IWU: Prof. Chinua Achebe’s leadership postulation doesn’t hold.

Professor Achebe, in the opening statement of his classic, the trouble with Nigeria, did pinpoint leadership—the absence of genuine leadership—as the bane of Nigeria. However, the Obasanjo supervised general elections of 2007 proved beyond all doubt, the limitations of the oracle’s postulations, as it relates to the INEC chairman.

But for some Nigerians, particularly, the losers and marginal beneficiaries of the last general elections like APGA, AC and PPA, Abia chapter, the problem remains leadership and therefore, only Iwu’s sack and possibly, his banning from holding public offices for life, would arrange matters. For these categories of persons, Iwu as an individual, was responsible for all the malpractices—ballot stuffing, result editing, and even the submission of result sheets to dominant parties chieftains in states for vetting before announcement, violence and destruction of lives and property, recorded or witnessed before and after the elections— And therefore, his sack, and not the sack of the entire security apparatchiki, that could neither “accidentally discharge” nor arrest a single thug, would correct every failing.

A superficial solution that purposely ignore the dynamics and resultant sophistication of crimes, in the Nigerian society, starting from the dying days of the Babangida’s administration when the military had to apply “minimum force” to guarantee a semblance of order in the country and the awe effects that their commando operations and swift results had on the psyche of the very young then, who have today, become the office seekers and thugs. The outcome of the Abacha’s local government creation exercise between the Ijaws and Itsekiris is enough prefatory messages on what we are experiencing today, with elections.

The kind of derring-do and buccaneering spirit that is prevalent amongst today’s youth is incomparable— Learnt or copied from the military. The dreaded robber, Lawrence Anini of the Babangida regime is today, comparable to pickpockets. Observe the youth proportion of any political gathering of today’s Nigeria and see how many of them that are prepared to win voters, or even believe that they need to persuade voters, to do their biddings, with superior argument; Very negligible. Check out the demonstrations of the youth in the motorcade of a typical Nigerian politician—life threatening; or that of the youths with state security service, providing protections for elected officials. And this heroic impulse would continue to grow as more means for gainful economic engagement vanishes, for the youth; our wishes notwithstanding.

Admitted, Iwu did lend a hand to Obasanjo in his bid to stop his vice and a handful of others from standing for the elections but he was just one man, and was therefore, not micro-managing the election processes in the local governments and states of the federation. His subordinates were supposed to but they were not; due to a combination of the poverty of the pocket and fear of the unknown from thugs. It was the politicians with their thugs, mainly babies of the 90s that took charge, with the tacit support of the security operatives—who went for those who could advance their personal course— that were detailed to police the process. It was just a case of the party with the largest numbers of thugs in a particular area, carrying the day.

Iwu’s sack would practically add no value to the desire for rig-free elections in Nigeria.
And the same goes for the electoral reforms and the controversy about the powers to appoint future Iwu’s. The man in charge of the election commissions in Ghana and the United States that gave spectacular performances, if loaned to us, would fail abysmally, should they be charged with the conduct of elections in Nigeria. And definitely, not Humphrey Nwosu, for he worked under a more decent leader coupled with a tolerable poverty level.

Even if we recommend death sentences or injection of HIV virus for offenders, it would still not deter the desperately poor youth from availing the politicians of their services and I dare to say, that this youth are far more daring than the police and in Warri, reckons only with the military, for the fact that they deploy heavy artilleries like armoured tanks in quelling uprisings.

The problem is the mind set—any way is the way—that has been allowed to dominate the thinking of Nigerians, actively fuelled by the abject poverty in the land. This can only be curtailed when employment opportunities are readily available to absorb the youths coupled with proper education through the religious leaders, town unions and other such groups—not government seminars and workshops with “expert” resource persons sourced with millions of state funds—to continually direct the minds of the parents on the dangers of short changing the future of their wards for fleeting gains.

Ilobi Austin’s opinions on national and international issues are readily and freely available at