PROBLEMS AFFECTING THE PEOPLE OF NORTHERN NIGERIA PAGE 4

PROBLEMS AFFECTING THE PEOPLE OF NORTHERN NIGERIA

(PART4 GENERATIONAL AND TECHNOLOGICAL
DIMENSIONS OF NORTHERN LEADERSHIP
DEFICIT)

             Written by: Suleiman A Gamawa


It is becoming a clear to notice that
Nigeria is a country with vast potentials which have remained unrealized due to socio-political and economic challenges of which dearth or scarcity of transformational leadership is at the heart of all. Again, it is common knowledge that this leadership deficit is more severe in northern Nigeria relative to other parts of the country.
Why? I will tell you why;

In northern Nigeria A disturbing overlooked dimension of this leadership conundrum or question however, is that leaders who ought to be responsible for identifying the problems and finding solutions seems to have little understanding of what these problems are, they prefer to ignore them or both, and hence have little or no solutions to them. The leaders are also becoming progressively disconnected from the ordinary people and their concerns. And still people with death heart follow them and they treat them just like a slaves.

The Problem is Divided into Five (5) :

1. MISPLACED PRIORITIES

2. CRITICAL PROBLEMS REQUIRING URGENT
SOLUTIONS

3. THE DISCONNECT

4. GENERATIONAL AND TECHNOLOGICAL
DIMENSIONS OF NORTHERN LEADERSHIP
DEFICIT

5. GOING FORWARD





4. GENERATIONAL AND TECHNOLOGICAL
    DIMENSIONS OF NORTHERN LEADERSHIP
                         DEFICIT

It is worth noting that leadership deficit is not unique to the North as it is a general Nigerian problem, and arguably a global phenomenon. The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, writing in June 2012 identifies two components of the global leadership deficit prevalent in many
countries -- generational and technological.
When this is applied to the situation in northern Nigeria, it becomes apparent that the disconnect between our leaders and the rest of us has much to do with the little generational change amongst those responsible for aggregating and articulating the North’s aspirations, with mostly
the same people who have been in the thick of things since some of us were in diapers, whom we’ve read about in social studies textbooks in primary and secondary school, still dexterously recycling themselves continuously back in power – as governors, ministers, legislators, permanent secretaries, board members of parastatals – still calling the shots today.
The incredibly persistent longevity of many die-hard power-brokers in northern Nigeria has ensured that few neophytes have been
genuinely groomed as successors. This situation of course is connected to the technological dimension of this leadership deficit which beyond the use of modern technology in governance, refers to the stale, archaic and retrogressive approach to leadership as a consequence of this generational gap, with little input of fresh ideas and approaches to governance. Therefore, the same top-down, gerontology and quasi-feudal approaches to leadership of decades past is very much the norm in the North Nigeria today, increasingly incapable of addressing present-day 21st century
challenges. In fact, a former Head of State of
northern extraction (in)famously remarked that Nigerian youths are not ready for leadership. Looking at northern Nigeria through the prism of generational and technological dimensions of leadership deficit put forward by Friedman enables us to understand the disconnect between what our leaders and elders regard as the North’s aspirations and what the rest of us really think are our aspirations, that they seem
not to realize this gap exists, that the
communication gap is widening and that it
potentially has grave implications. Now the danger is that as the North’s problems
and aspirations keep being misdiagnosed,
ignored and misunderstood by our leaders, with wrong solutions prescribed to non-issues, our problems continue intensifying rapidly, entrapping us further into the cavernous stranglehold of poverty, underdevelopment, political instability and conflict while other parts of the country forge ahead. According to a May 2012 report (PDF) by the United
Kingdom's Department for International
Development (DFID), 7 out of 10 young women aged 20-29 in North-West Nigeria are unable to read or write, compared to just about 1 out of 10 young women in the South-East; while maternal mortality rate in the North-East is 1,549 deaths per 100,000 women, three times above the national average of 549 deaths. As stale and musty ideas that pervade the northern atmosphere continue choking the very life out of a long comatose region with approaches that reinforce rather than address the glaring contradictions and atrocious inequality in the North, it is no wonder the
incident of violent crime – something alien to the North jut a decade ago – is now a daily occurrence as the spate of drive-by shootings and assassinations have increased
exponentially. As our leaders and elders have chosen to focus on non-issues, pointing the blame outwards rather than looking inwards, conducting sincere assessments and proposing solutions, even the
narrative about northern Nigeria outside the
country is changing. I have come across many references to northern Nigeria on international websites and blogs as the “poor” “backward” or “violent Islamist North”, while Google image searches of our major northern cities such as Kaduna or Kano routinely produce stomach-churning images of mangled corpses of bomb blast victims, burnt vehicles, or arrested suspects of one vicious crime or the other. We need to change they way we think and act in order to get out of this dangerous ninjas attacks.


             Article By: Suleiman Gamawa


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