Saving the Common Project

KWENU! Our culture, our future

Saving the Common Project

A Review of Ihechukwu Madubuike’s

Politics, Leadership and Development in Nigeria

Onwuchekwa Jemie

Monday, June 2, 2008

Forwarded by ugochukwu_nwaokoro@yahoo.com

I am delighted to be able to say a few words on the occasion of the launching of these two books, Politics, Leadership and Development in Nigeria, and Literature, Culture and Development : the African Experience, by my good friend Dr. Ihechukwu Madubuike. Madubuike is a man of parts: poet, scholar, and politician—a rare combination which puts him in a world with Leopold Senghor, Aime Cesaire, Andre Malraux and Nnamdi Azikiwe.

When Madubuike quit academia for the political campaign trail in 1978-79, many of his friends were disappointed—for two reasons: first, that a promising young scholar was turning his back on a field in which by training and disposition he was almost certain to distinguish himself and contribute in a deep and serious way to the development of the “thinking mind” of the nation. Secondly, his friends feared that he was going to make a fool of himself in politics, a field dominated by shameless tricksters and irresponsible self-seekers, as lacking in intellect as in patriotism.

It is now 30 years since Madubuike made that fateful choice. And what do we find? His friends should have saved themselves the trouble. Don’t you cry for me, says the song; celebrate with me instead. Madubuike did not make a fool of himself. As politician he carried himself with poise and gravity, and his records as Minister of Education under Shehu Shagari and Minister of Health under Sani Abacha will speak for him. Nor did abandon poetry (something dear to the heart of this gathering); instead, his poetic imagination deepened and his language matured, as much from his experience and mastery of public affairs as from the decade he spent in newspaper journalism in-between. And now we can see from the scope covered by these two books, and by their brilliant dissection of issues, that even in his flight from the academy Madubuike has managed to retain his intellectual moorings.

The two books under review are thematically interwoven. This is heavy stuff: each is some 300 pages of closely argued prose essays, speeches, radio broadcasts, position papers, book reviews and op ed articles published over a period of 30 years, 1974-2005. Each book opens with a lengthy and illuminating Introduction by the author, and closes with an only slightly shorter Afterword, also by the author. I am delighted that Literature, Culture and Development is in the able hands of my good friend Dr. Stanley Macebuh, leaving me free to concentrate on Politics, Leadership and Development.

In Politics, Leadership and Development Madubuike attempts to answer the question: What is the trouble with Nigeria? How is it that a nation with such enormous human and material resources has been in stasis for half a century? World-wide, Nigeria’s name elicits mixed admiration and fear. Nigeria is the nation whose citizens “can do anything”—in the best and worst senses of the word. Nigerians are effervescent, dynamic, irrepressible—and yet their nation has not only made little measurable progress on the global scale of development but even appears to be regressing, moving backwards, especially in the past two decades. What exactly is Nigeria’s problem? Anyone would be curious to know the answers proffered by this insider of insiders, a man who has served in two administrations, one civilian, the other military, during the half century in question.

But first, what is development? Madubuike’s definition is as good as any: in his words, development is “absence of hunger and poverty for most of our population, growth of national products and incomes, advancement in technology and industrialization, and positive modernization,” all of which together would “guarantee the freedoms, rights and security of the individual in a democratic society” (pp. xxxi-xxxii).

And what is blocking Nigeria’s development? Madubuike says it is bad leadership, coupled with “ambivalent, contradictory and inconsistent” policies (p. x): “Leadership failure is at the root Nigeria’s poor performance in economic growth and poverty reduction, [and] this failure has weakened institutional frameworks that are supposed to be the engine of growth, [resulting in] social tensions, pervasive corruption and the enthronement of a culture that repudiates excellence and encourages mediocrity” (pp. 7-8). Decisions, he says, are often made “to satisfy the interests of those in power at the material time without due regard or consideration to the general welfare of the entire country” (p. xv).

But then, what do we do about this bad leadership? How do we achieve “accountability” from our leaders? Madubuike does not say much about the responsibilities of followership, or what practical actions the people can take to control their leadership. His detailed position paper of the year 2002, “Repositioning the Peoples Democratic Party for the Challenges Ahead” (pp. 37-49), might be said to articulate what the people need and expect from the ruling political party. Readers may then measure the performance of the party in the past nine years against that position paper and their announced party platform.

The Nigerian populace has been notorious in their failure to rein in their leaders. We note, of course, that keeping leaders in line, making them stick to advertised policies, is easier said than done: the leaders have the monopoly on power: they have the guns, control the army and police, control the money, and control the propaganda. The public seems to be left with no recourse except pious prayers, and exhortations to their leaders to copy the example of Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha or Confucius—as in Madubuike’s chapter “Practical Leadership in Nigeria: The Christian Option” (pp. 9-23). But is this really all that the Nigerian populace can do? What have other nations done to keep their leaders in line? That is a question that goes unanswered in this discourse on leadership.

Madubuike does of course make the critical point that the bedrock of an active followership is education—from the elementary goal of achieving 100 percent literacy to the more sophisticated levels of “political education and socialization” which equips the citizenry with knowledge and prepares them to make informed choices between political candidates and platforms. He devotes detailed attention to issues in Nigerian higher education, particularly with regard to the creation of the new technological universities during his tenure as Minister of Education. He notes that even though the already existing universities were underfunded and under-utilized, the new universities were justified, first, on the political grounds of even geographical spread and “equity for the distribution of higher institutions in Nigeria” (one technological university per state), and secondly, on the development grounds of producing “skilled manpower” and “ students who would be job creators and not job seekers on graduation” (p. xvii). How the graduates of technological universities would be job creators is never made clear.

As the author explains, this “is not a prescriptive book on leadership and development” (p. 8). PRESCRIPTIONS ARE OF COURSE UNAVOIDABLE; BUT THERE IS NO SHORTAGE OF PRESCRIPTIONS AND DEVELOPMENT BLUEPRINTS, AS THE ARCHIVES OF OUR VARIOUS MINISTRIES WILL TESTIFY. What is fundamental is a clear understanding of what the problems are, and Madubuike’s extended and detailed analysis is a major contribution in this process.

I have to apologize that this is only a fraction of the review I intended; but I must break it off here because of circumstances beyond my control.