REFLECTIONS ON VALUES AND THE BUILDING OF A SUCCESSOR GENERATION IN NIGERIA Being the paper presented by His Excellency Dr. Kayode FAYEMI Governor, Ekiti State, Nigeria At the 1st Interdisciplinary Lecture of the School Postgraduate Studies, Ekiti State University, Ado-Ekiti, Ekiti State, Nigeria Tuesday, February 26, 2013

1. REFLECTIONS ON VALUES AND
THE BUILDING OF A SUCCESSOR GENERATION IN NIGERIA
Being the paper presented by
His Excellency Dr. Kayode FAYEMI
Governor, Ekiti State, Nigeria
At the 1st Interdisciplinary Lecture of the School Postgraduate Studies
Ekiti State University, Ado-Ekiti, Ekiti State, Nigeria
Tuesday, February 26, 2013
Protocols
I like to begin by saying thank you to all here present at the Ekiti State
University, a growing citadel of knowledge worthy of Ekiti, IlèIyì,
IlèÈye.For having me to deliver the first in the series of inter-disciplinary
lectures of the Graduate School of this academy I thank the Vice-
Chancellor, Professor Patrick Aina; the Dean of the Post-Graduate School,
Professor Eddie Olanipekun; the Chairman of this occasion, Professor
‘LadipoAdamolekun; distinguished faculty and principal staff; students,
and other fellow travellers in the infinitely exciting journey inenquiry and
learning. I feel a natural kinship with the academia for several reasons.
Not only do I consider it my primary constituency from which I have
received so much nurture or training. In my present assignment in the
public service, I am only on a temporary ‘leave of absence’ from
academia. But above all, there is no discounting the value of academic
pursuits, or of the academic orientation in this period and time that we
are in, which is referred to in some quarters as the Age of Knowledge.
The university is equally a universe drawing in the best and keenest of
minds that have come from far and wide to create a platform of solutions
for understanding and engaging the nature of our reality and the world in
which we live. It is a universe of possibilities, relentlessly re-shaping and
extending what we know and are capable of knowing, while offering
renewed insights. As the First Servant in and son of this State, and no
less a Nigerian as many of you are, I have come to share some of my
thoughts on how we can advance the cause of our democracy in this
great country, Nigeria, and create the basis for consolidating and
perpetuating many of

2. the unprecedented freedoms that we are currently enjoying in Ekiti State
and across Nigeria. This brings me to the theme at hand.
Problematique
The first sentence in The Trouble with Nigeria, the well-remarked book by
the novelist and grand story-teller Professor Chinua Achebe,goes as
follows:1
The trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely a failure of
leadership. There is nothing basically wrong with the Nigerian land
or climate or water or air or anything else. The Nigerian problem is
the unwillingness or inability of its leaders to rise to the
responsibility [and] to the challenge of personal example which are
the hallmarks of true leadership.
Professor Achebe’s observation about the condition of our society
continues to resonate three decades after he issued his damning critique
of Nigerian elites. It continues to resonate so insistently, in fact, that the
notion of an overarching leadership failure as the root of our society’s ills
has almost become something of a cliché – a staple sound bite issued by
everyone including political leaders ourselves. It has become, at once, an
explanatory tool as well as an excuse. But the theme of leadership failure
is one that we must continue to investigate beyond its superficial
deployment as a critique of bad politicians.
At the time that Achebe was writing in 1983, Nigeria was undergoing her
second democratic experiment. In fact, the second republic was actually
terminated by a military intervention at the end of that year. As military
regimes were wont to do throughout our history, the new military regime
cited the corruption and incompetence of the civilian politicians for
bringing the country to the brink of collapse. They argued that given the
foibles of the political class, the military intervention was a patriotic
necessity to avert the country’s descent into anarchy. The irony is that
this intervention
1
Chinua Achebe, The Trouble with Nigeria (Fourth Dimension Publishers, 1983), p. 1.

3. inaugurated a fifteen-year spell of military dictatorship which turned out
to be far more ruinous than the truncated era of civilian rule.
By the early 1990s, there was a growing consensus that the nation had to
be saved from the erstwhile saviours – the military – and that the new
saviour had to be democracy. Nigeria had come full circle. Today,
however, there is a sense that the promise of 1999 has dissipated and
that the political luminaries of the present dispensation have not been
particularly attentive to the lessons of our history. This feeling of
disillusionment is nothing new; it was in the air in 1983 as well. Thus, it
seems that in the course of our quest for good leadership which has seen
us test various models – stern authoritarians, benevolent smiling
dictators, tyrannical totalitarians and civilian politicians – we have come
up empty. If, after thirty years, we are still citing bad leadership as the
root of all or most of our problems, we should now be interrogating the
cultural and institutional forces, both subliminal and overt, which conspire
to ensure that our society constantly throws up bad leaders.
This is especially expedient against the backdrop of two reasons. First,
there is the urgent need to address apparent loss of faith in Nigeria and
her prospects by the younger generation even as we approach the
centenary of the creation of Nigeria.Already, signs of failure are evident in
the planning of the Federal Government’s celebrations for this landmark
in our collective history, at a time we ought to soberly reflectand take
affirmative action, geared towards ensuringsuccessorgenerations
effectively redefine the ‘Nigerian dream’ in the context of contemporary
realities and believe in same – against all odds. Second, there is the need
to look into our society’s model of incubatingnew leaders. If we are to
stand a chance of national rebirth, we must of necessity ensure that the
old brigade described by Prof. Wole Soyinka as the ‘wasted generation’,
which requisitely has to act as nursing mother to the emerging
generation, does not contaminate them with the same tendencies and
thus prime them to failure.
These cross-generational imperatives require amongst other things,
robust engagements such as this. My contributions are by no means
intended to be exhaustive. Rather, I offer them as a preliminary
investment in a conversation that must continue long after we have left
this place. For the struggle to better our living arrangements, to actualize

4. the good society on our shores and to enhance the quality of leadership is
always an ongoing endeavour. It never ends. Every generation, as Frantz
Fanon once said, must discover its mission or betray it. In order not to
betray its mission, every generation must inheritthe quest for and expand
the frontiers of achievement, enriching the store of wisdom by which
society and its leadership constantly reinvents itself. This is the very
essence of the idea of a progressive society.
It is against this background that I, once again, thank the Dean of the
Postgraduate School as well as the leadership of the Ekiti State University
for granting me your hallowed rostrum to share my thoughts with you.
This is especially important because I am neither a youth nor an old man.
Some say I am a ‘senior youth’ and I am glad to accept the ‘status’. I also
note, however, that Nigeria is one country where an individual in his
sixties would come out furious because he thought he had just been
cheated in the contest for the post of national youth leader of a political
party! If a sixty-year old is a youth, when does adulthood begin in
Nigeria? I have no answer to that; nor am I sure we should be bothered
about it now. Suffice it to say that I am very excited to be here today and
I look forward to an interactive engagement.
Where Did We Go Wrong?
There are three trends that I believe are relevant to the crisis of
leadership in our country –corruption and the decline of moral values; the
conceptual debasement of leadership itself; and the inability and
unwillingness of leaders to reproduce themselves
Corruption and the Decline of Moral Values
We cannot separate the theme of leadership failure from the general
plague of corruption assailing our society. Indeed, one might argue that
both of them are mutually reinforcing. As leadership continues to fail, that
is, as we fail to produce in adequate number exemplars of capable
leadership, society’s descent into moral anarchy also accelerates. And as
the degeneracy of the society hastens, leadership in every dimension of
public life begins to bear the stamp of decadence.

5. There are many perspectives from which one may attack the problem of
corruption but for our purposes today, it will suffice to zero in on one,
namely, the monetization of values and the growing inability to perceive
and articulate one’s life goals in non-material terms. It is almost
impossible now for us to define life’s meaning in terms that have nothing
to do with the bottom line. Young Nigerians have been socialized in such
a way that they have no conception of non-material achievement. We
have created a culture that serenades the wealthy and esteems the “big
man”, but not the studious. We esteem riches but not intellect except
possibly when it is deployed solely in service of the raw pursuit of wealth.
It is evident in our schools where the studious types are labeled “effikos”
and treated as nerds, freaks and outcasts for fulfilling the demands of
scholarship and pursuing enlightenment, while those who skip classes and
cheat their way through exams are exalted as the trendy people. But this
is, in a sense, a reflection of the larger society, where wealth has been
apotheosized and material acquisition is defined as the sole purpose of
life.
In our monetized society, it is believed that to be heard, to be reckoned
with, you need to have lots of money, and the more of it you have, the
louder your voice. This has several implications. The monetization of
values means that young people whatever their promise and their
potential believe that they have to join the rat race for material gain.
Everything in their social and moral environments urges them to join the
generation of hustlers emerging from our institutions and do whatever is
necessary to become wealthy. Increasingly, the chief moral calculation in
our society is not rooted in the question of what is ethical but in what is
possible - NOW!
Consequently, youth are not being encouraged to pursue their dreams
and their passions, to imagine alternate realities or to break new grounds
and define success in their own terms, which are all hallmarks of
leadership. Rather, they are conditioned to follow the herd. Our
institutions actually suffocate the spark of idealism which animates
progressive leadership and enables societies continuously renew
themselves. By the time the next generation arrives in positions of power
and privilege, their capacities for progressive imagination, creativity,
innovation, empathy and compassion are so depleted that they cannot

6. but simply follow beaten paths and rehash the errors of the past. This
might explain why little seems to have changed in Nigeria for thirty years.
Perhaps the best way to frame this situation is to ask the question:
Where will the next generation of activists, law enforcement professionals
and teachers emerge from? These professions are all critical in the
nurturing of a free progressive society. Yet, they are the least esteemed
because they command meager financial reward; and while an argument
has to be made for paying teachers and policemen adequately, there is
also something to be said for the fact that the tasks that forge
civilizations are more often than not undertaken by volunteer spirits; that
is to say, by those for whom the promise of material riches is not the
cardinal consideration. Leadership is born in unremarkable places – the
classroom, the police station, the community organizer’s neighbourhood,
etc. But where are those who will answer the call of leadership by
following their passions into these places?
The Debasement of Leadership
In a society that esteems opulence and exalts the big man, it is no
surprise that the very concept of leadership has been debased. This is
apparent when we survey the signs and symbols of power in our land:
the pomp and pageantry, the long motorcades, the sirens, the circus-like
atmospherics surrounding political leadership, the retinue of idle ‘aides’
and the inevitable flock of hangers-on, praise-singers and sycophants, the
palatial state houses and residences. Some of these idiosyncrasies which
surround leadership in Nigeria derive from the legacy of colonialism and
military dictatorship. In those forms of government, leadership was
always imposed from the top and was therefore an alien imposition on
society and an intrusion on our peace. The semiotics of power tended to
be loud, garish, oppressive and violent. This has become installed as part
of our leadership culture and has carried over into our democracy.
A corollary point is the association of leadership with wealth and therefore
the disastrous association of public office with affluence. Consequently,
many Nigerians simply see public office as a means of self-enrichment
and upward mobility. Leadership becomes not a means of service but a

7. means of getting richer than everyone else. The ghastly scale of public
theft follows naturally as a logical result of this outlook.
Leadership is not a position or a title or an office, but a function. It is
influence rooted in a core of convictions and beliefs that define the very
act and manner of leading. Positions, titles and offices merely serve as
vehicles for expressing leadership. Merely occupying a position and
having a title does not make one a leader in the truest sense of the term.
Perhaps the best evidence of how tenuous our working definitions of
leadership are is how so many public figures slip into irrelevance once
they leave public office. This indicates that these “leaders” derived their
relevance and significance from holding office rather than from any
personal attributes of competence, character, intellect or even charisma.
For as long as they hold office, such figures can command public
attention because of the visibility of their positions. However, once out of
office and shorn of its pomp and prestige, they simply recede into oblivion
because they possess no residual moral influence and authentic voices of
their own.
Chief ObafemiAwolowo and MallamAminu Kano are excellent examples of
politicians who possessed an intrinsic moral authority that transcended
their brief stints in public office. Nelson Mandela’s moral influence was
evident as an operative of the African National Congress and as a political
prisoner, long before he became South Africa’s president. Reverend
Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, both iconic figures in the African-
American civil rights struggle, never held public office. Dr. King now has a
national day set aside in the United States to commemorate his life and
work.
An office or a position does not confer moral authority so much as it
presumes it. Moral authority is a personal property that one takes into an
office and leaves with at the end of his tenure. That so many of our
public figures – ex-ministers, ex-governors, ex-senators, ex-
representatives – sink out of sight or hearing once they have left office,
and have nothing to contribute to their communities in a post-official
capacity, suggests that we are producing far more ‘office-holders’ than
leaders.

8. The Inability or Unwillingness of Leaders to Reproduce Themselves
The dominant cultural and institutional models of leadership are typically
defined by the exercise of raw power. They operate a paradigm based on
the projection of fear and the exploitation of others. This is largely a
legacy of our recent experience of military authoritarianism. For more
than three decades of our national history, leadership was cast in the
image of jack-booted soldiers wielding whips, guns and swagger-sticks,
and decreeing their will for the nation into being. They underwrote their
leadership by projecting fear, intimidating the public and threatening
violence rather than by winning hearts and minds. This authoritarian
paradigm has become a template for leadership in virtually all our
institutions.
The cult of the Big Man is characterized by massive insecure egos to
which sycophants must continuously swear fealty and pay obeisance. In
many of our organizations and bureaucracies, this paradigm has
effectively created personality cults in which fawning loyalty rather than
competence dictates the allocation of reward. The cult of the Big Man
sustains illiberal environments in which divergent thinking, innovation and
initiative are punished while servile group-think is rewarded. In such
organizations, members who are desirous of prolonging their careers tend
to blend in rather than stand out, thereby crippling their leadership
potentials. These organizations are virtually run as personal fiefdoms and
cease to function whenever the main authority figure is absent or, as it is
expressed in local parlance, ‘Oga is not around.’
Herein lies one of the characteristics of dysfunctional organizations –
leadership is seen as being vested in a single authority figure rather than
as a function diffused among several empowered actors. Because of their
overwhelming personalization of power and the centralization of
authority, leaders in this mould who also tend to be psychologically
insecure are simply unable or unwilling to mentor and empower their
subordinates. Under these circumstances, young potential leaders are not
being prepared to undertake greater responsibility. Indeed, their
executive impulses are stifled. The only kind of personalities that rise in
these settings are those who are equally insecure and egotistical, having
become adept at the dark art of survival in repressive official

9. environments, and will upon their assumption of authority also reprise the
authoritarian styles of their predecessors.
Not only do these individuals arrive into positions of authority unprepared
for the demands of authentic leadership, thereby emerging as ‘accidental
leaders’; they invariably perpetuate the cycle of mediocrity and
dysfunction afflicting our institutions. This dynamic explains why the story
of leadership in our country has stayed essentially the same for decades.
Leadership reproduces after its own kind. The tragedy on our shores is
that bad leadership has been far more prolific in reproducing itself.
Constructing a New Culture of Leadership
We need to rescue the concept of leadership itself from the cheapening it
has undergone. True leadership is something quite distinct from holding
an office or a position. We will enhance the quality of leadership on our
shores if we dissociate it from the acquisition of titles and positions. True
leadership is influence. It is driven by core convictions, values and ideas.
In a profound sense, leadership is living out one’s values and ideas. It is
the sheer power of personal example that projects influence. For the next
generation of leaders, it is essential that we recognize that one does not
need a political office or title to become an exemplar of higher values.
We also need to redefine elitism. Traditionally, the term ‘elite’ referred to
those who are enlightened. Over the course of the past decades, the
monetization of our values has yielded an association of elitism with
wealth. We perceive elites to be those who are simply wealthy. The first
generation nationalists such as Awolowo, NnamdiAzikiwe, Hezekiah
Davies, Aminu Kano and AdegokeAdelabu among others were men of
thought as well as men of action. They wrote books, pamphlets and
articles. They popularisedtheir ideas aggressively. They thought deeply
about their society and disseminated their musings.
For instance, while campaigning for the presidency in 1979, Awolowo
said, “Look at the books which I have written, the lectures which I have
given, and the many speeches and statements which I have made. You
will find that there is no problem confronting or about to confront Nigeria
to which I have not given thought and for which I have not proffered

10. intelligent and reasoned solutions.”2 It was no idle boast. Awolowo was
the most prolific of the founding fathers. It seems almost absurd to us
today for a politician to advertize his intellect as one of his qualifications
for high office.
There is a distinction between this commitment to ideas and debate as
part of the armoury of leadership and what obtains now. Unlike their
precursors, too many of our political elites do not esteem ideas enough
and this has devalued both the quality of leadership and public discourse.
We have to restore the moorings of elitism in a commitment to ideas and
intellectual acuity. The next generation of elites has to be distinguished
not by wealth or their possession of trinkets but by the quality of their
thoughts and ideas.
We also must absolutely begin to mentor young people. The litmus test
for our success as leaders is not how many people we are leading but
how many people we are transforming into leaders. In other words, how
many people are we empowering to realize their own potential as
leaders? Each generation of leaders must stand on the shoulders of the
giants who have come before them. We have a responsibility to boost the
next generation up on our shoulders. Whatever our successes as
individual leaders, they are incomplete until we have prepared the
grounds for succession. This is how positive leadership cultures are
perpetuated. Too many promising movements and organizations have
died out with their charismatic founders because they failed to mentor the
next generation to carry the baton of leadership into new frontiers.
Consider Singapore. Many of us are familiar with the tale of how the
sterling leadership of Lee Kwan Yew steered the small island from a
pacific backwater to a first-world city-state and one of the best run
nations in the world. But Singapore’s success story also owes much
torigorous succession planning in which leadership has been taken up by
a corps of younger leaders that were initiated into the governing party in
1980. They now constitute the second generation of leaders charged with
consolidating the success story of Singapore.
2
ObafemiAwolowo, Path to Nigerian Greatness (Fourth Dimension Publishers, 1981)

11. In a similar vein, Nelson Mandela’s iconic status as a pivotal figure in the
odyssey of South African liberation is unimpeachable. But Mandela
belongs to a very distinguished cast of leaders that included freedom
fighters like Oliver Tambo, Walter Sisulu and Govan Mbeki. And these
heroic freedom fighters were themselves the second generation of the
struggle ordained by the founders of the African National Congress. They
were heirs to Albert Luthuli, John Dube, Sol Plaatje and other heroic
patriots. Together these patriots forged a political tradition of such
resilience that it altered the course of South Africa’s history. As James
Freeman Clark said, “A politician thinks of the next election, a statesman,
of the next generation.” Leadership is a continuum and for our leadership
to truly stand the test of time it must be driven by a trans-generational
perspective. We must build up those who will take our exertions for a
better society to higher levels.
We have also to demystify leadership and begin to define it less as a task
reserved for a select group of highly gifted individuals but as something
each of us is called to accomplish in various ways and in diverse sectors
of public life. This entails a shift away from the idea of the ‘leader as
messiah’ – the notion that all it takes to transform our society is the
miraculous emergence of one extraordinarily endowed leader. We simply
cannot afford to reduce leadership to holding political office. Despite the
generally dreary outlook, there are a few young people that are leading
effectively and exerting positive influence in various domains of society. I
would like to pay tribute to these rising stars because I believe that our
country calls for a critical mass of such actively-engaged citizens if the
quality of leadership is to improve. I however have to refrain from
mentioning particular names so I don’t risk leaving anyone out
considering many of these young change agents are my personal friends
whom I am privileged to play the role of a mentor in their lives. In fact, I
have a number of such young activists serving in various capacities in my
administration.
These leading lights represent an army of do-gooders, public interest
advocates, activists, artistes, public intellectuals e.t.c., that are all in
varying ways engaged in shaping the future and creating islands of
progress. Our challenge is to multiply the numbers of such people. In
order to do so, we should move from a leadership culture of fear and

12. intimidation to one based on mutual respect, civility, empathy and
compassion. We have to create an environment in which initiative;
independent-mindedness; non-conformism and creative thinking are
encouraged and rewarded, not punished. Ultimately, the greatest
validation of our leadership is how many leaders we have nurtured.
The Successor Generation
The place of the youth in the quest for national renewal and a new ethos
of transformative leadership is especially pertinent given the demographic
realities of today. Increasingly, our world is growing younger. Young
people make up almost a fifth of the global population. With almost half
of the current global population under the age of 25, there is no doubt
that we are living in a very youthful world. This has implications for the
nature and pace of social change.
Throughout history, leaders have understood and sought to harness the
power of youth to regenerate their societies. Adolf Hitler certainly
understood the socio-political potential of young people. Following his rise
to power in Germany in 1932, one of his first actions was the outlawing of
all youth groups, especially the religious ones. In their stead, he
established the Hitler Youth and the German League of Young Girls.
These organizations became sites of intensive indoctrination, with the
young members being taught to venerate Hitler and serve him without
question. The boys were taught that laying down their lives for Fatherland
and Fuhrer was the highest and noblest act of virtue. The girls were
taught that it was their patriotic duty to obey the Fuhrer and to bear the
children that would consolidate the rise of the Nazi Third Reich. German
youths were taught that they were the master race and it was their
destiny to dominate the world.
A significant proportion of this generation of Germans committed horrible
atrocities in the name of their Fuhrer. Indeed, so total was the Nazi
indoctrination of this generation that it was a detachment of Hitler Youth
who died in the final battle for Berlin in 1945. It is not an overstatement
to assert that the rise of the Nazi Third Reich was essentially due to
Hitler’s skilful manipulation of the youth. By imbuing a generation with a
sense of historic mission, moral purpose and a confidence in their own

13. abilities, Hitler embarked upon his project of world domination. Even
though he was ultimately defeated, his deployment of German youth to
serve his cause holds valuable lessons for us.
To being with, no one should ever underestimate the potential of our
youth to serve as catalysts of social change. Youth are viable agents of
social renewal because of the natural gifts and aptitudes they possess,
namely, an idealism that is as yet unsullied by life’s heartbreaks and
defeats. This idealism is an invaluable resource for achieving the
impossible and for doing great things otherwise barricaded by the
cynicism and jadedness of the old. They approach tasks with a boundless
energy and zeal and seem incapable of exhaustion in the service of
whatever cause they passionately believe in. Also, because they lack the
prejudices of older people, they approach many things with a clean slate
and an innocence that permits fresh perspectives where a cynicism borne
of experience might otherwise paralyze the will to change.
But with these remarkable advantages come certain dangers. The fiery
idealism of youth carries the temptation of hubris; this often leads many
to ignore the counsel of their elders to their own detriment. As a result,
the youths not only become incapable of learning from the mistakes of
the past; they become prone to repeating them. This is an especial
danger for Nigerian youth. Having written off their elders as scoundrels
for leaving them a legacy of ruin and corruption, it is easy to fall into the
trap of assuming that there is nothing to learn from past generations. But
this would be a terrible error. There is always much to learn from those
who have gone before us even if only to discover ways of avoiding the
mistakes of the past. As George Santayana said, “Those who fail to learn
from history are doomed to repeat it.” Many of the chronic dysfunctions
of our society are rooted in a gross failure to appropriate the lessons of
our history. If yours is to be the generation that breaks the cycle of
underperformance, then you will have to be the most astute historians
our nation has ever seen.
Youthful idealism also carries the danger of naiveté. Without the valuable
armament of experience, a new generation can succumb to challenges
that have waylaid their forebears. Their great zeal and energy
unregulated by knowledge and understanding can lead to imprudence.

14. This is why leadership must be anchored to learning. Great leaders are
invariably great and quick learners. The ability to fashion a positive future
depends on how well we are learning from the past and the present – the
vast spectrum of human and societal experience that is available to us.
Consequently, the other invaluable trait of good leadership is humility.
Life and history are rife with teachable moments – episodes that have
valuable lessons to aid the quest for progress. Humility enables us to stay
attuned to the truths offered by these teachable moments.
Young people, it is clear, hold the key to society's future. Historically,
their ambitions, goals and aspirations for peace, security, development
and human rights are often in accord with those of society as a whole.
Therefore, the creation of ‘Naija’ by our youth, who constitute about 70
percent of the total population, as classical escapism from the
responsibility of re-building Nigeria is in my view a passing fad till the rest
of the society is ready for real change. How are we showing the youth
generation that we are ready for change and preparing this critical mass
of young people to take responsibility for a future that beckons with great
promise?
Our youth have been imbued with a sense of social, political and
economic insecurity by the older generation and many of them have been
indoctrinated as foot soldiers in the vain, selfish and often violent pursuits
of political elites at the polling booths and beyond. Sadly, their allegiance
to the same old guard that has retarded our nation’s progress raises
questions about the possibilities of a transformative dynamic emerging on
our shores. Young Nigerians have been alienated from politics and public
life having been constantly fed the canard that politics is a game for the
old and gray. In many ways, this sustains an apathy and cynicism among
the young that distances them emotionally from social engagement.
However, the view that young people are too young – or too naïve – to
understand politics cannot stand up to scrutiny in the light of our own
history. The role of the youth in the history of political leadership in
Nigeria predates independence. Many of the founding fathers of modern
day Nigeria - the likes of Dr. NnamdiAzikiwe, Chief ObafemiAwolowo, Sir
Ahmadu Bello, etc were at the forefront of Nigeria's independence
struggle in their youth. One cannot forget to mention that it was Pa

15. Anthony Enahoro's motion for self-governance as a young parliamentarian
at age 27 which paved the way for Nigeria's independence in 1960. In
fact, Pa Enahorostarted early in the journalistic profession and had
become a newspaper editor at the age of 21. It was on that platform that
he launched his political career, participated in many of the constitutional
conferences in London, held ministerial appointments in the old Western
Region and under the military administration of General Yakubu Gowon,
served as federal commissioner (minister) of Information and
Laboure.t.c.
The youthfulness of Nigeria’s military rulers is even more striking. Many of
the military leaders of Nigeria assumed power between their late twenties
and late thirties. It is therefore simply inaccurate to portray politics as an
indulgence of the old rather than a task for the young. Yours truly never
felt an iota of inferiority during my days as a leading activist in exile while
still in my twenties and early thirties, working closely and visibly with
veteran human rights and democracy activists.In those days, there was
never any question of age, but of competence, reliability and discretion.
I am aware that building a successor generation is not happenstance; the
processes are not accidental. They are very conscious and political, too.
As such, there is the need for clarity in the definition of the vision and
mission of our times, and a clear plan of action to realiseour goals. This is
what brings about the purpose of leadershipwhich a successor generation
is built to achieve. Also, I do not believe that the current discrepancies
being experienced in our democracy in Nigeria can be resolved through a
binary opposition that pits the young against elders in politics, but by
locating the social construction of youth as part of adulthood and
recognising the salience of deliberate, organic and planned succession
within that context.
While those of us in positions of leadership currently have to channel the
paths of taking our states and this country to the next level, it is a
successor generation that will be tasked with leading us to the Promised
Land. This holds true even when we realise that a state-formation is
almost always in process and incapable of being a completed entity –
which is the compelling reason for preparing the next generation for the
challenges and responsibilities ahead. In this regard, theyouth – the real

16. youth, not the sixty-something– will need to be given adequate exposure
and knowledge to withstand the rigours of leadership and put them in
good stead vis-à-vis their counterparts from other parts of the world who
are better equipped with social and psychological infrastructure for
effective leadership.
Mr. Chairman, please permit me to itemise some of the values of that
must be inculcated in members of a successor generation. In order to be
taken as serious and committed, themembers must embrace – and be
seen to embrace democratic principles. This requires that they be
prepared to respect and abide by the judgement of their fellows as well
as followers; to share a vision of ethical regeneration that is crucial to the
long-term development of the country; to have the capacity for
development-oriented leadership and discourage self-serving situations;
and to formulate alternative strategies and mechanisms for taking
advantage of indigenous and modern leadership styles as a way of
securing better governance. The values equally comprise the capacity to
engage with the older generation in a way that is not antagonistic but
encourages the transfer of essential skills; to be driven by an attitude of
public-spiritedness; and to know when to quit and not sit-tight in office,
etc.
While striving to build a successor generation in the political sphere,
theyouth must not be seen to refrain or shy away from the political
process. Both avoidance and outright repudiation of public life are but
reflections of the cynicism associated with politics, and of the false notion
that politics is essentiallya dirty game. The youth must not stand on the
fence in the guise of being activists either. For when all is said and done,
the lines between being an activist and throwing one’s hat in the political
ring are tenuous. They speak to a false dichotomy of sorts in our present
context. The point must be made that a relationship of
continuityexistsbetween leadership and power. From my own experience,
if the younger generation is not political, or if it stands aloof or away from
the political process, there can be no public service. The state also runs
the risk of being blown hither and tither by illegitimacy, decay and
atrophy.

17. The point, Mr. Chairman, is that planlessness begets failure. Any country
that fails to plan for succession plans to fail the leadership test – and
much more. The evidence is not far-fetched. In Nigeria the travails and
collapse of public institutions, such as the University system, after two
decades of authoritarian rule had resulted in the desertion of the public
domain by those who could have become leaders, and could have set
about their tasks with commitment and integrity. This has left thecoast
clear for those who could muster the resources to capture public office.
Given the pervasive ill-preparedness and integrity deficiency among these
people, it is no surprise Nigeria is where it is at the moment.
My experiences are no less relevant here. Over the years I have joined
hands with friends and colleagues on both sides of the age bracket, from
direct anti-establishment confrontation at the barricades as a young
Student’s Union activist and a pro-democracy subaltern operating through
civic engagement with political actors and public officials to my current
partisan political involvement. In all these one lesson has stood clear and
still stands clear. By carefully planned formal and informal leadership
development schemes, we can build a pool of young Nigerians who are
committed to social transformation and would work for genuine change.
Concluding Remarks
My conclusion, Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen, is that the debate
over whether young people should or should not engage in politics is
redundant. It is also superficial. As important as the formal institutions of
governance and electioneering are, they constitute just one dimension of
the way of life that democracy is. The workings of a democracy are
dictated by numerous actors and interests in a vast cosmos of social and
political engagement. When we broadly define the currents of public life
as simply the handiwork of a chosen caste such as ‘politicians,’ or as the
work of ‘civil society activists’, we strip the public domain of the
spontaneity and deeper meanings that make itdynamic yet nuanced. We
drape functions that are really civic tasks in the garb of a false and
exclusive elitism.
In the same vein, when we depict politics as though it is overly rational
and mechanistic, something like a mathematical process, we overestimate

18. the ability of politicians to redress the inequities of society. In my view,
the issue of leadership transcends the familiar categories of activism and
politics. It rests instead on how well we promote a culture of social
engagement driven by citizen participation in our democracy. In this
sense, leadership is not what happens when one gifted individual is
running things decently in a government bureaucracy. Rather, it is how
we describe what happens when multitudes step forward as citizens to
take responsibility for their land and thus become a transformative critical
mass. Leadership is many individuals fully assuming civic responsibility.
This is why I have chosen to dwell on the nurturing of leaders and
citizens. It is also why I have argued that we must begin to regard
leadership and citizenship as being contingent because without direct
citizen participation, the legitimacy of our political institutions will
continue to decline. It is for this reason that I strongly believe that
political leaders – be they politicians or young activists - should worry
because their ability to lead effectively is being seriously undermined by
the desertion of average citizens from the public space, deepening the
crisis of legitimacy that plagues the state. Yet, this lack of legitimacy cuts
both ways. When we, the people, withdraw our trust in leaders or
discountenance politicians, we make our democratic institutions less
effective and risk making ourselves ungovernable.
In my view, our young people should stop agonizing about the problems
of the Nigerian State which will not disappear in a hurry. They should
begin to organize in a manner that places citizens as drivers of change in
our quest to restore values-driven leadership and a future of hope and
possibilities for our people. In our quest for a transformative leadership
ethos, activists, social entrepreneurs and progressive politicians must
reject the false dichotomy between activism and politics which essentially
positions both endeavours in an adversarial relationship. While a creative
tension exists in a democracy between the public and the state, it is
important to understand that these tensions do not suggest a
fundamental antipathy between public activism or active citizenship and
politics. Both elements should operate in tandem to enrich the society.
Activists who promote an antagonism of politics and politicians are
therefore doing activism and society as a whole a disservice. Indeed, they
risk translating activism into nihilism.

19. Faced with conditions of economic uncertainty and social insecurity, most
Nigerians are wont to connect their dire personal circumstances to
political misrule and state decay. The popular reaction to this connection
is often a call to arms for radical change or revolution rather than the
more exacting quest to reconstitute the state on the pivot of democratic
governance to serve the interests of the broader citizenry. Young people
are often quick to agitate for a Nigerian version of the Arab Spring as a
cure for bad governance. Many imagine such a spring or revolution as no
more than an eruption of anarchy to dislodge the formal institutions of
government. Those who entertain such dreams should note that anarchy
is not a key to transformation and holds only the possibility of self-
destruction for society. The continuing instability of the countries where
the Arab Spring has taken place indicates that there are no magic cures in
the quest for a better society. The heedless uprooting of state institutions
in the fruitless pursuit of Utopia leads only to anomie.
This is not to repudiate idealism, or the sound basis of single-minded
activism. There is certainly a place for single-issue campaigns like the
‘Occupy Nigeria’, the Anti- Fuel Subsidy Removal movement and the
‘Enough-is-Enough’ campaign. Indeed, we need more of such campaigns
to create a sustained emphasis on pressing issues and also serve as a
vehicle of youth activism and engagement. The problem though is that
such popular campaigns tend to suffer from exaggerated expectations.
Activists are sometimes prone to overestimating the sort of political
outcomes that can be obtained from the streets. The very impressive
turn out for the ‘Occupy Nigeria’ protests of early 2012 proved that young
Nigerians are not as docile as some cynical politicians and pundits persist
in suggesting. For one tumultuous week, youth made their voices heard
and caused the political leadership to take note of their objections to a
contentious policy. Ultimately, the end of the week-long protests also
demonstrated the limits of street activism.
As leaders, we must recognize that transformation requires shrewd mixes
of ways and means. The street is but one theatre of activism and
engagement. There is a place for more sustained advocacy in fora where
emissaries of civil society and government can meet and exchange ideas.
There is also the necessary place of politics whereby running for office
becomes vital because the only antidote to bad policy is good policy – and

20. good people have to be in positions where they can promote good
policies. Sometimes those positions will require that we man barricades
on the streets. At other times, we shall need to make representations in
the inner sanctums of state power. There are times that it will require
both. The important thing is that we are where we have to be and at the
appropriate time. Leadership, in this sense, is not about a post but about
positioning and finding one’s purpose and mission in life.
In order to discover and realize our leadership potential, we first have to
find the spaces and environments in which we are best suited to succeed.
You may be a journalist, an educator, a law enforcement agent, a lawyer,
a medical practitioner, or a small-scale farmer. Whatever is your calling,
the essence of leadership is the same. It is to find where your natural
gifts and aptitudes will thrive, and then act for the common goodonce
that place has been found. All great leadership is driven by the search for
the common good – the quest for something that transcends self or
personal gain. Wherever you are, if you live with the conviction that it is
within your power to make a difference, you will find that you have begun
to lead. It is time for us to seize the day and begin to build the future of
our dreams – a future that will make our children and their children’s
children proud to call us their ancestors and themselves Nigerians.
I thank you for listening.