By Olakunle Agboola – Africa’s economic malaise is not the result of lack of opportunities or resources. Rather, the continent suffers from the affliction of dishonest leadership, and this is not to demean the efforts of a few exceptional leaders who have shown commitment to duty.
The catastrophe of bad leadership has created the impression that Africa is incapable of finding African solutions to the problems affecting the continent, and this is not exactly a product of racialism or the supremacist attitude of the former colonisers.
Rather, it is a widely shared view towards the continent by many other people of this world, including a lot of Africans.
Retired Prof John Oba, a political analyst spoke to our correspondence in Lagos, he expressed his dissatisfaction on African political leadership. He said, “Our leadership has for long been defined by indecisiveness and inaction, and this is why we are eminently known as illustrious back-seaters in international affairs, leaving the driving to all others, especially to the Western world. It really does not make much of a difference for us if the matter of concern is of immediate concern to Africans: we always want to look up to the superior beings from elsewhere to rescue our situation. We can bring up the issue of Ebola or HIV/AIDS, civil conflicts or even climate change; our attitudinal stand is always to surrender the driving seat to the western world.
When a country as well-endowed agriculturally as Zimbabwe becomes a recipient of food aid, or has its name missing on the global mineral traders list despite the rich mineral content under its surface, there must be something fundamentally wrong. Not only that, Nigeria ought to be the gateway of civilization in the 21st century with massive natural and human resources she possessed, but today, she is just an eagle flapping and scouting with the chickens due to poor leadership.
The so-called leaders are rulers smitten by the demon of individualism, poisoned by selfish interest and wickedness. On the long run, they have killed every beautiful dream and hope of a community. The effect is a wrong picture of success because everyone wants to get to power and cut their own tits. We effectively legalized a short-term mentality that has effectively stalled development for the continent” He concluded.
John Ige, the team lead of Africa Rise is hopeful on the revival of leadership who will take Africa to the promise land, when he spoke to our correspondence in Lagos yesterday.
According to him, “Since independence many of our countries, unfortunately, have been under people who style themselves as strong men, who really didn’t respect the dignity of us Africa. The first challenge is to find the people, the leaders. When we look at our continent it’s taken a bit long for us to come by the leaders who will take us to the promise land due to the lack of effective leadership over the years.
What I came to realize traveling around the continent and organizing leadership summit for the past 15 years is that, we are in short supply of leadership by service. We just have majority of those who want a bite of the National cake and do not care about the welfare of the citizens. And I don’t blame us the Africans, we have had a very sad history over the past 600 years, history that sucked our service to humanity and instilled some real demon of wickedness in us. But there is hope in the rising of new crop of leadership in Africa, which I hope will change the narratives. He said.
It is obvious that the Continent has been characterized by diverse social and economical challenges which has brought many countries in Africa to a standstill economically despite the abundance of natural and social resources. There is hope for the continent to witness a revival of leaders who will deliver Africa her inheritance.
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