argentine insurgents robbed banks too but went beyond that to include kidnap-for-ransom. And the latter was not only a threat to government officials, the expatriates and the rich; it was also a threat to the poor with many poor hostages dying in captivity (Stockwell, 2014). Little wonder Robben (2010 pp.148-149) observes that what was arguably the most significant occupation by the insurgents which included the control of a rail station, a police territorial jurisdiction, a telephone office, most access roads in Acheral in the Tucuman province of Northwest Argentina was short-lived. This was because, opines the author, “in reality the masses were not even trickling in small numbers to the guerrillas, because the violence was condemned by most Argentines.”

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In 1979, there was a spontaneous uprising in Iran. When the dust went away, the Shar went with it, chased away by the people. In 1990, a group of neo communists in Russia rose up against Perestroika and Glasnost – the change just achieved by the people. The people matched unto the Kremlin and chased them away. One thing the Russian experience demonstrated was that the initiative for change taken by Boris Yeltsin and the other reformists could not have stood if the Russian people were not with them. In 1993 there were similar uprisings in Nigeria for change after decades of misrule. People took to the streets to demand that their collective will, expressed in the election of the late Chief Moshood Abiola, be respected. But the agitators were soon silenced or chased away and the old order remained. In 2011, uprisings for change broke out in Algeria – and indeed in most of the Arab world. The authorities moved against them but not only did the people stand their ground, the military and police set against them were so overwhelmed by the people’s spirit that they too, joined the protesters. In all the instances of successful change of the old order cited so far, it was the people that made the difference. In the same token between two colonised countries, for example, after many years of agitation, it takes the people to make the difference for one to achieve independence, de facto, and the other mere self rule. Related to all this is an interesting observation that can be made from the patterns of conflict that led to the emergence of leaderships in two countries with somewhat similar backgrounds. Just like an earlier comparison was made between Nigeria and India in terms of the presence and absence of a national spirit, another comparison can be made between Nigeria and Kenya; this time in terms contradictions in the evolution of the characters of both leadership and followership. Nigeria and Kenya were both colonised by the same power namely Britain. Nigeria has been largely seen to have experienced a much more peaceful anti-colonisation agitation than Kenya; the latter known to have had one of the most violent paths to independence in human history. The wide measure of violent attempts by the colonial masters to suppress the Mau Mau movement, provided the impetus that created a bond among the ethnic groups in Kenya particularly the Lou and the Kikuyu the latter which

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began the uprising (Corsi, 2008 p. 98). Page & Sonnenburg (2003 p.373) capture the undying spirit of the Mau Mau African, adequately: “In the final analysis, the Mau Mau established that the Africans of Kenya were prepared to fight and die for their land, ending all hope of white minority rule. As a direct result of the rebellion, the British government began to plan for Kenyan independence under majority rule.” But then it is interesting to note that the Nigerian experience did not start as peacefully as it ended. In fact the guerrilla-style, highly compartmented pattern of agitation among the Igbo communities33 of the Midwest namely the Ekumeku Movement was so virulent, organised and people-oriented that it was one of the most resistant movements ever experienced by colonial Britain and the main source of inspiration to the Mau Mau Movement (Iweze, 2016). Now while the Mau Mau wars led to a people-oriented, more politically stable post-independence Kenya, the Ekumeku wars were not replicated in other parts of Nigeria and these pockets of, yet effective, resistance among villages in a small segment of Nigeria were overwhelmed by the ‘diplomatic’ variant of the larger hinterland of the rest of the country. Though the Ekumeku movement is cited as the most promising armed resistance in colonial Nigeria, there had been even more vociferous uprisings and wars before Ekumeku. In this light the Yoruba and other nations of Western Nigeria were known to have fought severe civil resistance wars most notable being the Kiriji wars of 1877 - 1893. In a similar vein there were the resistant wars against the conquering forces of Uthman Dan Fodio in the geographical entities that make up modern Northern Nigeria. Inter ethnic and tribal wars were fought in areas constituting modern Eastern Nigeria and other parts of the entities that make up today’s Nigeria. In Northern Nigeria there were the campaigns of Sunni Ali and Askia Mohammed of the Songhai Empire in the Northwest. There were also those of El-Kanemi of the Bornu Empire and perhaps the most outstanding, the campaigns of Uthman Dan 33

The Ekumeku campaigns were so compartmented that the British had to conquer every community separately and even at that such conquests were not always complete as guerrilla insurgencies regularly came up. The fight against the Ekumeku movement took so long that it was one of the longest resistance movements known to the British colonial empire. See “The Politicization of Movements: Nationalism and National Unity in Pre-Independence India, Ghana, Nigeria and Kenya”, by J. A. Newton (1990)

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Fodio. The Yoruba civil wars and those of pre-colonial Northern Nigeria as fierce as they were, however, were of a different character, compared with the Ekumeku campaigns, and as such had a different objective. This is very important for an adequate and a scientific understanding of the character and content of political behaviour among the citizenry of contemporary Nigeria. The campaigns in precolonial north and south of Nigeria were for the purposes of defining nations and, sometimes, nation states. At the end of the campaigns nation states and Empires such as Songhai, Borno, Benin, Ibadan, and the Sokoto Caliphate, among others had emerged. When the colonial state emerged, it was a unitarist federation of these nation states under the contraption Nigeria. Further, as observed from the ideologies of the Nigerian state formation in Chapter 3, the campaign for independence rather than being carried out in the name of a Nigeria with a common set of values, it was along primordial and other parochial lines. Thus these well established parochial institutions rather than a national collective provided the spirit for the campaign for self rule. The implication for the de-making of the Kenyan or the Indian-type national spirit can be viewed at three levels. The first was that these rather rival parochial institutions were in themselves in conflict while at the same time fighting the course of independence. The second was that none of them was strong and willed enough to engage the colonisers in any armed struggle. This was because of two reasons. The first was that there was the possibility of the colonialists raising forces from rival regional groups to crush such armed conflict. The second was that the leaders of these groups were galvanised by the ideology of legitimation which basically promised a bequeathal to them of well-formed paraphernalia of state which they could subsequently occupy. It would not be in their interest to destroy same. The third level of understanding had to do with the absence of an armed struggle itself. In this regard, where for instance the brutal Mau Mau struggle helped build a collective national spirit in Kenya (Speitkamp, 2015 pp.207-224)34, the absence of an armed struggle in the case of Nigeria, watered down the pains and the visible price 34

The author demonstrates how the brutal Mau Mau campaigns by Kenya against colonial rule helped to create a huge centripetal force among Kenyans, such that it became a national reference point where issues of national values and unity are raised.

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of colonialism. Thus, the impetus for a collective national spirit this would have created and ultimately forged was missing. Another factor that shapes the character of political leadership is the extent to which an emergent class of leadership relates their political power to economic power not just at the time and process of the struggle to wrest power, but after they seize power. Though many climes, nations, empires and domains may have been acquired through military expeditions, there is no doubt that political power in human history has been sustained and perpetuated with economic power, even though political power protects economic power (Przeworski & Curvale, 2005). The use of military force to acquire domains has in fact been by way of politics of last resort, and is often for the purpose of acquisition. Where attempts have been made to sustain and perpetuate power mainly by force, the result has been political turbulence, upheavals and resistance until the power by force is dismantled. A proper understanding of military campaigns for domains will reveal that such ventures are driven by the need to advance economic interests (Lozano, 2012 p.39). And once such conquests are made even attempts to sustain power by force must be backed by economic strength. A classic example of this is provided by Josef Stalin’s Russia. Stalin and his vanguard understood the strength of economic foundation such that while they built military power, they forcefully transformed an agrarian economy into an industrial nation of reckoning at that time. And it did not matter the cost in human lives as people were forced to work under seemingly impossible conditions. In fact as Stalin himself noted: “the death of one man is a tragedy; the death of millions is a statistic” (LarHurd, 2009 p.11). At the end of Stalin’s economic reforms, over 20 million soviet citizens lay dead. In the same token, Mao Tse Tung and his revolutionary vanguard used forced labour to build a new socialist economy. At the end of the day in China it took the lives of forty million Chinese citizens to build a new economy. Equally, the French Revolution of 1789 was the prize of the efforts of an emerging class of nouveaux industrial and laissez-fairist Jacobins and the Montagnards to topple the then incumbent feudalists represented by the monarchy, and install farreaching economic changes (Marik, 2008 p.144). And in the making of the French 107

democracy through five republics between 1792 and 1958, it was a progressive installation of real holders of economic power in the affairs of state. In the same vein, the contemporaneous capitalist revolution in England abolished absolute monarchy, giving real power to a rising class of industrialists (Morishima, 1984 p.82) who were majorly constituted in the lower house of parliament where real legislative and executive powers reside to this day. The making of the power class in modern United States took the initiative of a vanguard powered by new industrialists initially among 13 American enclaves of the then British colonies to revolt against the King of England. This happened as these industrialists began to grow in relevance over the erstwhile slave and plantation owners who had dominated the economies of these British colonies. Indeed the American experience provides a unique lesson. It is on record that among the initial 13 colonies that promulgated the American Charter of Independence, only the state of Georgia came about as a result of Royal Charter. The rest 12 were direct creations of men and women who settled in the Americas after six to eight week journeys by sea in quest of economic fortunes. It was this quest and their determination that created the mettlesome spirit with which they defeated the then world’s most powerful Navy; the Royal navy, and arguably the most powerful army at the time. The old Soviet Union, China and Cuba presented a variant of revolutions driven by the quest for relevance of holders of economic power. Although none of the scenarios followed the trajectory of Marxian dialectics, each of the events raised vanguards that short-circuited history by transferring power direct from the feudalists to the immediate custodians of economic power namely the workers without transiting through a capitalist revolution as Marx had envisaged. From the foregoing, it is evident that social conflicts of positive societal change acquire character and content depending not as much on the convictions and actions of leaders, but on those of the led. Progressive leaders may come on the stage but if the led are lumpen, conflicts for social change remain at the ephemeral level. Such an order makes the polity highly susceptible to the manipulations of the retrogressive power class that hold the people hostage; one group against the other. 108

The Crisis of Followership The preceding chapters have attempted to show, inter alia, the historical foundations of the present character and content of political followership in Nigeria. As already observed there has been, for as long as Nigeria has existed, so much concern about the price of inept leadership in Nigeria. On the other hand, there has been little or no concern about inept followership within the context of the Nigerian political space. Yet, evidence abounds as to the pre-eminence of followership in the making of a good political culture. There are in fact some questions that may throw some light in this direction. Why is it for instance that when there was a coup in Russia in 1990 or more recently in Turkey in 2016, the people rose up and chased the interlopers away? Why is it that it is difficult for an inept leader to emerge in states like the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Japan, or even South Africa? And when they do emerge by some error, the system has a way of removing them usually by constitutional means. On the flip side, why is it that in Nigeria no attempted coup has ever been resisted by the people? Why is it that in Nigeria the “good man” has never emerged as president? Why was it that in 1980 when the people of Iran rose up against the establishment, they stood their grounds even when the police and the military were sent to disperse them, with the law enforcement agents eventually joined the protest. Conversely in Nigeria thirteen years later, a few gun shots dispersed pro June 12 protesters? The answer to all these questions is simply and squarely inept or inactive followership. An adequate understanding of the dynamics of political followership in Nigeria is therefore central to understanding the present poverty of good leadership in the country. Further, it is also crucial to identify the complexities created by the interplay of bad followership and its fruit namely bad leadership, as they are complicit in the making of the politics of last resort in Nigeria. Apathy, Tepid Political Participation and the Culture of Impunity In the preceding parts of this account there has been an attempt to chronicle the

events that created and cultivated a peculiar type of political culture in Nigeria. This

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part will make some highlights while relating them to the present political order of apathy and tepid participation on the part of the governed. So far this study has attempted an insight into the making of sectional or parochial groups in the political evolution of modern Nigeria. Be they ethnic or primordial, religious or trade groups, they are mere facades that mask a fragile class of interlopers that hijacked the organ of state from the erstwhile colonial masters. Works as Nnoli (1978) account for the emergence of both formal and informal ethnic institutions to serve the purposes of social welfare and other related purposes that would otherwise have been provided by the state. Ekeh’s (1975) theory of the two publics within the colonial state namely the primordial and the civic publics, also demonstrates the preeminence of the primordial group over the collective in a larger Nigeria. Both accounts explain the superintendence of centrifugal loyalties over and above the common course that was Nigeria. But then the sectional loyalties that placed the destinies of these different groups in the country in the hands of their local champions, did not guarantee responsibility of the latter to the former. Rather the colonial ideology of legitimation by which these leaders were persuaded, erroneously conferred on them the personal ownership of whatever apparatus of state they were able to wrest on behalf of their groups. On the side of the led, due to the fact of a long tradition where they looked up to parochial groups rather than the state for what would have otherwise been the responsibility of state, there is always an implied approval for whatever actions their leaders took in their names. Thus, it is usual to follow their “leaders” at times of election whether there is a manifesto or not. It is also unimportant whether such “leaders” are qualified and, or are prepared for the task of leadership or not. Further even when they perform woefully, they still enjoy the support of such lumpen followership, with the latter reeling out to the rest of the country the “right” of their own person to be in government at the particular time in question. In effect, this form of placid followership defines the actual character of a particular level of political participation of the led. This level includes both conversing for votes and actual voting. In addition to this tepid class of political participation, there is also the highly vociferous. These are found among the jobbers, the riggers and the 110

political thugs. Their stridency in political participation is not out of self will; rather it is driven by the same ideology that legitimates, by their own perception, the presence of their leader in the corridors of power, whether qualified or not. Thus when leaders are elected, they are usually unaccountable to the people, self-serving, and with uncommon impunity. Finally is the group of the out-rightly apathetic. This is to be found among the highly informed; the intelligentsia sometimes, and those who understand the dynamics of the prevalent political culture where a fraudulent leadership is tacitly supported by a tepid followership. This group is unorganized, mostly highly engaged in their vocations, knowing that even when they decide to act in the right direction, there would be no followership, and their ideas would die with them. They stay aloof. This type of order perfectly suits the political leadership as it provides an excellent setting for the interlopers to perform their enterprise. To this extent, leaders emerge by way of presidents, legislators and others, not by any merit, but by some considerations that ensure the maintenance of the status quo, and the survival of the peripheral property class in whose trust, the apparatus of state is held. This is why virtually all the time presidents emerge in Nigeria totally unprepared. As Keshi (2007) complains, “…in Nigeria virtually all our leaders have emerged either as compromise candidates or as opportunistic coup plotters. For both scenarios, they have emerged totally unprepared. In January, 1966, General Aguiyi Ironsi emerged Head of State through circumstances he did not create. He was totally unprepared. Later that same year, General Yakubu Gowon became Head of State as a compromise candidate; totally unprepared. He was to be Chief Executive for a whopping period of nine years. “The Mohammed / Obasanjo regime that followed came via a coup, and the nature of coups does not allow the time for a thorough blue print before one is saddled with the colossus of governance. President Shagari wanted to be a Senator; he became President, all of a sudden. Then “coupists” followed. Chief Shonekan himself admitted that his was a “government of circumstance,” while Generals Abacha and Abubakar were children of circumstances of sorts. President Obasanjo became president-elect in 1999, less than three months after he told Nigerians politics was 111

not for him. And how far did he really take the country in eight years? The rest is history. “So how prepared is (was) President Yar’Adua? We may know the man as a good, incorruptible governor, but we did not see a man preparing for the presidential slot ahead of time, in a manner associated with presidential successes all over the world. What we know is that the man had to be settled for when all efforts to install President Obasanjo for an infamous third term failed.” In the same token both Presidents Jonathan and Buhari that followed came totally unprepared. In the final analysis there are both crises of leadership, as well as of followership. But it does appear that the leaders, being only human will chose pleasure and avoid pain, as long as they have the implied approval of the led. Further, good leaders that are an exception to the rule, when they emerge; whatever revolutions or even reforms they may envisage get consumed by a corrupted followership, such that their proposed programmes of change die on arrival. Thus it takes a good followership for a good leadership to emerge, and very especially, sustained. This is why Joseph de Maistre (1753-1821) made the famous quote: “every nation gets the government it deserves.”

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