Kayode Komolafe
14 May 2008
column
Lagos — There are great lessons to learn from the rising profile of former Senate President Ken Nnamani. The rise has been steady since he left office a year ago. His profile is a profound testimony to the fact that amid the cloud that often envelopes the perennial discussion of the leadership question, a silver lining comes up, once in a while, on the horizon.
We must take adequate notice of such a development.
Only last week, he launched the Ken Nnamani Centre for Leadership and Development (KNCLD). Among the leaders who honoured the occasion with their eminent presence were former Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon, former President Shehu Shagari, former President Ibrahim Babangida and former Head of State, General Abdulsalami Abubakar. Others were former Ghanaian President Jerry Rawlings, former United States Ambassador to Nigeria, Howard Jeter and a host of legislators, governors and ministers. It was a gathering that was quite appropriate for a reflection on the issues of leadership. In fact, Gowon, Rawlings and Jeter reportedly gave their own important perspectives on leadership. It was refreshing listening to those who have had the opportunity of exercising power reflecting on leadership and what it entails. Nnamani seems serious about the project, which he says is not going to be profit making, but will serve to promote common good. To accomplish this he needs N3.5 billion. The ambition is quite laudable and the goodwill already generated, going by the list of those who have embraced the concept, is an evidence that Nnamani is embarking on a worthwhile experiment.
However, what make the new centre remarkable are the deeper lessons it offers to those in public offices.
The first lesson is that after tenure as a political office holder, there are other productive ways of rendering public service. To be of service (if indeed people hold political offices to render service in Nigeria), one does not have to hang on desperately to power or destroy institutions to perpetuate him in power. It is also a rebuke to those who insist on circulating themselves in the corridors of power not minding the relevance of the appointments they are offered. In other words there is life after political office.
Secondly, the Nnamani story shows that when in power, the leader must know when to seize historical moments and make a difference. A misstep can be decisive for the career of a leader. Nnamani is walking tall on the political landscape today because he presided over the senate when the moves to manipulate the constitution to extend the tenure of former President Olusegun Obasanjo for a third term were checkmated. He would not be talking of a leadership centre today if he had been corralled into the 'third term project". He stood out simply by sticking to principle and ensuring that the rules were followed. It was simply a matter of keeping fidelity with his oath of office. If he were to be a character without a sense of mission, the matter would not, however, be so simple. The perversion of the people's will would, of course, be rationalised on the grounds of "stability", "continuity" 'expediency' and other opportunistic appropriations. Yes, Nnamani gave the senate a good leadership by ensuring its institutional integrity and independence. But if he had taken a wrong step with the third- term politics, he could have rubbished his whole tenure. He has a voice today that decent people are willing to listen to simply because he read the people's mood correctly in 2006 and seized the moment appropriately to distinguish himself as a leader. An historical moment can make or mar a leader and there may not be a second chance to correct mistakes.
Thirdly, Nnamani is making a significant contribution by deepening the culture of thinking about our problems. Every analyst of Nigeria's developmental debacle invariably comes to the conclusion that the factor of leadership is central to overcoming the problems. What is often not stated is that a lot more of thinking ought to go into the process? There is need for more thinking on the part of those who formulate and articulate policies. There is a great of thinking to be done by those who appraise these policies for the purpose of offering alternatives. It is often presumed that the reality facing us has been sufficiently defined. This may not be so after all. Indeed, the vicious cycle of development that the nation finds itself may in itself be a consequence of inadequate definition of the Nigerian condition. For adequate definition of the problem, a lot of thinking is required beyond the casual appreciation of events which passes for a national discourse at present.
So, those who make efforts to create institutions to be devoted to serious reflections on the problems should be encouraged. The sort of centre Nnamani is embarking upon should help in structuring the debates and give some depth into analysis of issues.
Fourthly, it is noteworthy that the centre is focusing on "transformational leadership". The Nigerian condition requires more than nebulous reforms. For decades, different regimes and administrations have fashioned various brands of reforms, employing fanciful acronyms. If it is possible to clinically feel the pulse of the socio-economic and political system, it should be suffering from reform-fatigue by now. It is often forgotten by our reform advocates that a reform is not supposed to be an endless exercise. It must have targets and benchmarks. It should be possible to locate at which point in time the reform has achieved its purpose. Over time, the qualitative effect of cumulative reforms ought to be transformation. In any case, the Nigerian situation is direly in need of transformation. The solution to worsening mass poverty is the transformation in the quality of lives of the people. The collapse in health, education, infrastructure and other sectors makes transformation very urgent. Since one of the important functions of leadership is to give direction and mobilise the people and resources towards the identified direction, the leadership needed is the one that can give direction towards transformation.
That is why the Nnamani centre is such a timely and good example.
Let Us Budget Against Disaster!
In his column, Kayode Komolafe has drawn our attention to the plethora of developmental problems confronting our nation. He probably forgot to mention that no efforts are made at confronting disasters when they occur in our country. True, reforms have been randomly put in place to confront some of what Komolafe aptly described as "demons", but unfortunately the demon of disaster management in our country is not even fully recognised and identified, much less of confronting it.
As a former Comptroller-General of Federal Fire Service and a risk management practitioner, I observe with regret that our budget for this year did not, anywhere, accommodate or recognize disaster management - especially fire security - in the security portion of the budget for which N444.6 billion was appropriated. Fire is at war in many parts of our country and in several areas of the world. We are so unfocussed in this sector that we do not even have reliable statistics of fire-induced losses, and their consequence on the economy. Every year and for decades now, all tiers of government in this country suffer from collective amnesia, and generally forget to make adequate provisions for fire security. What portion of our constituency projects has anything to do with fire security?
It is important to take everyone and every institution to task on safety issues. The government, the legislature, corporate organizations and civil society groups all know that fire kills and maims. We all know that it can reduce to ashes all our gains and achievements in all fields and make a nightmare of our dreams and our future. On Thursday, April 24, 2008 a petrol tanker fire paralyzed movement along airport road in Abuja for about eight hours. The fire fighters at the scene were ill equipped to promptly bring the fire under control. At the end of it, all they could do was to cordon off and isolate the area, while the fire raged.
We are told that the recently passed 2008 Budget is for the ordinary people of Nigeria. Uncontrolled fires deal more deadly blows on ordinary Nigerians. It is the Nigerian poor that suffer mostly, and largely unsung when fire disaster strikes, and they constitute the major missing link in our poor fire statistics. If the 2008 Budget is aimed at poverty reduction, it must then be realised that fire induces poverty from which many ordinary Nigerians do not recover.
If 2008 Budget is for accelerating the provision of basic infrastructure to improve the quality of the life of our people, then it must be accepted that fire administration at all levels in our country lack essential basic infrastructure for the training of all ranks of fire fighters, and for operational fire fighting itself. If our budget for this year is for improvement of education and for social safety, yet many of our educational facilities are often completely destroyed by fire with terrifying consequences, like temporary closure of the school affected. The frequency of plane crashes and multiple disasters on our roads have not engineered any purposeful response from our governments and corporate institutions, let alone the best practices in emergency preparedness and mitigation. The painful reality today is that the agencies that are supposed to rescue us from disasters when they occur are hardly in place in our state and local government areas. More worrisome is the certain professional handicap of our first responders that is the fire services, from Abia to Zamfara.
It is only a nation that is prepared and alert that responds promptly and effectively to emergencies and disasters. Anywhere in the world, the Fire Service is the operational nucleus of all emergencies and disaster management. The 105-year old Nigeria Fire Service is still born, making it important and urgent for our governments to put in place a good, efficient and dependable Fire Service that this country really deserves. Clearly, capacity building that is needed urgently in our Fire Service qualifies to benefit from our commitment under the Paris Club Debt relief gains that amounted to N110billion. How we fast track the fire sector and equip it to protect Nigerians, our existing infrastructure and our dreams of becoming an economic power by the year 2020 would depend on the collective priority we all accord to our Fire Services under the present Administration. We must confront the Fire Security Demon Now.
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