On Tuesday, 13th August 2013, an assertion was made by former president, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo that Nigeria is jinxed and cursed. Horrible and hope-defeating as that statement might be, considering that the statement emanated from the man who had served as Nigeria’s president for the longest period of time (if you combine the time he spent as a military head of state and his eight years, 2-term tenure as a civilian president) it wouldn’t be out of place to give more than a cursory look to the statement and analyse certain aspects of what he meant to have made such damning pronouncements.
Chief Obasanjo, postulated that if Nigerians were yet to commend any leader after 53 years of independence “then we (Nigerians) are jinxed and cursed; we should all go to hell.” Going further, the man in condemning the “younger” generation of leaders described many of them as lacking integrity and “prophesied” that many of today’s youths would do worse in same situation.
While agreeing with Chief Obasanjo amounts to utmost pessimism because of the inherent implication that things will not get better in this country, it is quite hard not to go by his stance that Nigeria is indeed cursed and jinxed with irresponsible leadership amongst other ills amongst which sycophancy and mediocrity tops the list.
Sycophancy on its own has been the single biggest impediment to credible leadership because of the delusional influence it has on leaders and the feel good factor it bequeaths on their often horrid or at most average performances thus foreclosing chances of improvement. Unfortunately, Nigeria’s political landscape as at now is populated by sycophants who make leaders with less-than- sterling output feel like they are the best things to ever happen to the country since independence.
One wonders what goes on in the mind of these sycophants when one sees advertisements on national dailies, sponsored by government functionaries to congratulate their principals over “landmark achievements” such as commissioning of boreholes in rural communities. When one considers that such projects are actually carried out at inflated amounts and also that whatever charges paid to secure such advert slots could be put to better use in provision of educational facilities etc. one begins to understand effect of the damage done to the Nigeria’s hope of improved governance by the action of sycophants.
Sycophancy, though a terrible condition on its own, thrives even better when action in consonance with its twin – mediocrity. The Oxford Advanced Learners’ Dictionary describes mediocrity as “the quality of being average or not very good” whilst the Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary puts the word mediocre as “of moderate or low quality, value, ability or performance” one begins to wonder if those definitions were written with Nigeria in mind.
Mediocrity is undoubtedly another curse we seem to have been cursed with as a nation, what with our ideology of making excuses for poor performances with words like “at least he did something” when people make comments on such poor performances. This mediocre behaviour is what would make defenders of the Federal government’s poor stance on corruption point to number of people charged to court as an indication that the government is “doing something” even when a year after the mind-boggling revelations of how much Nigeria loses to thieves in the guise of oil marketers, there is yet to be any conviction of any sort.
Chief Obasanjo might not have been the best that he could be as a leader but his government was one that took a tough stance on the issue of corruption even if many say that his tenure witnessed a lot of selective hounding of perceived enemies. True as this might seem to be, I’d say that was any of the convicted people innocent? If not, then let someone else pick on the other thieves that were left from his time.
Not known to be one to mince his words, Obasanjo has once again rocked the boat by saying that Nigeria is jinxed and cursed and yes, maybe we just might be cursed and it is not only by irresponsible leadership and ignorant followership but also by mediocrity and sycophancy and most of all they are SELF- INFLICTED curses.