LEADERSHIP?A PHILOSOPHICAL EXPLORATION OF PERSPECTIVES IN AFRICAN,
CARIBBEAN AND DIASPORA POLITIES*
John Ayotunde Isola Bewaji
Abstract:
This essay is aimed at provoking dialogue on the often neglected
aspect of the African and Diaspora academics? philosophical reflective
obligation to each other, to their contemporary societies and to
posterity - leadership. I question the notion of ?leadership? as is
prevalent in the discourse of contemporary developing societies of
Africa and its Diaspora, whereby anyone who assumes power or attains
prominence is described as ?leader?. I argue that, especially in these
societies, there is a disconnection between the governed population and
the ?leadership?, which is a consequence of a dysfunctional leadership
metaphysic, epistemology and psychology. I prefer to delineate
?leadership? from ?rulership?, to separate de facto Africa and Diaspora
realities from de jure (Cf. Burns 1978: 2). This is because
?leadership?, as I understand the concept, is a normative concept to
which ?rulership? is not necessarily a synonym. Thus, Western media and
their satellite appendages? Africa and Diaspora media references to
?leaders? is often uninformed, at the most charitable, and mischievous,
in plain language.
I propose to do three things in this essay: first, to highlight the
?leadership? issue as a problem in Africa, Caribbean and Diaspora
polities; second, to dilate on the different origins, causes, effects
and implications of the problem in these societies, and third, to
indicate why I think a philosophical approach to the analysis of the
problem will help find solutions to the problem, especially by
indicating what criteria will have to be met for the development of an
adequate Third World sensitive theory of leadership.
Introduction ? Theorizing Leadership
A philosophically robust concept map of ?leadership? is critical to
understanding the socio-economic, political and technological
challenges faced by African, Caribbean and Diaspora polities. I have
been interested in determining the extent to which, for example, the
type of ?leadership? that a society has, is responsible for the type of
society that arises and is developed; two, in investigating why has
?leadership? not been a philosophically interesting concept to African
and Diaspora academia, whereas sex, death, gender, happiness, life
after death, punishment, trust, culture, justice, identity, community,
war, peace, meaning, truth, science, art, mind, belief, knowledge,
evil, God, existence, globalization, etc., have all been considered
fundamental philosophical issues deserving of critical and analytical
discourse; three, in determining why we require references from former
teachers, employment supervisors, church leaders and even sureties for
employment to positions of responsibility and management while we do
not conduct background checks, examine school records or ask for
recommendations from people foisting themselves on third world
societies as ?leaders?; and four, in inquiring why do Western societies
tolerate so-called (inept, morally bankrupt, visionless and even
despicable predatory parasites as) ?leaders? for other societies
(especially African and Diaspora societies) which they will not, at
least openly, tolerate for themselves.
The most important understanding of philosophy that I favor is one
that regards the discipline and practice not as an arcane, rarefied,
pedantic and irrelevant speculations of idle white middle/leisure class
males but as one which reflects and is a reflection on human efforts to
understand themselves, their environment as determinants of their
cognitions, aspirations and limitations. Consequently, I delved into
intrinsically contemporary philosophical texts to see if there would be
illuminations on the concept from which dialogue on the matter may
commence. I was very disappointed that there was no direct philosophy
text that deemed ?leadership? fundamental enough to give it space and
critique. Discourses on leadership in philosophical circles in the West
are so meager and far in between to be helpful. Apart from Plato?s
Republic, St. Augustine?s The City of God, Nicolo Machiavelli?s Prince,
discussions of virtues in society have been either in terms of morality
or escapist and evasive prescriptions of lives for the general
population as in Rawls? A Theory of Justice. The works of African and
African-American (including Caribbean and Caribbean Diaspora)
intellectuals and statesmen like Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Du
Bois, Marcus Mosiah Garvey, Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere and Obafemi
Awolowo, to mention a few, have not attracted mainstream commentary and
the intellectual engagement they deserve in African and Diaspora
academia. But I have found Garvey and Essien-Udom (eds.) More
philosophy and opinions of Marcus Garvey (1977) very interesting,
though lacking in the type of exercise that philosophers call rigor of
critique and analysis.
In the light of the above, I turned to sociology, psychology, social
psychology, organizational behaviour, and political science, to see
what I could glean that would be philosophically interesting on
leadership. I found psychology, social psychology and organizational
behaviour had very interesting entries on ?leadership?, but, as to be
expected, these entries were of the genre of descriptive discourse. In
political science one finds discussions of leadership, but these
discussions are not any more analytically or critically rigorous than
in other social sciences. The philosophical issues have to be distilled
and ferreted out of the maze of data provided. This is not an easy
challenge, but it is not a challenge that should be shied from.
In this essay I do not intend to encroach on the disciplinary
boundaries in psychology or social psychology or the applied areas of
both, organizational behaviour. Even if this were to inadvertently
occur, it will be because I wish to follow through on Charles W. Mills?
perceptive questioning of the rigidity of disciplinary boundaries
foisted on subsequent generations out of an inexplicable fiat of
exigencies of intellectual interest, existential circumstances and
attendance to curiosities of epochs. He says, concerning the proper
concerns of philosophy vis a vis boundaries of discourse, that,
In many cases this directing of attention will be perfectly
reasonable, indicating the existence of genuine disciplinary
boundaries. But sometimes what purport to be objective definitions of
appropriate limits of the world of philosophical inquiry and
authoritative pronouncements about what is conceptually interesting in
that world have a more questionable provenance. Sometimes they arise
out of specific life-world and local interests of particular
populations. Thus the seemingly universal view from nowhere may well be
a view from somewhere; the magisterial voice from the heavens turns out
to be broadcast from earth. And sometimes it is only through the
emergence of alternative views and voices that one begins to appreciate
how much of what had seemed genuinely universalistic was really
particular. In the dazzle of their official illumination, the canonical
images blind us to different possibilities (Charles W. Mills 1998:
xi.).
When I say that not much philosophical discussion of ?leadership? has
been undertaken, I do not mean that persons may not have so recognized
the need. One clear effort was made by James McGregor Burns (1978) in
his very interesting and perceptive book titled Leadership. In this
work the author raised germane philosophical questions about the
nature, sources, appraisal and determination of leadership, but being a
political scientist and being more concerned with an analysis of
leadership in the United States of America experience, his discussion
is vitiated by the limitations of disciplinary interests and goals of
ending with a prescription from this American model to universal
?leadership? understanding. Because of the insights he provides I will
spend some time on his ideas. I will not spend such time on the
discussions of leadership in Sociology or Psychology for that matter,
because I have not found similar issues raised here, by Burns and
myself, in Sociology or Psychology.
Burns begins by identifying the crisis of leadership in the American
experience as being due, largely, to mediocrity or indiscipline. He
says:
The crisis of leadership today is the mediocrity or irresponsibility
of so many of the men and women in power, but leadership rarely rises
to the full need for it. The fundamental problem underlying mediocrity
is intellectual? Leadership is one of the most observed and least
understood phenomena on earth (1978, 1-2).
Clearly, as Americans will say, Burns was right on the money here. And
one would think that he has in mind the African, Caribbean and Diaspora
leaders. He went on to look at the effort of Plato, who analyzed the
expected personality of the philosopher king and the place of a) the
influence of upbringing, b) social institutions, c) economic
institutions and d) responses of followers, to the making of the
leader. He also considered Confucian leadership philosophy, which
emphasized the moral element and precept in leadership development, the
idea by Plutarch that leaders should converse with philosophers, and
the teaching of Christianity concerning non-violence (2). What he did
not bring out is the effect of the educational prescriptions in Plato?s
Republic and the Christ?s own idea that the leader must be the servant,
this being the real understanding of minister or secretary. Burns says
further, that:
There is, in short, no school of leadership, intellectual or
practical. Does it matter that we lack standards for assessing past,
present and potential leaders? Without a powerful modern philosophical
tradition, without theoretical and empirical cumulation, without
guiding concepts, and without considered practical experiences, we lack
the very foundations for knowledge of a phenomenon ? leadership in the
arts, the academy, science, politics, the professions, war ? that
touches and shapes our lives. Without such standards and knowledge we
cannot make vital distinctions between types of leaders; we cannot
distinguish leaders from rulers, from power wielders, and from despots
(2)
What is important in the passage is the fact that ?leadership?, as a
concept, has, according to him, suffered from a paucity politically
scientific and philosophical interesting analysis. By talking about
absence of a ?school of leadership?, there creeps in an ambiguity,
because one could understand him to be suggesting either an ideology of
leadership or a particular institution devoted to the teaching of
leadership. I take it that he means the latter, but if so his position
will be inaccurate, because leadership is taught in various parts of
the educational (formal, non-formal and informal) curricular. But what
is important is the lack of emphasis on the nature of leadership,
bearing in mind its role in our lives.
Sharing the view of Mills, he echoes the need for inter-disciplinary
collaboration to approach the issue of leadership. He is rather
presumptuous though in thinking that what will help solve the
conceptual problem of leadership is the collection of data, as almost
three decades after his work we still have no clue about leadership in
spite of those data that he celebrates. He says,
Although we have no school of leadership, we do have in rich abundance
and variety the makings of a school. An immense reservoir of data and
analysis and theories has been developed. No central concept of
leadership has yet emerged, in part because scholars have worked in
separate disciplines and sub-disciplines in pursuit of different and
often unrelated questions and problems. I believe, however, that the
richness of the research and analysis and thoughtful experience,
accumulated especially in the past decade or so, enables us now to
achieve an intellectual breakthrough. Vitally important but largely
unrelated work in humanistic psychology now makes it possible to
generalize about leadership process across cultures and across time.
This is the central purpose of this book. (p. 2)
Clearly this passage exhibits unlimited optimism. Is it possible to
generalize on leadership across cultures and across epochs? What is the
role of culture in leadership? Can one extrapolate from data gathered
in one culture to pronounce on the behavioral pattern of leadership in
another culture? These are some of the questions that his book has not
answered, or where answered in an American-centric manner we cannot
transfer his answers to apply to other socio-cultural and political
environments without undue injustice to such societies.
He went on to lament the bifurcation of the leadership literature into
considerations of leadership and followership typologies, as in such
studies devoted to biographies, heroic or demonic leaders, famous and
important persons, etc., by contrast with the effects the leaders
have/generate on/in audiences, masses, voters, opinion polls and
election results. His synthetic contribution consisted in looking at
leadership dynamically, in terms of winning and losing, adversarial
contestations, conflict and power, social change, collective purpose of
leader and led, satisfaction of needs and expectations, and
sociological and biological determinants of leadership (3).
His ideas of transactional and transformational leadership have been
very popular and are probably adequate with regard to American (USA)
political situation where everything must have a bottom line, but his
contention that leaders are neither born not made makes little
empirical, analytical or logical sense (4). In fact, it clearly flies
in the face of evidence from America and other societies where
investments are made in identifying and nurturing leaders for the
purpose of smooth transition at the expiration of the tenure of
incumbents ? either because of death or as a consequence of demitting
office of incumbent at the end of term. In the same vein his decision
to settle on two essentials of power (motive and resource) as the
determinant of elements of leadership does not have the capacity to
exhaust our analytical requirements (12).
In spite of these limitations Burns analysis is very valuable in
understanding the narrow experience of political leadership in American
culture. It fails miserably, as we shall see, in furnishing an
understanding of the varieties of leadership, or even political
leadership historically and contemporaneously in Africa or the
Caribbean and their Diasporas; the areas of our interest, as
traditionally leadership in many societies has not always been a quid
pro quo. But that is not the only grouse we have with Burns. We do
expect that the insights developed in our discussion will be useful for
students of leadership, not in being transferable from one culture to
another, but in the sense of providing us with a road map with which we
may attempt the navigation of leadership concepts in Africa, Caribbean
and Diaspora polities, and possibly other polities as well.
Having failed to find our questions addressed in as analytical a
manner as we would wish we must make our own suggestions for later
evaluation. The first point we would affirm here is that leadership
shapes society and consequently determines leadership expectations.
Clearly this runs against the grain of popular wisdom that ?a society
gets the leadership it deserves?. It is the clear conviction of this
writer that the masses of the people are like boats on the volatile sea
with no person to guide them where there are no leaders. It is true
that some leaders get into positions of leadership by accident, but
such situations raise the issue of legitimacy, which can be determined
only with the acquiescence of the people over whom they rule. Numerous
examples in history show the points we have made. More will be said
about the relationship between development and consciousness and
leadership later, for now, let us turn to the second question.
Why has leadership not been a matter of concern to Western political
philosophers? It seems to me that the simple reason is that, strictly
speaking, there has not historically been much of a crisis of
leadership in Euro-American polities (at least, till the 2000
Presidential Elections in USA). In these societies there are clear
requirements for aspiring leaders; these range from education,
pedigree, experience, economic to social and moral. Background checks
are conducted to determine the suitability of the aspirants to
leadership. In African, Caribbean and Diaspora polities these are not
always the case. Even when there are laws to determine the selection
process, we find these laws bent or ignored or repealed. There have
been instances in Nigeria when prospective leaders have procured forged
educational documents in order to qualify for posts to which they
aspire. In which case, there are no rigorously enforced or enforceable
criteria of leadership in these polities; hence no encumbrances to
prevent rogues from becoming leaders, once you are able to procure the
support of the key figures, ?king-makers? and players in the system.
Because of this fact Western political philosophers can take for
granted issues of leadership ? that is, they can ignore the
epistemological, logical, metaphysical and axiological issues related
to leadership, but African, Caribbean and their Diaspora philosophers
can only do so at great intellectual, social, economic and cultural
cost to themselves and to their societies.
On our third question, why reference reports are not required of
political aspirants, seem to raise issues of taking for granted the
moral and intellectual probity of aspiring leaders. In Western
societies it may not be out of place to make the assumption that those
who offer themselves up for service would be among the most upright in
society. Even when errors of judgment arise in putting in office
persons of questionable character the term limitations and the various
checks and balances would prevent social disaster from ensuing from
such mis-judgment (even though calamitous decisions may be hard to
redress for years after such leaders may have left the stage). In this
wise there are protections for Western societies against bad
leadership, which were also present in most traditional African
societies. But with the destruction of the cultures of the various
African societies by the double assault of Christianity and Western
education on the one hand, and economic dis-empowerment and
expropriation on the other hand, the new leadership had scant regard
for culture or law. Hence, the conventions and protections that make
Western societies enjoy continuity and development are lacking in these
new or emerging African and African Diaspora societies. In the case of
the Caribbean and its Diaspora polities the situation is even more
complicated. Because, having been severed from their ancestral cultures
and the checks and balances, the new leadership lack both the proper
cultural background (grounding) of their African ancestors and proper
understanding of the inner cultural conventions of either the UK
Westminster system of government or the Presidential American system of
government. The further problem of the ?marginalization of the
Caribbean male? as a consequence of slavery and through a warped
childrearing system that poorly socializes the male Caribbean
male/person, creates a double jeopardy, whereby society looks up to the
male to lead, but fails to provide the male with the necessary
equipment for leadership. Most Caribbean leaders are deadbeat leaders,
defaulting in the promises they make (in many instances never actually
expecting to be held by their public to the promises they make) and
lacking in moral conviction to do what is right. Not requiring
character reference only compounds the problem.
To our final initial question, why do Western societies tolerate poor
leadership for African and Diaspora emerging societies (that is,
societies from slavery and colonialism)? This is not anything difficult
to understand. For one, who wants another Singapore or Hong Kong in the
Caribbean or in Africa? For another, if Caribbean or Africa societies
become self-sustaining, who will be the lackeys to the metropoles from
which ultimate intellectual and material power devolve? Finally, if
true leaders emerge in these post-slavery, post-colonial societies,
where would the sustenance for the metropoles, in the form of unending
payment of bogus national debts be derived, and markets for all kinds
of manufactured goods, as these leaders will instill discipline in
their cultures, economies, and peoples, making them independent. Hence,
the longer there are cerebrally challenged and culturally defective
leaders in these post-colonial societies, the better for the economic
and political domination by the former colonial masters and the new
imperial power, America.
African, Caribbean and Diaspora Polities and Leadership
Let me say first that African and Caribbean polities are not
undifferentiated in nature and the leadership requirements are not of
identical natures. But there is some simple similarities that make
conjoined commentary on them easy to grasp and meaningful, that is,
profitable, to comparatively interpret.
Since the demise of the black Nile Valley Civilization (and the
subsequent denial and reaffirmation of the genealogy of the same in
Western academe), the fall of the various succeeding Empires and
Civilizations of black peoples and the occupation of African continent
by foreign peoples, the black persons? experiences have been like no
other. It has been stories of disaster after disaster. The psyche of
the black person has been assaulted, traumatized and subverted, her/his
intellect appropriated and debauched in the extreme, her/his generosity
negated and interpreted as stupidity, her/her contribution to
civilization and humanity denied and appropriated, her life reduced to
tatters with no sense of foreboding or pang of conscience, her current
existence negated and her future pauperized and mortgaged millennia in
advance. In consequence the black person does ?not? exist, ?cannot?
exist and ?will not? exist on equal terms as other persons, as the
playing field has been deliberately distorted, tilted and slanted to
create inequities and inequalities. Where blacks as a group suffer
aggression it is turned face down and around to indicate that the
aggression was actually favor done to her to save her from worse fate
from nature and her ignorance; where her glory is trampled it is
suggested that there was no glory initially and one could not suffer
from an absence of what one lacked or never had originally. Yet the
universal epistemologies of existence have continued to hark back to
the old cognitions of traditional peoples of Africa and elsewhere, from
plastic technology to genetic metaphysic.
The current crises in Afro-Caribbean and their Diaspora polities,
however, are not simply understandable unless critical and diachronic
analysis is undertaken. But how does one do such an analysis where the
thematic of the ontology and epistemology of ?leadership? are clouded
in negation, where there is a confluence of denial and derogation of
indigenous education, where there is snobbery of traditional religions
with their insistence on high moral standards and retributive concept
of punishment and determination of guilt in absolute terms, where even
highly competent local expertise is scorned in favor of second rate
imported technical personnel? One could multiply, ad nauseam, the
debilitating aspects of the crises of African, Caribbean and Diaspora
polities. It suffices to insist that the absence of intellectual,
philosophical and critical dialogue on this related issue of
?leadership? is more of collusion of Western academia and their
surrogates in African, Caribbean and Diaspora ivory towers and the
mental escapism and self-denial of the ?roast breadfruit? clones of
Western intellectuals that suffuse these African, Caribbean and
Diaspora centers of learning and corridors of power, than a consequence
of the well-being of the polities we are interested in.
Why go back to pre-slavery, pre-colonial and contemporary Africa to
commence a philosophical understanding of African, Caribbean and
Diaspora leadership crises? The simple reason is the similarity of the
trajectories of their histories and the carry-overs from these
historical experiences into contemporary leadership fiasco. Take
Nigeria as a case in point. Contemporary Nigerian leadership is a carry-
over form British style of rulership during the colonial period. The
colonial ruler-group are ?foreigners? and did not mix with the locals,
they had no reason to, and they did not see their destinies as tied up
with that of indigenous Nigerians. At independence the inheritors of
power were rulers who descended from an elite group who were distant
from the people they governed, being that as a consequence of their
acquisition of Western classroom based education they felt they were
only nominally part of the masses of the people, they had lost touch
with the people as a consequence, or absence, of their ?education?,
they fail to see themselves as part of the people who had invested in
their acquisition of Western ?education? and being distant they fail to
understand their heritages, values, cultures and histories; and as a
consequence, their aspirations were not those of the people, their
newly acquired behavioural patters were different and more British or
American than indigenous and they exhibited arrant contempt for, and
they disdain, the people they rule over as these forebears and peers
and junior ones were regarded as illiterate, less fortunate, stupid,
gullible and poor people.
In a very serious sense we see the Nigerian leaders avowing the same
intellectual and practical response to the indigenous culture, similar
to the ways in which the Western anthropologists Lucien Levy Bruhl,
Placide Temples, Robin Horton and early African theologians like John
S. Mbiti, Bolaji Idowu and others which they saw as inferior to Western
and Christian systems and metaphysic. These scholars had celebrated the
primitive mentality, illogical, unscientific, etc. mentality of
Africans, and the new elite groups, products of the Western educational
centres now claim that their own peoples were uneducated, poor
illiterates and common masses, as Smythe and Smythe exhibited above. It
is not any wonder that in their ignorance they became aliens in their
own countries.
Writing in 1960 the Smythes showed a good understanding of this factor
in the psyche of the new Nigerian elite group. They stated:
Already there is discernible among the new elite a sense of separation
from the less privileged classes, which the betray unconsciously
through references to ?these people? or ?the uneducated classes? which
are indicative of a distinction between those who ?belong? and those
who are outside the fold, as well as a growing sense of being ?better?
than some of their fellow Nigerians (Italics mine for emphasis). (100)
Explaining the origin of this feature of the new elite, they say,
This lack of identity with the masses follows the example of the
British, who evolved a self-contained colonial way of life
characterized by frequent home leaves and few, if any, social or
cultural contacts with the indigenous population. As Nigerians have
acquired education, and a higher standard of living, they have found
little common interest to share with the average person who lives in
mud house without modern amenities. (1960: 100.)
To exhibit their lack of interest in their compatriots and their
misplaced identity orientation, according to the Smythes, these new
group do not interact with the locals:
A member of the elite is rarely reported in association with the
masses except during the ? political rally, when he may make a campaign
speech, or on such an occasion as the dedication of some public
building at which the masses form a crowd of onlookers. Even on such
occasions the elite do not rub elbows with their less privileged fellow
Nigerians; they are sheltered from the crowd by the police, an official
escort, or some rail or raised platform (101).
This is just one example of leadership dislocation. This is not the
only problem with the Nigerian leadership at independence. They are
numerous and will be indicated at the appropriate time. Meanwhile, let
us go to our first issue, the historical antecedence of leadership
poverty in African, Caribbean and Diaspora polities.
Historical Antecedents
Contemporary society is in a peculiar mess of having to marry
egalitarianism with the demands of high moral probity in public life,
without provisioning for the requisite modalities for eventuating a
harmonious marital relationship for both. What is even more difficult
to understand is the dubious socialization and educational mechanisms
that we now advocate in contemporary societies. (Now, I must insist on
the caveat that, by speaking of contemporary society I intend this to
mean Western Society writ large and of which African and Caribbean
polities are part). Here we find that all the old methodologies of
instilling moral beliefs and discipline in the youth are under serious
challenges while we, as humans, in the West, have failed to provide
workable replacement for what we are eagerly jettisoning.
Let us go back a little in history. All civilized traditional
societies have clear-cut methodologies (formal, non-formal and
informal) of instructing youth in the ethos and mores of the culture.
These are passed down from generation to generation, through formal,
non-formal and informal methods of instruction and reinforcement. Also,
determining whether the product ? the adult ? has become a well-formed
member of society is not difficult to discern. But that is not all;
civilized cultures also devise careful mechanisms for nurturing
leaders. They do not leave them to luck. Those to whom leadership will
devolve (albeit hereditary) are carefully selected, groomed and
instructed in the ways of the culture of their societies and they are
carefully imbued in the sensitivity to right and wrong, to the extent
that we do find that such persons, on attaining the esteemed positions
for which they were prepared, are able to perform without too much of
paparazzi and tabloid media hounding. In fact, it was the
responsibility of all the leaders of thought in societies to properly
bring up those who would lead.
The example of the failure of the first Jewish experiment with
kingship is not difficult to understand in this regard (Old Testament:
1 Samuel 8). The only qualifications we are told that the person
selected (in the person of Saul) to rule over the Jews had was being
very tall and handsome. There was no indication about what type of
family he came from, what type of upbringing he had, and how cultured
in the ways of the Jews he was. The incapacity of such a person to
carry the burden of leadership (Saul?s inability to function) is not
difficult to understand, under the circumstances.
It would be interesting to see if any of the tall, handsome persons
around today can just be picked on account of those superficial
attributes to occupy the White House. (It has been suggested that part
of the problem between the Hutus and the Tutsis in Rwanda is a
consequence of this warped understanding of human physiognomy and
leadership competence, whereby a certain group was selected on account
of appearance for leadership to the disadvantage of other members of
the society who happen to have numerical majority). At best we would
have them engineered into Basketball programmes from youth. And hardly
do many of them have much of a life at the end of their playing careers
if they do not go back to school or if they have not been fortunate to
have been properly brought up in good homes.
Let us start from the continent which has finally been agreed is the
cradle of Homo sapiens - Africa. Undoubtedly for Africa to have
originated the type of developments and achievements in writing,
mathematics, science, technology, civilization, art, culture and social
engineering that created the wonders and curiosities unravelled all
over ancient topography of Africa by scientists, archaeologists,
culturologists, linguists, anthropologists, philosophical historians,
etc., there must have been some level of sophisticated and highly
devoted leadership capable of harnessing the human and natural
resources to request of the environment to make available that level of
development that we (most serious scholars) now acclaim as
authentically African.
One way or the other, this highly sophisticated leadership yielded to
the invasion of the continent by negative forces. While we may
speculate about the proximate and remote causes for the enslavement,
colonization and subsequent cultural and scientific asphyxiation of the
great Africa of our ?Diasporic? nostalgia, the fact remains that
current leadership has no avenue for continuity or connection with its
historical antecedents. One can safely contend that African traditional
leadership that gave birth to the civilizations which tamed the Nile,
created the Great Desert Art, developed Great Zimbabwe, performed
surgical feats, studied the outer extremities of space, etc., died with
the colonization and enslavement of Africa, creating a leadership
vacuum which all forms of charlatans now fill by default, while there
has not developed any cadre of leadership of merit in the miscegenation
called society in the New World African Diaspora.
Why is this so? In many African societies, for example, the first crop
of youth sent to ?the white man?s schools?, when Western education came
to hinterland Africa, were not the cream of the breed. Why? There was a
high level of suspicion of the white man?s ways ? his education that is
confined to some space and time span, his justice system that often
compensates the criminal rather that the aggrieved (presumption of
innocence of the accused till proven guilty without safety valve for
the aggrieved in any primary sense and the possibility of plea
bargaining are examples of the white mans strange judicial system) and
which facilitates sophistry, by contrast with truth and fairness, his
disrespect for the traditions and cultures of the indigenous societies
emanating from ignorance of life, society, nature, the environment and
the super-sensible realm, and his belief that the Supreme Being can and
must be worshipped on only one day of the week and in an enclosed space
outside of which all shenanigans are possible, among others. This
sending of the second or third best of the breed to the white man?s
school cannot be without justification. For one, leadership in Africa
was not something you just happen by. It was not without long periods
of tutelage. For years and years leaders identified are schooled in the
traditions of the people, the culture that they must uphold, the
religions and moral ethos that are implicated by social existence and
affirmations of life inextricably weaved into existence. Because of
this African traditional societies took great care to nurture
leadership. Even where leaders were determined by heredity and lineage,
care is taken to ensure that the final product that inherits the mantel
at the transition of the incumbent is well prepared for the challenge
of leadership and commitment to society and the proper representation
of the ancestors.
This must not be interpreted to suggest that there were no misfits or
that all was always perfect, but the important point being made is that
effort is clearly made to identify and develop leadership in all
civilized societies. To take care of the errors that may be humanly
unavoidable in leadership identification process clear checks and
balances are carefully developed to ensure that leadership was imbued
with humanity. Second, most traditional African parents could not see
how life could be meaningfully influenced by the less than six hours of
work that takes place in the white man?s educational space, over five
days of the week, compared with the life long nature of education and
leadership training that takes place under the traditional system of
education in the African society. Third, since the children sent to the
white man?s schools were never expected to amount to much anyway, it
was not regarded as a disaster that the products turned out to be
servants to the white man and menaces to the indigenous cultures and
institutions. Finally, the products of Western education were expected
to be persons able to speak with forked tongues, thereby capable of the
chicaneries associated with curious oddities that white ways of life
constituted to indigenous Africa (Ajayi and Espie eds. 1965: 162).
Some of the products of the system were even more dangerous to the
African societies and the cultures and civilizations of African peoples
than the alien white folks that they replaced and whose ignorance can
be pardoned. A reading of the first crop of African theologian scholars
would clearly make this point, as their denial of African religious
experience and understanding of the Supreme Being were more indicting
than that of their Western counterparts. I have discussed this at
length in another forum, but we may merely mention here the works of
Mbiti, Idowu and Awolalu as examples to make the point.
The long and short of the story is that in polygamous families those
who initially went to the white man?s school were, first, the children
of wives that were not very liked by the husbands; second, children who
were regarded as lazy and who showed a proclivity toward indolence;
third, children who showed evidence of being cantankerous,
disrespectful, disobedient and dishonest. These were children whose
fathers could care less how their lives turned out, hence it did not
matter what the white man did to/with them. The nefarious activities of
the products of these educational experiences, and how they exerted
their pound of flesh from the society that ?dissed? (Jamaican for
?disrespect?) them, is told in many of the novels by Cyprian Ekwensi,
Chinua Achebe, Ola Rotimi, Wole Soyinka and others.
That some of these very products then turned around to demand
independence for their societies is not difficult to understand as they
easily recognized that for as long as the white man remained the
overlords in the African colonial countries they, the clones and
surrogates, must continue to play second fiddle. This recognition, out
of self-interest among others, therefore, indicated that they strive
for and attain independence for their countries. It is not by accident
that most of these nationalist fighters were law, medical and commerce
graduates, etc., not engineers, agriculturalists, etc. Being in the
parasitic professions, they were able to comprehend their limitations
and had a will to power that was not equalled by a culturally matched
will to leadership and an understanding of the nature and process of
leadership (Ajayi and Espie, 1965: 161).
Thus, when independence was granted, the questions that were never
asked during the struggle for independence still did not arise:
independence for what? What society would we want to have in fifty
years time? What legacies would we wish to leave behind when we join
our ancestors? Who shall continue the process and carry on the work of
shepherding the society to green pastures in the full glare of the
glutinous enemy at the gate? Where would our different societies stand
in the community of societies in future generations yet unborn? For one
thing a group without a proper leadership ?home training? could not be
expected to be anything but upstarts mimicking the gesticulations of
their admired and hated overlords, hence one sees, for example, some of
these rulers trying to out-do their colonial foster parents in three,
four, five piece suits in the hot tropical climate, without noticing
any incongruity in the suffering they endure just to be the ?roast
bread fruits? that they are (these are people who, according to
Jamaicans, are black persons by skin pigmentation, but who are whites
in the mental dispositions, practical predilections and cultural
affinities exhibited in their appearances, gesticulations and
genuflections, intellectual preferences and even non-preferences).
Because of a lack of understanding of the concept of leadership,
coupled with poor preparation for leadership, it soon became clear that
for these African and Caribbean rulers (what Soyinka referred to as the
?wasted generation?, which I prefer to call the ?wasting generation?),
what was more important is attainment and retention of power, as a
means of oppressing their hapless compatriots. Power became the end in
itself primarily, and secondarily a means of accessing state funds for
personal selfish use.
The Nigerian example does not cease to fascinate me. Here, at
independence, was a spectacular enthronement of a government of
ignoramus. For one, the British falsified the demography of the country
to favour the most ill-prepared segment of the country and followed
this by rigging the election so that we had a Prime Minister who had
neither a basic schooling in either traditional home training that is
necessary for leadership, nor even a proper mastery of the educational
system of the colonial master. Since then Nigeria has not had any
modicum of leadership that is comparable to what Old Oyo, Kanem Bornu,
or Benin Empires had. Second, the rulers that Nigeria has had could
hardly define the word ?leader? if seriously pressed, and in some cases
could not spell the word ?leader? by themselves. Third, they (political
administrators) neither have an awareness of the Black Person?s history
in the world nor of the contemporary situation of the Black Person
globally and on the African continent. Fourth, most African heads of
state (Nigeria in particular) have suffered from a sit tight syndrome
as a matter of necessity ? given the travesty of justice perpetuated by
them they usually are frightened by their own shadows. Finally, having
not received what is anywhere near the best of education that their
society could afford ? traditional and Western - they have been out of
their depths in the fortuitous positions of power they have found
themselves.
Apart from their alienation from their indigenous communities, there
were other problems with the inheritors of leadership at independence.
They were, in many cases, a) unable to understand the concept of public
life and public property, as they were not disposed to use public
property, especially public funds, with diligence and propriety, for
only official business but were busy wasting funds and engaging in all
kinds of fraudulence; b) unable to separate their private income from
public funds, seeing opportunities to serve as opportunities to
embezzle public funds with impunity; c) unable to recognize a
difference between the tactics and stratagems that gained their
societies independence and strategies for developing new states from
colonies, hence the same tactics of sabotage, subterfuge and antagonism
used to fight for independence, from the foreign overlords are they
were called, are now employed against the new enemy, that is,
indigenous critics of their uncouth and scandalous behaviour in office;
d) unable to see that leadership is a call to service , hence,
operating with the same mentality of alienation and separatism of the
?educated elite?, so that having attained public positions means being
even more special and alien, and e) unable to understand that their
countries are part of a big world in which it is survival of the
fittest. Consequently, they were not prepared for the task of nation-
building.
We often wonder why contemporary Africa, Caribbean and their Diaspora
polities are decadent, cerebrally diminutive, innately corrupt,
corruptive, corrupting and morally bankrupt and spiritually retrograde
and culturally retrogressive. We easily forget the historical
antecedents of contemporary African and Caribbean political elites,
clowning around in leadership garbs. Dialectically, ?leadership? is a
function of historical transitions over time and space. One cannot talk
of ?leadership? in cultural, educational and historical vacuum. Nor can
one get any clear vision on the notion of ?leadership? culture and
education without examining the underpinnings and presuppositions of
the social metaphysic and the epistemic attitudes and attributes
prevalent in the societies under examination.
While sociologists, psychologists and their ilk can describe as much
as they like the variations in the themes of ?leadership? essential for
the existence and survival of the technologically engineered industrial
society, mostly in instrumental and utilitarian terminologies, such
enunciations must be of minimal value, in the context of our discourse,
if not predicated on the larger issue of societal ?leadership? itself.
Consider for example the paucity of content that will derive from a
study in the leadership of Coca Cola or IBM or General Motors outside
of the philosophical foundations of Capitalism. Imagine how puerile a
debate of the management structure of the large multinationals will
turn out to be if the underpinning presuppositions relating to the
bottom line were negated and privated. In essence, history is very
illuminating in understanding the parlous state of leadership in Afro-
Caribbean polity.
The Caribbean example is not any better. In the cases of Jamaica,
Guyana, Haiti and Dominica Republic, it could be said that there was a
singular opportunity on the part of the political directorate to get it
right at independence. But what did we find? Here are countries that
could be the Caribbean examples of positive all-round greatness in the
region, with so much potential in terms of land space, population size,
natural resources, and proximity to the hemispheric giant that has
always been favourably disposed toward the islands as a matter not only
of self-interest but also of strategic economic market.
Let us look at Nigeria and Jamaica as examples of African and
Caribbean countries attaining independence about the same time. While
the Nigerian disaster can be understandable and even excused as a
deliberate product of the British perfected divide and rule system ?
vide the fact that Britain is a classic example of divide and rule
country in the world with Irish, Welsh, Scottish matters never resolved
? and that the British does not balk from committing fraud as part of
official government policy by falsifying the demography of Nigeria and
rigging the Nigerian Independence Elections to install a stooge
government that we have mentioned, Jamaica, on the other hand, cannot
be easily get away with a luxury that has proved so pernicious and
debilitating. In fact, in the Jamaican situation, by comparison with
Nigeria with over three hundred (300) distinct language, ethnic and
culturally identifiable peoples, the shared heritage of slavery common
to over 80 percent of the population would have indicated a necessity
for bonding and a charting of a common fortune and future. Rather
members of the same extended family, who had the fortune of making the
Island the paradise in the sun that it has the capacity and probable
destiny of being, have contrived to create political partisan
identities of otherness that have remained irreconcilable, with
attendant cruel antagonisms, worse than between the Igbo and the Hausa-
Fulani during the civil war in Nigeria or between the Arab and the Jew
in present day Palestine. While in Nigeria, because of short-
sightedness and idiocy of the political class, we have differentiations
on grounds of ethnic identities and state of origin, in Jamaica what
obtains is which party card one carries, which entitles one to
advantages and disadvantages. The clannish system is tribally polarized
and erupts into warfare periodically ? more frequent as the resources
for pillaging becomes more scarce and limited.
I have also found that, unlike in Jamaica where ethnic differences are
non-existent, but was created by the fiat of members of the same
extended family to carve for themselves fiefdoms, in some other
Caribbean countries the existence of any semblance of ethnic
differences is good enough excuse for polarization of society through
the same myopic mechanism of leadership insecurity enunciated by the
egocentric William Lynch syndrome of divide and rule ? better construed
as divide and conquer. (I am mindful of the literature on
Rastafarianism and the Maroons of Akompong as distinct ethic groups
within the Jamaican body politik, but my view is that compared to
Nigeria, that is stretching the meaning of ethnic a little too thin,
hence, I ignore such dilutions of discourse aimed at obfuscating
serious issues.) Thus, the political elite finds it easy to fan the
embers of discord by playing on primordial fears of the other ? the
unknown and the alien. Those from Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana will
not find it difficult to identify with the issues raised here. Clearly
the political directorates in these countries are not remise to hide
their ineptitude under the cloak of enemies at the gate, and today the
enemies are, first, the ?leaders? themselves, second, the lack of
education they have and which they continue to deny to their people,
and third, the global village with all the contestations and
polarizations deriving from the struggle for economic control.
What I am suggesting here is that the situation at independence in
Nigeria and most African countries parallels that of most Caribbean
societies, regardless of the differences in the historical trajectories
that preceded the independence. In clear terms the elites (the
political class, that is) never raised the questions that had the most
relevance: political independence for what? What they sought first was
the political kingdom, believing that once attained, every other thing
shall be added unto their societies with little, if any, effort at all
on their part.
At independence in Nigeria, the political elites were a pack of
visionless, simple- minded people who thought that the world would wait
for them. This visionlessness was the most important factor that, to my
analysis here, led to the civil war, and even with that (that is, the
conclusion of an unwarranted war) no lessons were learnt. It must be
said that the military has been the scourge of most countries where
they came to power. The situation of the Nigerian military is even
worse than in most other countries in the world, as members of the
armed forces at independence were not of high educational training in
the Western sense and the were not highly morally endowed in the matter
of personal development and home training as decent children never went
to the army. When Nigeria found oil in commercial quantities the
nitwits in power were of the opinion that ?money was not Nigeria?s
problem but how to spend it?. We had a megalomaniac political class
that neither understood African heritage, yet embarked on FESTAC 77.
This was a period when the Nigeria currency was stronger than the US
Dollar or the British Pound Sterling, and we went all over the world
shopping for every conceivable gadget. In fact, we coined another
phrase that ?if the West will not sell technology to Nigeria, we will
steal it?. Shortly thereafter we found, in Nigeria, that having oil
(the so-called black gold) is no recipe for success, as we bred a set
of power mongers who counted their importance in terms of billions of
dollars they have stashed away in Swiss and Cayman personal loot
accounts. In many instances loans are taken on behalf of their
countries and divided among themselves into their foreign accounts,
then turning round to ask the foreign governments to forgive or
reschedule the loans for their countries, when their stolen personal
?wealth? could pay these loans debts plus interests many times over.
In any case, by the time I was in high school the only people who went
into the army were school dropouts, touts and other never-do-wells in
society. Decent people do not send their children to the army and
children with ambition would hardly see fulfillment in an army
established as ?kill an? go?. It was the new white man?s school for
depriving the youth of their sensibility and freedom of self-expression
as you ?obey the last command? or ?obey before complain?! It is not by
accident that the most educated of the Nigerian military rulers has
been the one who voluntarily relinquished power only to attain it
twenty years later. And the worst that could happen to any country if
for the military to take over power.
In the Caribbean, most people from the region are by far more familiar
with the political class history first hand than I am (and surely
Puerto Ricans will be better in this regard than I could attain at this
stage of my research), but the manifestations of the malady remains the
same, hence the need for to venture into this analysis. Being mostly
lawyers, the political class or elite group in the Caribbean are adept
in the intellectual game of obfuscation of issues ? saying so much
while saying nothing. All they have mastered is probably the flip side
of their ?master?s voice? (remember the age of the gramophone!). The
consequence remains a region that is externally financed and directed
rather than inward looking in the generation of motivation, sustenance
and destination. In fact, the political class has little respect for
the intellect of their indigenous people, and are scornful of
themselves, knowing fully well that as parasites on the resources of
their respective countries, they often collude to determine the
negation of the interest of their societies ? especially when they are
aware of the political omnicide that continued antagonism would spell
for all concerned.
I wish to conclude this segment of the analysis with another
contention. I argue from the forgoing that African and Caribbean
polities are still pervaded by the disruptive, divisive and pernicious
?ours-theirs? dichotomies inveigled in tribal politics and adversarial
legal frameworks which the rulers inherited from their erstwhile slave
masters and colonial mentors and have not made any effort, in fact have
not seen reason to make any effort, to transcend these negative and
destructive legacies. (It may be surmised that maybe the type of
education they received from Ox-Bridge and LSE (add in recent times
Harvard) is not one that can make them appreciate their destiny in
history or the destiny of their peoples toward dependency and
nothingness, hence their inability to introspect and cogitate the
dilemma of their peoples in the global environment where the peoples of
colour must contest to attain to the rights that even pets in Euro-
America take for granted). Ingrained in any variety of this kind of
legacy is the mentality, first, that government property is no one?s
property, hence, no compunction to care for it in any serious way;
second, a predisposition to tax evasion as no sense of community has
been developed and no accountability has been insisted upon to ensure
judicious use and disposal of government funds; third, destructive
attitude to public property in the form of arson, theft, neglect, as
replacement mechanisms are loaded with contractual kick-back mechanisms
for personal monetary gain, etc.; and finally, the perception that
public funds are largesse or ?God?s blessing?, to be disposed of for
self and acquaintances while the opportunity lasts with impunity.
Parenthetically, one could add for comic relief that fact that many
helpers in Jamaica do not see as stealing the employers property, as
the helpers believe such ?taking? cannot constitute contractual
infraction to persons who can afford to employ others in their home
when they are not government or companies!
The consequence that this breeds is that the same techniques that were
employed to get rid of the colonial masters and salve masters are now
used by the mentally and culturally ?alien? rulers in the African and
Caribbean polities. The poor and the masses are the new enemies that
must be brought to heel, they are the targets of all type of deceit,
they are blamed for being lazy, for being difficult to lead, while
those who profit from the corrupt and unjust systems the new rulers
have created are the least willing to acknowledge the existence of
injustice and the beneficiaries of corruption are hardly willing to
admit the iniquity of their unmerited advantages. Thus, like leadership
in African polities, the Caribbean leaders find scapegoats everywhere
and are never guilty of any wrong. In consequence there is so much
?Anansism?, or ?ginnalship? or ?bandolooism? (Jamaican words) ? a
system of rulership by deceit, kleptomania, corruption, and all manner
of abuse of public office and privileges of public trust with arrant
impunity and distrust. What this has done in the Jamaican situation is
entrench a psyche of callousness, viciousness and cynicism. Thus the
poor and the disadvantaged are easily provoked, and irritability
without proper educational temperament to master stress leads to
invidious violence and reckless homicidal tendencies.
While still on this historico-philosophical analysis of leadership one
may mention in passing the two leaders Nigeria never had. The first was
Obafemi Awolowo, while the second was Moshood Abiola. The first was a
product of the colonial legacy who left a great record of management
and development in the old Western Region for the emulation of other
regions in Nigeria in the 1950s. The second was elected by popular
ballot in an election conducted by a military dictatorship and
Nigerians, to their dismay and chagrin, had the election annulled by
the same military. These gentlemen were not only schooled in the
traditions of their people, they excelled in Western education also and
combined these educational experiences with very humble family
backgrounds where memories of early deprivation instilled in them the
understanding that leadership is a privilege to serve and to improve
the lives of the people. They were industrialists and educationists who
know what makes for success in developing and running businesses, not
armchair analysts and critics like most others. They were not afraid to
work with their hands to put into practice what they conceived in their
minds, hence they were in the forefront of the effort to create wealth
rather than simply manipulate or tax and spend what others have
created.
What is indicated from the above is the fact that it takes an
intellectual leap of faith for the oppressed to correctly diagnose the
origin of their oppression. This is why in Afro-Caribbean polities the
aggression and anger of the larger segments of the populations are
wrongly targeted. This is because the rulers have contrived to keep the
populations under a ?veil of ignorance? (to borrow a Rawlsian
terminology), both educationally and psychologically. While persons who
steal a goat would be jailed for three years, other more ?privileged?
persons who steal hundreds of millions of public money or who cause the
collapse of state institutions are given state honours at elaborate
functions. Thus it requires the persevering intellectual exercise of
the will to accurately prescribe corrective measures to African,
Caribbean and Diaspora rulership maladies. This is not only happening
in parts of Nigeria where misguided politicians hold people to ransom
under so-called Sharia law, cutting off fingers of thieves and ordering
the stoning of fornicators will they themselves are stealing billions
of dollars from public coffers without having to account to anyone. In
essence, the situation is most degrading for both the political
oppressors and the oppressed, as the way all these atrocities reflect
on the intellectual integrity of the coloured person is negative.
Consider public officials negotiating the cancellation of national debt
with the Paris Club whose executive members have less than a million
dollars each in their accounts with beggars who each have billions of
dollars their countries owe in their private accounts.
Having justified why we consider ?leadership? to be a conceptual
problem worthy of philosophical analysis and establishing why thinkers
from societies which suffer most for a paucity of leadership have an
obligations to address the issues, we now move on to the next levels of
discourse ? indicating the criteria that would need to be met to have
an adequate philosophy of leadership. Or, formulated another way,
theorizing leadership in a non-purely empirical or descriptive manner,
as social scientists are wont to do.
Leadership
It would have become clear that I have been very cautious thus far not
to have described the political elites and rulers in Africa, Caribbean
and Diaspora polities as leaders. This has been by design, because, on
my Richter scale of leadership, I have not been able to identify any
single Afro-Caribbean ruler of the 20th Century that could pass as
leader. This is because one way or the other they have failed to meet
the requirements of the Psalmist. The shepherd analogy comes in handy
again here and we may enumerate some of the crucial requirements of the
shepherd that have aided other contemporary peoples of the world and
past epochs of Africans to become great. The shepherd is a leader who
does not put self-interest above sheep interest, does not rest until
the sheep is provided for ? not just for the immediate needs, but
ensuring the needs of the future are guaranteed also ? consequently the
shepherd envision the unknown tomorrow and plans for it. The shepherd
is the protector of the sheep and exemplified the virtues of
righteousness requisite of followership. In this regard, the shepherd
as leader leads by example and does not have to ask for respect before
getting it.
Parenthetically, one need not get unnecessarily carried away; hence, I
must here temper the analysis with realism. The Tanzania experiment I
find worth commending. The Nwalimu, Julius Nyerere, we are told,
retired from public office without any mansion of his own. The weakness
of his period has been described as exogenous and a consequence of the
conspiracy of vested interest coupled with over-zealousness. This does
not detract from the viability of the leadership offered by Nyerere.
And at the pain of being dubbed a totalitarian, one could mention Fidel
Castro and Khadafi here for good measure.)
What is ?leadership?? I tried checking Webster?s Third New
International Dictionary (Mass: Merriam Webster Inc. 1981) to see if
there would be a definition that may be a starting point, but only
found ?leader? defined as someone who leads, and ?leadership? as the
office or quality or capacity to lead. These circular definitions fail
to help. Robbins defines leadership thus:
. . . leadership (is) the ability to influence a group toward the
achievement of goals. The source of this influence may be formal, such
as that provided by the possession of managerial rank in an
organization (413).
Clearly this is a utilitarian, profit and loss definition of
?leadership?, but we still can glean aspects of the ideas we have
highlighted earlier from it. In human society writ large contrasted
with the simple business environment, the leader needs more than just a
capacity to make people achieve goals. From the biblical shepherd
example, it is clear that a leader needs to be a visionary. Clearly the
purely utilitarian perspective is weak, as it does not take cognisance
of collective purpose and the requirement of the evolutionary dynamics
of social and cultural needs of the led which must inform leadership
focus.
While we will come to this, let us consider what Robbins? review of
literature reveals. He examines trait theories ? charisma, enthusiasm,
courage are necessary attributes of leaders. This is true, especially
when group goals have been clearly defined, even though there are times
those of lesser ilk may think that leaders with these traits are fools
? as they seem to have no sense of danger to self, no understanding of
basic requirements of self-survival and welfare in the undue dangers
they search for and bring to themselves and those close to them. Other
attributes were found in behavioural theories espousing toughness,
intensity and autocracy, while contingency theory (and its variant,
situational theory), indicates variations contingent on the context and
group or society that is to be led. Clearly, as usual, social
scientists have failed to provide clues that could be followed in the
solution of societal problems. The failure is not unexpected because
the effort at stereotyping humanity is doomed ab initio.
What do we learn from this that can be of philosophical moment? In the
first place, when we wonder why the countries of the Pacific rim ? at
the head of which you find a Japan that was badly battered in the
Second World War ? were able to rise from oblivion within a spate of
four decades to dominate the world technologically and financially, or
why USA has been able to blend hetero-ethnicities into a vibrant polity
? even with the usual unresolved issues of racism, racial profiling,
and implications of the last Presidential Elections in the state of
Florida, among others, are still festering; why Russians are a proud
people, in spite of the collapse of the Soviet Union, etc., many
scholars would easily indicate in concession (concurring with the views
here proffered) that it was not the colour of the skin, nor the
intellectual superiority of the population, nor the climatic generosity
of the environment that made the difference. Many will easily indicate
and concede that the difference is ?leadership?!
What the psychologists and social psychologists were searching for
would not be found in any textbook, as the moral component and force of
leadership are not written in bold letters in society?s statutes for
efficacy, even there are those high sounding codes of ethics for
ministers and officials of government. Hence, any discussion of the
concept of leadership that stops only at the manifest components must
be short-sighted.
There is an allure among academics of what is called current or recent
literature. In this regard, it is believed that reading or using
literature that is older than five years in publication is evidence of
lack of currency, as if recent research has a prerogative of insight
and erudition. Why I am inclined to think this is a fallacy is a
rereading of Pitirim A. Sorokin?s (1948) The Reconstruction of Humanity
(Boston: The Beacon Press). A superficial reading may suggest that he
is canvassing the view that if one were to look at human societies from
a reconstructive perspective one would believe the author was against
clear-cut leadership development or enculturation process because they
seem at times to fail to deliver on the expectations of humaneness and
protections of rights by contrast with others, especially
totalitarianism which at times may be benevolent at times. But clearly
what Sorokin laments if fact that the faults of democracies are easier
to recognize and in the public domain as a consequence of its systemic
openness. While there is no time to dwell at length on his discussion
here, it should interest readers to look carefully at his criticism of
democracy and the possibility of tyranny of the majority, nay, tyranny
of the minority in contemporary democracies as the percentage of the
population that determines the government more often that not is less
than fifty percent of the entire population.
Before we go on to sketch the criteria that ?leadership? by contrast
with mere exercise of power would entail, we need to briefly discuss
what a philosophy of leadership will look like. On the logical side, we
would like to see a critical interrogation of the meaning, content,
manifestations and consequences of ?leadership?. The social scientists
have fastened on only one side of this logical equation. They have been
more concerned with the descriptive, inductive and de facto aspect of
the concept to the utter neglect of the analytical, deductive and
conceptual aspects. This has vitiated a proper understanding of the
concept and problematic of leadership. As a consequence, even when
Burns craved for a synthesis of the various conceptual aspects of
leadership, this would not be forth-coming because only the empirical
aspect was being addressed. In other words, we look logically at
leadership from inductive and deductive angles, but we are also mindful
of other possibilities in interpretation of leadership, such as
intuitive and reductive logical expositions.
Coming on the heels of our logical prescription must be the
epistemological requirement. Here it may simply be indicated that many
factors are called for here. These include the cognitive, intuitive,
emotive and dynamic, introspective components. In this regard, we may
indicate that there are two sides to this: a) the epistemological base
of leadership and b) the epistemological base of followership.
Let us dilate a bit on the first. Leadership must originate from the
vantage position of ?knowledge?. We can see that all the great thinkers
are agreed on this, from Plato, to Jesus, to Awolowo (the last one here
calls it the regime of mental magnitude). In a sense, the reason why
Plato prescribed the philosopher king as the person fit to rule is
because such a person would have attained a level of understanding of
the universe, people and him/herself to be fair to all and just in the
dispensation of justice. In another sense, we may simply encapsulate
this epistemological requirement by indicating that the leader must be
wise, not simply knowledgeable. This is because there is danger in mere
requisition of knowledge, as many persons are specialists in various
areas by regrettably poor in most others and unfit for leadership. So
competence in some profession or acquisition of skills or ?techne? or
expertise is no indication of capacity to lead. Hence, the better we
conceive of leadership holistically as requiring wisdom. The leader
would have attained this through proper upbringing, attendance at the
school of life, knowledge of history and culture of her/his society, an
awareness of international relations and forces of history, familiarity
with the psychology and pathology of suffering or being downtrodden in
an inclement international environment, capable of an analysis of the
sociology of poverty, the metaphysic, economics and politics of
dependency and the historical interaction of races and ethnicities in
the global village. More than these, the leaders would have to acquire
a great perseverance in the mastery of the knowledge of self. For the
blind cannot lead the blind without both of them being endangered.
We are not making an unreasonable demand of leadership here. What is
being suggested is that the leader should be intellectually rounded and
epistemologically astute. When we look at Booker T. Washington (?The
Atlanta Address?. 1895), we find that he exhibited so much mastery of
the attributes we have put forward here, but his generation was unable
to understand the tactical nature of his leadership philosophy. Hence,
they often thought he was a sell-out when he preached industry,
frugality and education. They thought that he meant in his lamentation
of the poverty of his contemporary African American?s poverty,
ignorance, immorality, that he was talking of an innate and hereditary
attributes. But being aware of the forces arrayed against his black
contemporaries who were just emerging from slavery, he knew that the
challenges were not for the fickle and there would be no accolades won
without serious effort, and that while a white person will get
recognition with excellence, it would require a super excellence effort
and accomplishment for the black person to attain the same recognition.
This is what brings us to the second prong of our epistemological
requirement. Knowledge is critical in the followership also. For is the
blind were to be leading the sighted into a ditch, the sighted would
cry foul and resist the perdition that await them. This is the reason
some philosophers advocate that the citizen must have a right to civil
disobedience or even violent revolt against oppression and tyranny.
Now, it is important to understand how the coalescence of unhappy
circumstance can conspire to facilitate the greatness of a people. One
may use the analogy of the Jews in this regard. Washington was aware
that the successful person of colour was an endangered specie, hence he
preached lying low and creative use of little latitudes gained from
oppression through constructive and diligent effort. This requires,
therefore, that blacks whether in Africa, the Caribbean or the Diaspora
should not forget her history in the last five centuries, how she got
to where she is and strive to endure that her leadership be not
ensnared into complacency which could either perpetuate for ever her
and her descendants eternal dependency on other peoples of the world as
consumers of the trash coming from other races. One must never forget
the wisdom in the Yoruba proverb that, bi owo eni ko i te eku ida, a
kii beere iru iku to pa baba eni, that is, if you have not attained the
power necessary to confront the opponent you do not ask why or how
he/she killed your father. For, doing that is asking to be killed
yourself, and the only way you can have the strength and resources to
do that is by acquiring knowledge and resources to stand on your own,
before demanding freedom. Thus, giving period during which he lived,
his leadership, based on matured epistemology of reality has been
vindicated. The prematurity of the activism of the abolitionists
abolitionists and militants was clear in limitation of the achievements
of racial justice before the right time in the second half of the last
century.
In Blacks in America since 1865 edited by Robert C. Twombly (1971), we
find a reinforcement of the epistemological requirement. From the
perspective of Washington, one great service leaders must undertake is
to search for and continually obtain information. This means that
leaders must read, they must listen, and they must think. To speak
without the exercise of these epistemological foundations as basic
backgrounds is to condemn themselves and their society to ignominy and
serious social and political dangers. It is no wonder that Eusi Kwayana
emphasizes this epistemological factor when asserting that,
To understand the collective psyche of a people, we have to learn to
listen not only to speech, but to non-speech and to a whole complex of
responses? We have also to have periods when we fade and allow
ourselves to absorb universal wisdom, listening with eyes, ears, skin,
and the secret tuition we all have to some extent, known as in-tuition?
When leaders throw aside reason, it seems that non-reason takes over,
with or without their help. (Internet source provided in reference
section).
Even if we are not too sure about the source of the universal wisdom,
we would agree that a lot of intuition and consciousness is necessary
for successful leadership, and the fact that a lot of the negativities
in Caribbean polities are consequences of ignorance and insensitivity
to the destinies of these societies by selfish and self-seeking rulers
suffering from intellectual myopia and moral bankruptcy.
Let us take the third leg of our requirements, the metaphysic of
leadership. Here we confront the most difficult aspect of theorizing or
philosophizing about leadership. But that should not deter effort.
Starting with the ontology of leadership, two questions will have to be
asked: Is there ?leadership?, and if there is leadership, ?How do we
recognize it?? On the first, there can be no denying the existence of
leadership, but what we find in that identifying it, because of the so
many families of attributes that constitute leadership has been a
problem. This is where the social scientists have tried and failed
because, unifying all leadership qualities makes if difficult to
understand, and thinking that by listing these and teaching it success
in some field will translate into success in other fields makes a
mockery of the who philosophy of leadership.
This is what leads us to the suggestion that given the diversity of
the families of attributes which make up leadership, the ontology of
leadership will have to deal with relativities of time, space, context,
cultures, groups, goals, etc. These are critical to the attribution of
leadership, and in human affairs we do find that perception is a
critical component.
Clearly it may have been expected that by talking of the metaphysic of
leadership I intended some eternalistic, supernaturalistic or even
metaphysical understanding of leadership. While one would have wished
there was a failsafe method of divining leadership, this expectation on
the part of those who have harboured them have proven of little value.
This is where we find the problems with various forms of theocracies in
human history, and this is where the expectations of people who look
for divine intervention in the solution of human and social problems
have been disappointed time and time in history. Human beings have
always had to be proactive, knowing where they want to go before they
can start getting anywhere near there. In many instances those who turn
out to be instrumental in the achievement of progress and development
in various historical epochs in human history have been regarded as
divine intervention, dubious as this seems logically, we may permit
persons with proclivities toward religions exuberance to feel
comfortable in this zone. For the purpose of this dialogue however, it
is clear that in history leadership has never been Manna from heaven,
it has been human, and full of sacrifices and opportunities for
satisfaction of group and personal goals.
Taking the axiological turn, we now must emphasize the normative
nature and the norm generating nature of leadership in any society. It
is clear that leadership should constitute the embodiment of the very
hopes, aspirations, identity, dreams and realities of a society. Baring
this, it is clear that there will ensue a drift in society that will be
disastrous. It is important in this regard that should be clear
standards and channels for the enforcement of these standards on both
the leaders and the led, especially on the leaders. This is because,
when leadership disregards the least of the norms, ethos and statutes
of a society with impunity, the signals sent reverberates through the
entire fabric of the society, having consequences not easily redressed.
While certain modes of behaviour will be tolerable for citizens, such
allowance cannot be made for leaders, because giving small room for
indiscipline and disobedience of the laws would lead to further and
further infractions of the statutes. Societies with great civilizations
have endeavoured to ensure that leadership transcends the regimen of
the ordinary folk. While ordinary folk can operate at the level of
normal reaction, leaders require more. Now, normal reaction implicates
a complex matrix that is predicated on group behaviour and/or
consciousness that has as its elements a) intellect, b) memory and c)
association, all of which implicate a complex neural system
differentiated on socio-cultural predications of rationality. In
personal affairs, this complex plays out in relation to perceived
latitude of behaviour, while in social settings, the latitudes are even
more complex! Consequently, humans not only manifest a plethora of
relationships but they seek out sources that help them to discriminate
these relationships.
On the other hand, emergency reactions breed a stimulus response
different from the normal situation. Some factors do not impinge on
decision making mechanisms here, as the tendency is to involuntarily
launch into a fire-brigade mode ? that of crisis management. This
indicates the abbreviation of the social milieu of certain actions, as
normal reaction is supplanted by the abnormal. But then this does not
mean the total negation of the social, unless the situation becomes so
privating that the only reality is the preservation of the ergo, the
self.
Clearly in many of our Africa, Caribbean and Diaspora polities,
especially the Nigerian example, the exigencies of life and the
existential situation has not only become so privating, it has created
a siege consciousness with the attendant situation of a Hobbesian state
of nature, characterized by bellum omnium contra omnes ? a war of all
against all, and especially of the leadership against the led, with
enthronement of mutual suspicion and antagonism as the order of the
day. The Jamaican experience is only a little different, hence the high
of level of cynicism about leadership and corporate social existence.
So we see that in leadership matters, when we are concerned about
norms, values, rules and regulations in public life, the leadership
orientation and development must combine intellectual with a high level
of sophisticated discipline that enables leadership to transcend normal
reaction level, as conditions of leadership imposes on the leader this
as part of everyday experience. Leadership places on those who assume
it social obligations a high level of sensitivity requirement.
Imagine for a moment a situation in which leadership exhibits a
generalized survival, self-preservation, ego-protection and
individualistic orientation. At such a level everything must conduce to
self-preservation and entrenchment. Imagine a situation where political
leadership is construed as an instrument of determining who gets what,
where and when. Where politics is a game for determining between
?tribes whose members are perpetually at war with each other? and where
the winner takes all and the loser ceases to exist literally. Imagine
for a second a politics that is divisive, rather than uniting, where
those who play by the rules get shafted and where leadership does not
believe that the laws must shackle them from committing destructive
blunders at the expense of the citizens. Imagine a situation where
leaders are above the law, and where they can set their agents to kill
and maim opposition with arrogant impunity. These will definitely lead
to anarchy and mayhem.
Thus, when we are examining the ethical foundations of leadership we
find that leaders are required to allow their consciousness to shift
gear into the supernormal mode of cognition, behaviour and relationship
with the people under acute stress situations. They must not just be
normal persons or even ab/sub-normal that we mentioned above, society
expects them to put society interest above self-interest. It is at this
stage that the true test of leadership can be determined. This third
stage is where the leader becomes only an instrument for the
realization of society?s consciousness, where the leadership becomes
the tool for the propagation of organic existence of the society. This
is where leadership education, orientation and preparation kicks in
automatically in advanced or civilized societies. Some may call this
the spiritual level of leadership, but it is simply the level where
that popular saying becomes significant ? I am, because we are.
For our purpose, it will be useful to indicate the following
attributes as important and critical in the analysis of the concept and
moral content of leadership:
a) Vision And Some Level Of Idealism
A leader must have a vision of a better society. This vision must be
informed by the realities of the historical antecedents of one?s
society, contemporary realities of the world in which the society
exists, and the potentialities and possibilities that the endowments of
nature and human resources can transform for posterity. We have
mentioned the importance of education in leadership development, but we
must reiterate that factor of historical education, which will create
in the leaders an awareness of how other peoples have related to
his/her peoples and the consequences of such interaction. In which case
the leader would be better prepared to use such knowledge for the
advancement of the interest of his/her own peoples.
Why it is important for a leader to have a vision and a dream of a
better society arises from the need to plan for future generations and
ensure that the plans are realistic. It is necessary that leaders be
able to lead from the front and be good examples for followers if there
is to be effectiveness in leadership. In this wise, it is important
that leaders be well educated in the traditions of their society as
well as the associated histories of societies that have impacted on the
traditions and that will continue to so impact as we mentioned just
now.
b) Honesty
Honesty is a requisite of true leadership. Honesty necessitates
transparency and fairness. The infectiousness of honesty cannot be
underestimated as the character of the leader shapes the demeanour of
the followership in many instances. Nigeria, under the Muritala
Muhammad regime (albeit a military dictatorship) at the initial stages
of the administration was a study in this requirement and part of the
reasons for the short-lived span of this regime was the wavering of the
leadership from the path of honesty and trust in the people.
Clearly, it may be asked why not follow Nicolo Machiaveli?s prince who
need not be good but needs only appear to be good. The immediate retort
to this is the Marley view that ?you can fool the people some time, but
you cannot fool the people all the time?.
In fact, the degree of cynicism that pervades the Afro-Caribbean
consciousness is a consequence of the Anasism of the leadership. In
consequence, it is clear that if we cannot trust the leader, how can we
follow the words emanating from leadership?
Elsewhere I had analysed the apathy and the tendencies toward
anarchism of large segments of the populations of Africa and Caribbean
polities as by products of an elite labouring under the lethargic jet
lag of colonialism and slavery. On this occasion it is merely worth
noting that African and Caribbean polities have not accepted their own
part of the blame. They still look for scapegoats for their failures.
They are quick to point fingers at slavery and colonialism, while
forgetting that for every finger pointed the remaining four on the hand
indicates self-reference. Honesty requires that leadership accept blame
for missed opportunities, wasted resources, excesses in governmental
exploitation for self and connected parties. The first step is
repentance ? that is, willingness to confront the populace with the
truth. An acknowledgement of error, rather than the mystification of
power and the harassment of the poor into submission, is the first step
in atoning for the pernicious effects of dishonest leadership that has
pauperised the societies of Africa and the Caribbean.
We may say that the first decades of post-independence in many Africa
and Caribbean polities were periods of euphoria and hence we had not
settled down to serious business, but what explains the drift in the
subsequent years? Can we say we have no means of divining what fate
attends our failures in the community of nations? Or would we suggest
that we never had the opportunities that the Asian Tigers had (even
with the temporary collapse of their financial sectors in the mid- to
late-90s, which still left these societies better than those without
similar financial crises)? We must honestly confront our mirror images
and ask the questions the leadership must face.
c) Ability to Listen Patiently and Attentively to Others (Diverse
Views), and to be Educated
It is important for leadership not to arrogate to itself omniscience.
In Yoruba society, it is said, that, ?the young is wise, and the old is
wise, is the pillar on which the ancient town of Ile-Ife was built.? In
my essay, ?Olodumare ? God in Yoruba belief and the problem of evil?
(See African Studies Quarterly, an electronic journal by University of
Florida, Gainesville, 1998), I had discussed the importance of the
weakness of Western theistic theology, theocracy and divine rulership
espoused in Judaeo-Christian tradition which arrogates to the Supreme
Being infallibility, even in the face of counterfactuals as in the
Genesis. In Yoruba theology it is not regarded as strange for
Olodumare, the Supreme Being, to consult His diviners to ensure that
things move properly in the affairs of the universe. This would serve
as a humbling lesson to humans that they cannot and should claim what
they have not, indicating that they need to encourage consultation and
respect for the wishes of the people.
What we see here is the need, therefore, for dialogue between leaders
and followers, because it is in such feedback mechanism that right can
be right and wrong righted. The consequence is loyalty and willingness
to endure difficulties together as one, rather than having leadership
preaching belt-tightening while their own rank is bulging at the
waistline and a swelling parasitic membership procuring larger and
larger cloth and shoe sizes, cars and homes and other expensive luxury
consumption, even including buying homes in Europe and having fat
accounts in various offshore banks. How would one square a situation
where at the negotiation table for the rescheduling of loans that the
representative of the poor begging country wears the most expensive
designer outfit of all at the meeting?
Part of the appeal of President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria when he
campaigned for Presidency was the fact that he was the only military
ruler in Nigeria to have ceded power voluntarily. Also he tried then to
live what he preached in form of ?austerity measures? whereby the most
expensive car was the Peugeot which all middle class Nigerians used in
the late 1970s and ?green revolution? in the form of farming which
helped many civil servants survive the harshness of the austerity
measures and which profession he turned to after retiring from the
army. His campaign for eschewing exhibitionist consumption patterns
resonated with the people as the balance of trade and payment situation
of the country reflected a need for austerity and his government was
willing to make the sacrifices they were calling on the people to make
? not empty calls.
d) Dedication to the Cause of the Society and Transparency
Even situated as the Caribbean countries are, there is no escaping the
fate of weaklings and failures as the fragility of Caribbean economies
are daily emphasized by threats from international conglomerates such
as Chiquita. While Darwinism may be discredited as explanations of the
evolution of the species, we must honestly confront that as a truth in
Global economics. The strong simply gobbles up the weak and the weak
simply loses identity ? even for distant Islands, this must not be
forgotten.
Consequently, it is immediately urgent to understand that leadership
needs transparent dedication to the cause of society. This is why in
civilized societies one cannot indicate that there are no distinctions
between private and public lives of leaders. The ?official secrets act?
in many third world countries are outdated, counterproductive and
antithetical to the interest of the people whose interest is being
protected.
In Lieu of A Conclusion
As I said earlier, this piece is a part of a bigger project on the
philosophical analysis of Africa, Caribbean and Diaspora polities. What
is presented here is but the preface. But it is hoped that many able
minds would join the debate and provide fertility ingredients for the
discourse in the minds of the fringe academia that Africa, Caribbean
and Diaspora intellectuals constitute. I will not be able to end the
introduction to a concept that I believe has been neglected by those
who need the discussion most without bringing in the words of Garvey.
He said,
There comes a time in the life of everyone, as well as of races when
we settle down to look ahead and see what is before us. The Negro,
making up his mind to look ahead, has before him a very dark and gloomy
future, brought about by his own neglect at a time when the opportunity
presented itself for him to engage himself in the undertakings of world
re-organization (115).
While the re-organization that Garvey intended was at the United
Nations level in the aftermath of World War II, our interest is even
more modest now. Our interest is in the re-organization of our polities
in line with the demands of fairness, justice, equity, love,
dedication, and values that we can be proud to be remembered for by
posterity.
Our situation in the various African, Caribbean and Diaspora
constituencies call for drastic measures. In the multi-ethnic, multi-
linguistic and multi-cultural societies like Nigeria, for us to
continue as if we are really doing well is no more than grand self-
deception. In the Jamaican situation, the dispossessed and the economic
and social outcasts are outside of the system and constitute a big
challenge to leadership. This creates a false pluralism not different
from what obtains in multi-ethnic or multi-cultural societies. While it
is true that those who benefit from a system, either because they
belong to the ruling majority (minority) or partisans in power, always
find it difficult to understand the resentment of the minority for the
domination they suffer, just as the powerful has always found it
incomprehensible why the weak is suspicious of their good intentions of
domination. We must bear in mind that the incentives for embracing non-
accountable rulership is overpowering in young democracies. These
incentives make it difficult for our polities to get rid of the disease
of electoral malpractices.
No group in a pluralistic society voluntarily accepts the leadership
by another group. It is clear that for acceptance to occur there has to
be transparency in the allocation of power and in the allocation of
resources. Unless a means is found for judicious power sharing, there
will always be rancour. This is where the matter of mettle of
leadership comes in, to transform the contentious issues to areas for
consensus and unification of destinies.
It is clear that democracy as bequeathed to the various African,
Caribbean and Diaspora polities have not been very successful. There
are two interpretations of democracy that we may bear in mind here.
First, we understand democracy (not ?dem-all-crazy?, as Fela Anikulapo
Kuti said) as meaning that all who are affected by a decision should
have a chance to participate in making that decision, either directly
or through their representatives, or two, simply allowing the will of
the majority to prevail. While in a homogenous society the latter may
recommend itself, in a multi-ethnic society it would seem that the
first would be more likely to be just to the interest of all concerned,
while at the same time allaying the fears of domination that some
segments of the society may have.
Our understanding of leadership would indicate that we endorse, as the
fountainhead, as historical responsibility and as a temporary stopping
place for this discussion, the views expressed by Garvey. We would be
able to defend this in philosophical and sociological (and indeed
historical) terms, as the soundness of the reasoning originating it
would be borne out by the good consequences or results of such
commitment. He said:
Yet the thing that lives in history, the thing that goes to the credit
of man, is not how much wealth he has piled up for himself; is not how
comfortable he has lived, but how good he has done for the rest of
humanity. The present world generally worship power, influence and
wealth. It is very easy to find sycophants who will fawn before such,
and who will pay unreasonable compliments; but those who encourage and
help the poor are few, and when they do engage themselves in such
labour there is nothing else transient for them but condemnation (118).
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*I want to thank the Centre for Caribbean Studies, Hunter College,
City University of New York, New York, USA, for the generous Caribbean
Exchange Scholarship, in May ? June, 2002, which made further research
on this project possible. I also want to thank the scholars at the
Centre for their encouraging, constructive and critical comments at the
presentation of the draft paper at Caribbean Exchange Scholar Seminar,
June 4, 2002. I thank the participants at the Caribbean Culture 2
Conference, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, Barbados,
2001, for critical comments on an earlier effort at reflecting on the
issues raised in this essay. And I also thank the Department of
Theology and Religious Studies, University of Botswana, Gaborone,
Botswana for giving me the benefit of their facilities as a Visiting
Scholar on Sabbatical Leave, to further develop these ideas in the
academic session 2002-2003 and for the comments of colleagues in the
Department on the final draft. I hope this final product meets some of
their criticisms and further develops the issues we explored together.
Any errors that may remain in the essay are entirely mine.
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