Bridging the Leadership Gap: The Missing Link
Ajanlekoko, an electrical engineer, is a Senior Manager in one of the telecommunication companies operating in Nigeria. He earlier made same post on Nairaland.com
I’ll try not to make this some kind of article.
Lots of debates have been raging on this Nairaland regarding what is really the problem with Nigeria and Nigerians. I want to try to put a fresh spin on things, using an illustration of a Nigerian scenario.
There’s a particular company in Nigeria. It’s a multinational; in fact it’s one of the Big 5 on the Fortune 500, the Nigerian subsidiary. Some of y’all may even know the company sef.
Someone close to me was describing the culture of the company, and it’s like this.
There are two sets of people in the company; the old brigade and the new brigade.
The old brigade are, just as their name suggests, old. They are more into the paddy-paddy thing, mediocrity, collusion, corruption, and general incompetence. They are the jelenke type of people. Those guys got into the company mostly based on tribe. At some point the most senior Nigerian in the company hired all his villagers in most positions. Later, when the politics of the environment changed, the host community of that corporation in Nigeria have pushed for representation, and now they’re also well represented in the company. Problem is, they are mostly incompetent, so no value add there.
The new brigade are a set of young Turks hired by some ‘visionaries’ among the old brigade, for a variety of reasons. These guys are young, bright, and ambitious. Unfortunately, because they are actually tools of these strong old men, they spend all their time battling each other for relevance. Most of them are hired to fill positions based on their first class and Ivy League degrees, and have no requisite experience per se. That in itself isn’t a problem, but the company, rather than creating the building blocks for a new management cadre, rather put these guys into positions where they have zero experience and maturity to fill. The old geezers sell these guys on the virtues of all-out warfare,dog-eat-dog mentality, perceptionist sensationalism (don’t mind the big words) and the end result is a lot of confusion, tough talk, and very little progress.
Now with all this analysis, you’d think the company would have collapsed by now abi? For where? The ‘slaves’ in the system, who are the dumb schmucks that think all you have to do to get by is put your back into it and work hard, are the ones keeping the company moving. While the old and new brigades perennially battle each other, these cadre of pitiful sods keep on trudging along, slaving away, keeping the corporate wheels turning, keeping the company profitable enough to fuel these generational wars.
Tragic, isn’t it? When my friend told me about his company, it just struck me that this is really the problem with Nigeria. We have a class of oldies who are too archaic and useless to take us forward, and these guys, some of them, have also raised a new cadre of greedy and ambitious young Turks. The Leadership gap, which is all about vision shaped by principles, loyalty to the people who are the greatest asset of the country (not the oil), and a desire for genuine achievement, is missing. Who is filling that gap?
Especially now that the likes of Soyinka, Gani, Achebe, Tai Solarin, Beko, etc, are all either dead or dying, we need to have this cadre in place. Some of these guys attempted to join the political fray, since the system just refused to produce the kind of people they were fighting for, but Nigerians just couldn’t see these guys, or even get a chance to support them, no thanks to the old and new brigade battles. Good example is the AC-PDP debacle of Ekiti: We know we hate PDP, but do people actually want AC? Tunde Fagbenle wrote a couple of sundays back in the Punch about his ill-fated 2003 senatorial bid in Osun State. He ran on NCP platform, he went, campaigned, the people loved him, but at the end of the day, he barely garnered enough votes to take a household, talk less of a ward.
So, my guys and gals, are you man or woman enough to fill this gap? Or you see yourself as one of the Young Turks, of which I would classify even your beloved Fashola? Would like to see comments.
