Graffiti … The sins of the governors

By Idang Alibi…

One of the most moving and insightful stories of visionary, committed, dedicated, inspiring, transformational and sacrificial kind of political leadership worthy of emulation by all leaders is recorded in the Bible in a chapter titled Nehemiah. It tells the story of Nehemiah, a Jewish patriot and nationalist, who was one of the Jewish exiles/captives in Babylon. Nehemiah was serving the Babylonian king called Artaxerxes in the privileged position of cup bearer. While there, he heard from home how the Jewish community in Judah was in ‘’great affliction and reproach’’. The city walls of Jerusalem were in ruins which meant that the people had no sense of safety and security. They were at the mercy of marauders and other adventure seekers.

Because of his love for his compatriots and his nation, he pleaded with the King to allow him go back and lead the rebuilding of his people’s defense architecture and provide leadership for the people’s social, economic and spiritual restoration. Nehemiah’s is the story of courage, tenacity and self-denial in the face of almost insurmountable odds on the part of a leadership that wants to pull a people out of the pit of poverty, defeat and leaderlessness.

What is most striking (and which has led me to a comparison with our governors who are daily crying for a bail-out by the Federal Government) about the story of Nehemiah, is that because he was leading over a poor and disposed people, Nehemiah elected of his own volition not to enjoy the rights and privileges enjoyed by previous governors who behaved more like hirelings than the shepherds they were supposed to be. He refused what he called the Bread of the Governor.

Here, who talks about a deliberate self-denial of the Bread of the Governor so the governors do not become a burden to the already impoverished people they are supposed to lead? In our country, the governors not only consume the full loaf of the bread of the governor but they will go ahead to take several slices of even the cake meant for the people and add to their own portion. Whether the people can eat or not the security vote of the governor must be appropriated and spent.

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At the end of the day some of them amass for themselves a humungous amount of the people’s gold, shekels and silver and become stupendously rich in the mist of mind boggling numbers of poor, dispossessed and distressed people.

A good number of our governors are guilty of three leadership sins: waste of money, waste of precious Executive Time and lack of organizational and mobilisational abilities to mobilise, motivate and mentor the people to achieve set targets as Nehemiah did in the herculean task of rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem in a short span of only 52 days. It is principally this lack of leadership skill that after a long tenure of four or eight years, some of our governors labour in vain to point out any monumental things they have achieved.

Many of our governors have the mentality of the hunter: ‘’kill and eat now; tomorrow you shall get another game’’, when they should have the mentality of a shepherd who patiently breeds in order to have a multiplication. As we all know, poverty always comes upon those who have the Esau mentality as opposed to those with the Jacob mentality. The Esau mentality is one that hates delayed gratification; it is the mentality of wanting it now, now and right now and not later even if it means you will have a better and bigger share then.0

The Jacob mentality, on the other hand, believes that you can only secure your future by denying yourself of certain pleasures now. How many of our state chief executives can boast of how they have led the people to engage in regenerative investments which bring true wealth and prosperity in the long run?

For many of our governors, frugality is not in their dictionary. One of the five main functions of leadership or governance, says former USA President Roosevelt, is to be frugal and to teach the people frugality. Here, squander mania is the central principle of our administration.

Last year, I was privileged to attend a party given by one of our governors to a group of visitors to the state. At that party, wine flowed in so much abundance like an ocean that I feared it would drown us all. I counted four of the top comedians of the federal republic who were hired to crack jokes and make the food and wines to sit well in the bellies of the visiting dignitaries.

It did not end there. Three of our music megastars were on hand to grace the occasion and give a live performance. When the biggest of the stars mounted the stage to give a rendition of his rave of the moment, the governor could not hold himself any longer. He took to the dance floor. At a point when he was in Cloud 9, he removed his outer long dress and flung it in the direction of one of his aides who caught it with the agility of an ace hand ball star. This was around 1. 30 am when a sensible leader should be resting so that he can wake up hale and hearty the next day to provide reasonable leadership to his people. And I shook my head in sympathy for the people who had elected this man as their governor.

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While at that party, my frugal sensibility took the better part of me. I decided to eat only a small portion of the meal set before us and to drink no wine or soft drink as my humble but hardly noticeable protest against the sin of waste and gluttony I was seeing before me. I made a mental calculation of what must have been spent to stage that extravagant show and concluded that nothing less than N40 million must have gone down the drain that night. I reflected sadly that if I were governor, that amount will be enough for me to set up an agribusiness enterprise that can provide employment for not less than 100 unemployed young men and women. And here we were consuming it in one miserable night in the name of honouring us!

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