Kogiflame
Conversations and discourses about leadership are daily events in our state. And this is because leadership is the fulcrum around which significant events in history have happened.
Leadership is defined by results, and not attributes as we presently see it today in our state.And yet, leadership is very elusive and highly complex concept that requires several levels of unravelimg to become meaningful in our state.
Despite this, it is axiomatic to see leadership as the cause that transforms reality.This implies, for instance that performance is what signals a good leader especially within the context of the state like ours.Within the context of a state and politics leadership is benchmarked for performance ratings against governance parameters.
Good governance thus becomes the verifiable and verifiable effect of a good leadership.This preliminary understanding gives us to direct at state performance in Benue state.
The focus on the state and it’s leadership and governance credentials allign well with my concern as a citizen of the state whose critical output have emanated from the attempt to understand institutional and governance reforms in ways that will enable the state make sense of it’s developmental agenda.
The concern with the Nexus between leadership and governance becomes all the more auspicious given our state preparation towards 2023 to elect new sets of leaders that will drive the state for at least the next four years.
This significant reason ties in with another fundamental one; the state ratings in the Nigerian governance indices.It is good we know that on the national level, Benue state is ranked in the 34th position out of the 36 Nigerian state, with a low score of 45.5 compared to Gombe, Lagos, Rivers, Oyo, Ekiti and Nassarawa states.
The National governance efficiency index ranks at 35 out of 36 in the states fragility index for 2022.Benue state today stands near the top of fragility index at number 34 with a score of 97% (with a mere change of 0.8 from 2022).
BENUE: WHERE ARE THE LEADERS.
This is a very important question we should be asking as citizens of the state as we approach the 2023 general elections in the state.Where have the leaders of the state gone?.
This is a fundamental question that should resonate with Benue people because of our leaders dismal performances..Given the many years since the creation of the state, we have a reason to query about what has happened to the state and it’s leadership which has not translated into governance and developmental progress.This questions enables us to generate some posers with the state political context in mind.
Why has governance performances been difficult for Benue state leaders?.
*Is it really the case that Benue state is unable to produce credible leaders with competence and capacities to make a unique difference to the frame of governance,especially given some outlier performance in some states of of the country?.
*Or could it be that Benue leaders have been held up to a leadership standard in national competitive governance indices,that is too strict and unrealistic given the circumstances that defines our politics in the state?.
The implication of this questions is simple.How do we begin to understand the nature of leadership in our state that will enable us appreciate the concept of misgovernance and how to outline a way out?.In saying leadership is at the core of our state’s, institutional and developmental predicaments, we need to articulate a dynamic and framework of leadership that has the capacity to undermines the state’s myraids of challenges.
In thinking about the dynamics of leading and leadership,we must consider it a dependant variable that cannot be excluded from it’s governance environment.As a dependant variable,therefore,it is expected that leadership will have a transformational element that will lead to the alteration of the environment which it governs.
That element benchmarks global best practices to outline a vision of economic and Infrastructural developments that will improve the quality of life of the citizens of the state.
In thinking about the leaderships in Benue state this way, and about the possibility of transforming her governance and developmental agenda,it becomes logical to peer review our state with other states in the country-and the issue is simple-what is it about this states that connects leadership with transformational capacity?.
Benue state as it is presently carries a developmental burden complicated by a terrible mix of resource curse, misgovernance, prebendalism, economic profligacy, the rentier culture, insecurity, lawlessness, and the bad politics which our elites play with everything touching on our state’s progress.
No wonder then that there is a serious discussion on whether the state is a failing or an outrightly failing state.What a shame?.
Within the rubric of failing or failed state, the template that must distinguish leadership of the state is the transformation of the state into a developmental one.And that demands that leadership must urgently be hitched to a change management that serves as the catalyst for redirecting the developmental process on a path that transforms the lives of the Benue people.
This developmental process we must note,has hitherto been characterised by high-sounding policy initiatives, programmes, visions,and strategies which today have become paper tigers lacking in any tangible implementation outcomes. When this visions and strategies have produced any outcome at all, this have been insufficient to generate the kind of transformation that are noticeable in the developmental agenda of the state.
The development challenges is therefore that of closing the gap between sound policy initiatives and development plans and the democratic dividends they are supposed to yeild in ways that makes democratic good governance a tangible benefit for Benue people.
Putting the development process this way clarifies the urgent responsibility of a transformational leadership.We in the state should be happy to vote Professor Bern Angwe and this is because he has the capacity among the present set of individual just long to be voted in as the next governor of the state to interject between the development and the democratic governance with the needed change management dynamics that enables democratic governance yeild visible and efficient service delivery and Infrastructural development to the state.
Wishing us all a happy Christmas and New year celebrations with the electoral victory of Professor Bern Angwe as first among the happy returns we pray for as a people in the new year
Simon Obochi
Sec NNPP
Oturkpo LGA
