Farm House Dialogue - Africa Leadership Forum

What Have We Left Out?Perhaps we have not considered the restructuring of the minds of men at the top, those inthe middle and those at the bottom. That could be it.“We spoke and acted as if, given the opportunity for self government,We would quickly create utopias. Instead, injustice, even tyranny isrampant”- President Julius K. Nyerere- Commenting on the tragedyof post colonial African leaders.Understanding or misunderstanding the concept of leadership has been the blight andoften the bane of many men at the top in Africa. Misunderstanding the concept offollowership is the other side of the same coin of failure or collapse of the society. Unlessboth groups, the leaders and followers, get their roles right, the abyss of Hades willcontinue to be the destiny of African peoples.Tyranny and sycophancy are two evils which feed on and sustain each other. In ancienttimes, the “divine right of kings” was a widespread creed. An ancient Chinese Emperorwas the “son of the Heavens”. Today, in many parts of Africa, the “divine right of rulers”has supplanted the ancient creed.Military rulers raw in jack-boots or transmitted into mufti exercise that “divine right”without qualms, self appointed or selected or erected rulers who subsequently maintainthemselves in perpetual power through rigged elections insist on that “divine right”. Anycrook or charlatan who can convert the national treasury into his personal or family fundstrives to wield that “divine right” in perpetuity. And the people they rule suffer.In a country such as ours which is over-governed “more chiefs than Indians”, withmultiple tiers of government –federal, state, and local governments, executive andlegislative arms, ministers, special advisers, commissioner, governors and their deputies,council chairmen, supervisory councilors, “royal fathers” of various grades (emirs, obas,ezes, chiefs, igwes, obongs, etsus, tor, amanyanabos, olus, mingis, district heads etc), thetyranny/sycophancy tango has been woven into an art form. The rulers breathe fire in KingRehoboam style, “My Father made your yoke heavy; I will make it even heavier. Myfather scourged you with whips; I will scourge you with scorpions (Kings 12:14), whilethe ruled fawn obsequiously just to stay alive for another day.Such a mix could never result in good governance, or peace. It leads to abysmally lowquality of life indices. And with these indices, Africa remains the butt of jokes of miseryand underdevelopment.