Have you ever wondered why we have bad leaders in Nigeria? If you are still wondering, I’ll advise while you are at it not to look too far. Let us use the analogy of the farmer to understand the source of our problems. Good farmers select good seedlings, plant and nurture them and thereafter expect a good harvest. The political field should in several aspects be like farming in that people are selected, invested upon to become leaders so as to yield good output or what our people describe as ‘good dividends of democracy’. Sadly, what obtains in the Nigerian political arena is at variance with the acclaimed farming practice. What we have is a situation in which bad seedlings are selected, planted, nurtured and expected to yield good harvest. Isn’t it insanity to add zero to zero and expect to get ten?

Like all organizations, the political system is built like a pyramid. The base of the political pyramid is the ward where every would-be leader is expected to emerge. At this base level, all stakeholders are expected to have a say in the emergence of local leaders. In reality, leadership at the ward level is at the whims and caprices of the local godfather who selects individuals that they can control and present them as leaders. One would expect that in doing that people with some measure of leadership attributes would be favored, but nay! In most cases, the godfathers look for the most vulnerable persons. They prefer those without good education or any means of livelihood. They prefer people lacking capacity for independent thinking. Yet it is these ward officials who sit in judgment as delegates to select party candidates for elections into State and National Assembly positions. What this means is that it is only the candidates presented by the wards that ‘you’ get to chose from. If they present nonentities, you would have no option than to vote for the best out of the nonentities they present. When you look at this from the perspective of the farmer you can compare the wards to the farmers whose responsibility it is to select the seedlings to be planted. If the farmer is discerning enough to select good seedlings the farm would produce good crops and if he selects bad seedlings the outcome would most probably be rotten harvest. Are you still wondering why we are where we are?

I am always amused when I hear elites propose elitist solutions to the shallow depth of leadership materials among our political elites. I laugh because like most things Nigerian, we borrow solutions from abroad without testing whether they are adaptable to the Nigerian environment. It is the reason why most members of the middle class are ‘not on ground’. For the uninitiated, ‘being on ground’ is the most important attribute of a good politician in Nigeria. So when a political player is described as not ‘being on ground’ it is an insinuation that his link to the Wards or the ‘grass root’ (electorates) is suspect. Any serious political player must have a well-entrenched taproot at the grass root level or alternatively have a godfather whose taproot is as deep as that of an Iroko tree.

So what does it take to be on ground?

The first requirement is accessibility to the leadership and stakeholders in your Ward. For instance, if you live in Banana Island in Lagos and your ‘Ward’ includes Obalende and Ijeh, you would be expected to know the leaders of the Ward and all other stakeholders and be directly available to solve their problems when you are approached. It does not matter if you were approached in the middle of the night or whilst you are facing a personal crisis.  In addition, it is expected that the doors to your home would always be open to welcome unscheduled visits from stakeholders. In the hinterland of Nigeria, being on ground is deeper. You are expected to make occasional visits to beer parlors, palm wine drinking joints and ‘mama put’ kiosks to patronize your constituents. Your phone should also be on the ready 24/7 to answer calls from ‘leaders’, political associates, acquaintances and distressed members of your community. You are expected to be patient, adept at listening to even the craziest of gossips and be generous to fund the escapades of your leaders and stakeholders. Mind you at this level every man with a vote is a leader. If you cannot do any of these, then you are not prepared to ‘be on ground’ hence your only other access to political growth would be to adopt a godfather who is on ground.

The second requirement is a deep pocket. For every aspiring politician who has not grown through the ranks, the shortest route to the grass root is through the depth of the pocket. Much as this route is laced with thorns, as the grass root generals are adept at fleecing the unwise deep pocket, it offers a short cut to the grass root for persons whose social connection to their wards is low. With a deep pocket, you can hire several supporters and fund them to make visitations to ‘tombo joints’ to sing praises of your generosity and spend your way up the popularity ladder. Uncanny as it may sound most political decisions at the grass root level are taken at ‘local pubs’.

The last requirement is spiritual smartness. Politics is not for the faint hearted. More so at the grass root level. Every supported or potential supporter has a spiritual master, marabout or pastor that requires one patronage or the other. The spiritual game is a political field of its own requiring tack and wisdom. It is equally an avenue to fleece the uninitiated. If your faith in God is shallow you would be mince meat for the gods. Yet when you observe that those who offer you supposedly potent spiritual support don’t seem to have faired well in the political field despite their avowed access to the spiritual realm, you still have to thread carefully lest you offend the gods of the grass root. The grass root is not a place to display your piety, but rather a place to show tact and safely maneuver through the spiritual minefield.

The question that arises from the foregoing is the feasibility of winning an election in Nigeria without being grass rooted. In my view it is possible… But only by adopting the option of having a godfather. That route took Obiano and Emmanuel to the State Houses in Awka and Uyo. It took Fashola to Alausa and El Rufai to the Arewa House in Kaduna. But that option is at the mercy of individuals whose goals may not be in tandem with the general good of the people, hence it cannot be guaranteed to spring up good leaders.

So what option is open to us in our quest for good governance?  I have only one answer. Involvement!

At the onset of the present political dispensation in 1998, people who had good jobs or promising businesses stayed away from politics because of the experiences of the past.  Hence the early movers were the unemployed, artisans and the old political dogs. These persons took over the reign of governance in 1999 and have enjoyed a first mover advantage. To protect their advantage the early movers have adopted several strategies such as violence, spiritual mumbo jumbo and fear to discourage those with superior intelligence from getting involved in politics. It is simple logic. Keep those who can displace them away and continue to promote those who can be manipulated. Sadly, this protectionist tendency created a dearth of intelligent men at several levels of politics, the outcome of which is the quality of governance that we have been getting across all tiers of government over the past eighteen years.

So shall we fold our hands and do nothing hoping that God will make things better? Can we really afford to stay away from politics? All you need for an answer is to look at your life and look at the world around you? Can your life be better? Can the world around you be made better? Do you have a desire to leave a better country for your children than the one you lived in? If your answers to all these questions are yes’, then you have no option than to get involved in politics. Take a cue from America. Almost all Americans belong to one political party or the other. Even the independent voters cast votes during elections. So why do you assume that voting in an election is beneath you? If you would take a deeper interest in the politics around you rather than mere social media umbrages, you will discover that most of the leaders at the grass root are within your economic cycle of influence… your cousins, nephews, drivers, gardeners, laborers and chefs, the unemployed neighbor who washes your car, your security guard and in some cases, the lesson teacher for your wards. Whilst you are seating in your high horses bellyaching over the inefficiency of the political class, these dependents of yours have taken up important positions in deciding your future. Perhaps because you are too big to fraternize with them, you are unaware that they are your leaders. You are too busy abusing Tinubu and Saraki to note that you have ceded leadership to your domestic servants.

So what does involvement entail? An end to lip service and armchair activism! It is no longer enough to register to vote at a general election. Involvement requires that you participate in the political processes that lead to the selection of the people presented as candidates at general elections. You must participate in selecting those whose actions affect the course of your wellbeing and businesses. The starting point is to register as members of a political party. I don’t mean any of those brief case political parties but the ones with realistic chances of winning elections. Change is not going to happen if we keep deceiving ourselves nursing hope that Angels would fall from heaven to change our country. Change would happen when we get involved by influencing the internal dynamics of the political parties and by educating people within our cycle of influence to take the right decisions. The time to get involved is now.