Failed Leadership

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It's been 65 years since Nigeria became a sovereign state, and in all these years we've only rotated the same leaders from the old.

In fact, currently there have been rumors that the former governor of my state, who was a senator for over a decade before he became a governor for 8 years, is currently planning on returning to the senate.

I might not be quite certain what goes on in the political affairs of other African countries, but I'm guessing it's the same fate or probably something similar.

The thing is, if ever we have a new face rising to the position of leadership, they are just puppets in the hands of the old politicians.

Thus, given our political predicaments, it becomes certain that the problem isn’t our leadership style but the leaders.

Basically, if we are to ditch democracy for an autocratic style of leadership, chances are the people taking over the autocratic government becomes the same democratic leader or their stooge who has failed us in democracy.

Looking at my country, Nigeria, we might be operating a democratic government, but in reality what we are experiencing is an autocratic style. Democracy has been so bastardized that we see abnormalities like a governor and his cabinet members being suspended by the president without following the laid-down democratic procedures in the constitution.

We also see more abnormalities, upon which, with the suspension of the office of the Rivers State governor, we have a retired military officer filling in as the head of state.

Indeed it's an out-of-place situation that left us questioning what happened to our democracy?

More questions become, if we have these elected democratic leaders taking laws into their own hands against the constitution of the country, what then happens in an autocratic style where power is absolute?

It won't be good for sure as I remembered how Nigerians suffered in the hands of the previous government. In a space of three months we had new designed Naira notes in circulation and the old ones were considered obsolete.

The most painful situation during that time was that no smooth method of transitioning was put in place. Thus, a lot of businesses especially perishables suffered.

In addition to the sad experience, the supply and circulation of the newly designed currency was very poor and the people still had the old design which was considered useless in their possessions.

You know it never made sense that the directives of CBN governor superseded that of the supreme court. During that time, the supreme court ruled reversing the order of the CBN governor on the old currency design.

Unfortunately, we still saw the old designs being rejected by traders as the banks were following strictly the directices of the CBN governor on no old design deposit.

As an Economist, I doubt that there's anywhere in the world where a country's approved currency becomes invalid and rejected by the authorities. I understand that every now and then a currency is redesigned but not at the detriment of the masses.

Indeed, our democractic leaders have failed to a large extent in protecting our collective interest. Nonetheless, switching to an autocratic system of government will still not help us.