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Nigeria: Gowon - Military Leaders Failed Nigeria
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This Day (Lagos)
7 May 2008
Posted to the web 7 May 2008
Chuks Okocha And Dayo Thomas
Abuja
Former head of state, General Yakubu Gowon (rtd), yesterday at the inauguration of the Ken Nnamani Centre for Leadership and Development, took a swipe at military rule in Nigeria, saying military leaders including himself had failed the nation.
He said after over three decades of military rule, the military leaders were now convinced that dictatorial rule could not bring and had failed in bringing about development and transformation in the African continent.
Gowon spoke in Abuja at the occasion where former Ghanaian president, Flight Lt. John Jerry Rawlings (rtd), fingered praise singers as the root of the problem of African leaders.
In his remark as the Chairman of the occasion, Gowon said, "As young men in the 1960s, some of us became, rightly or wrongly, impatient with the very slow pace that our post-colonial leadership was offering our people.
"We (the military) then mounted the stage and tried to offer varying degrees of leadership and governance and what we thought could get our people and our country moving towards its manifest greatness.
"Unfortunately, after over three decades of military rule, we are all convinced that dictatorial rule cannot and have failed in delivering the much-needed development and transformation of our continent."
Gowon spent nine years in office as Nigeria's head of state from July 1966 to July 1975.
He berated Nigeria and African leaders, saying: "Our citizens often have become hostages to a class of sit-tight crafty, foxy pseudo-democrats with proclivity for looting, greed, corruption and maladministration. While our citizens yearn endlessly and ceaselessly for change in their well-being, the only change they have witnessed have been different forms of impoverishments."
He further said: "Political intimidation, intolerance of opposing views, abuse of power, complete disdain for the voter as the ultimate umpire in any democratic process and assassination of political opponents are all signals of deteriorating political situations in most African countries."
Speaking as the guest lecturer, the former Ghanaian president described praise singing as the bane of African leadership.
According to Rawlings, "when leaders appoint advisers on how to govern the people and ensure good governance, such appointees turn out to become praise singers for fear of losing their jobs when the truth are told."
However, he lamented that the true colour of a leader is never known until he leaves office, explaining that by then, he would be as Ghanaians say "a dead frog whose four legs are up for all to see."
"Today, we see elected legislators singing praises of Mr. President, journalists lining up to interview and hail the leader, soon, the whole country pretends that the leader is never wrong, until of course he is no longer in power," he said.
Rawlings also said only docile societies would get dictatorial leaders while transformational societies create transformational leaders.
He cautioned against what he described as blind obedience and advocated a bold, confident and constructive obedience if good leadership must be enjoyed with good governance.
Rawlings said democracy would remain a pipe dream unless it was attached to improving the welfare of all the citizenry.
Also speaking, former United States Ambassador to Nigeria, Howard Jeter, described Nigeria as a potential leader if only it would engage in good governance and leadership.
He listed the qualities of good leadership to include ability to see, hear and feel the pulse of the people.
Jeter also said that the president must be connected with the people and gave an instance of what happened to former president George Bush in 1992 when he was asked how he intended to tackle the rising cost of bread.
According to him, Bush had no answer to it because he was not connected with the people, and it was one of the reasons he lost the presidential election to President Bill Clinton.
Former Senate president and Chairman of the centre, Nnamani, in his opening address, said he embarked on the project because he wanted to make Africa achieve in the 21st Century as the Asian made the 20th Century theirs.
According to him, "our driving force is that we want to make leadership the essence of governance. Good leadership is the essence for economic growth, without a dedicated leadership, the economy will not grow."
He said the centre was galvanised towards providing a transformative leadership that would uplift the continent forward.
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Also in attendance among others at the ceremony were Second Republic president, Alhaji Shehu Shagari, former military heads of state, Generals Ibrahim Babangida and Abdulsalami Abubakar, former Senate president, Senator Anyim Pius Anyim, former House of Representatives Speaker, Hon. Aminu Bello Masari, and Governors of Bauchi and Anambra states, Mallam Isa Yuguda and Mr. Peter Obi respectively.
pls any thing you people can do to see that our nation is in a better position like europe pls do masses are dieing and people in the word are making jokes with that nigeria.
Well said by Gowon and Rawlings. Despite their own huge mistakes while in power, these two past leaders do have some decency in them to go down and pull up some grains of wisdom and integrity remaining in their souls. They came out and frankly said it the way it is! This is far from the short-sighted dictatorial tendencies of Obasanjo and his cronies in the Nigerian PDP party, the Mugabes and Mubaracks of Africa. Folks, do we need another more 30 years for African leaders and Africans to understand that dictatorship is not the way to go...especially when other... [Read Full Text]
Nigeria needs a closure to the ugliness of military rule but worse of it the civil war that ensued. We are still blessed to have both Generals Gowon and Ojukwu living. Gowon has pointed accusing finger at Ojukwu and on the other hand Ojukwu has said that Gowon was the rebel for not ceding power to Brid. Ogundikpe.
Let us bring this matter to a close by asking the prestigious Patriot Group to organize a town meeting between Ojukwu and Gowon and others to explain to us what should have been done to avoid the war and how to forge... [Read Full Text]
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