With antecedents, a leader can master not only his absence but also his silence. This was the case when President Muhammadu Buharu was sworn in as the 15th Head of State of Nigeria. There was so much talk about his Body Language that abhors corruption and indiscipline. The memory of his War Against Indiscipline(WAI) during his military regime in the early 1980s made many, especially civil servants, rethink their ways.

This piece is motivated by Prof Prof Ndubuisi Ekekwe‘s Master Your Absence: how companies can become category kings. Writing from my personal experience on leadership, I share with you how a leader can master his absence and silence in becoming a category king in the art of leadership. The choice of subject matter is borne out of our major bane as a country and continent as a whole. Despite the black race starting well on leadership in the story of the Tower of Babel, we lost it.

“Man know thyself.”—Socrates

The simple meaning of this statement is that knowledge of oneself leads to a possible mastering of self and a development of self for the benefit of self, others, and the society at large. I have introspected and discovered that one of my gifts is leadership. Each person alive today has his own unique gifts and these gifts must be worked on to increase their value. Just like gold ore to pure gold. This makes me always lookout for opportunities to improve my leadership capacity knowing that there is a great demand for it in Nigeria.

My first experience of mastering my absence was during my National Youth Service year in 2014/2015 in Taraba State. The then LI (God rest his soul) , that is, Local Government Inspector (an NYSC official in charge of corps members in a local government) announced me as the next CLO, that is, Corps Liaison Officer (a corps member responsible for the welfare of his colleagues in the local government). I was surprised when one of my colleagues in my PPA (Place of Primary Assignment) told me that sometime ago a meeting was held to decide who the next Principal Corps Member, and CLO would be. In attendance were selected corps members, school principals, and the LI. They decided that ” ‘Corper Gani’ is bigger than a principal corps member, only the CLO is befitting for him.” A principal corps member is the person in charge of other corps members in the most populated school. I was humbled hearing his confession.

But how did this unanimous decision favoured me as the next CLO? My antecedents! You see, since I set my feet in Kurmi LGA, I hit the ground running. There were fundamental social dysfunctions especially with the youths. From changing the monthly CDS (Community Development Service) of monthly sanitation (an exercise with zero social impact) to weekly career guidance seminars for senior secondary school students from school to school, Ebola Seminar, free O Level tutorials anchored by corps members, provision of classroom amenities, in all classes in my PPA, proper selection and training of school prefects, etc. I built trust and demonstrated competence as a leader through influence and without my knowledge and in my absence, I was elevated as primus inter pares.

Here is another tale of how I mastered my silence and got an opportunity to serve. This happened in the Month of October, 2019. It was the third day of our training as new employees. We were twenty-three (23) trainees. One of the facilitators said it was time to choose the class governor. “If you have the ability and want to be the class governor, put up your hand”, he said. Immediately, a hand in the front seat was up and instead of herself she recommended me. The coordinator was surprised and asked, “Why didn’t you nominate yourself?” He has started it already, she answered. Then he asked the class who else is interested, but they all chorused, “We want Gani!”

That moment made goosebumps rupture all over my body. Yes, I wanted the role and was tempted to raise my hand but a voice within said, “If these folks appreciate what you have done, they will choose you.”

I planned to make this concise, I am sorry it’s long. I will conclude in the next two paragraphs. The diagram below depicts how a leader can become a category king in the art of leadership. The curve is positively sloped rising from left to right. The vertical axis measures a leader’s influence as he accumulates more capability on the horizontal axis. Leaders at the base of the curve, termed downstream, are title and privileges conscious while those at the upstream are people and solution conscious. To progress on this curve, a leader must nurture his abilities first by acquiring knowledge and skills and then seek or  create the opportunities to influence others towards an altruistic goal.

To be a category king leader, one must start as a leader without titles before men will seek you and give you a title. A leader limits his potential when he seeks and holds on to titles. For example, Tony Elumelu as the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of the United Bank for Africa had a limited leadership influence. He only thrived in the banking sector. Thanks to Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, the then Central Bank of Nigeria Governor who gave him wings by putting a limit to the tenure of commercial banks chiefs. Now Tony Elumelu through the Tony Elumelu Entrepreneurial Fund, TEEP, is now adjudged a global leader.

Another category king leader worth mentioning is Prof Ndubuisi Ekekwe who recently proved this principle by being honored as one of the 20 Best Futurist Keynote Speakers 2019 by TAFFD USA.

Leadership is influence, practical love for the people, passion and competence in your field of endeavor. There are lots of problems in Nigeria that will make anyone a celebrity. So, do you want to be a senator, governor, or president? Start by solving your neighborhood problems and when the time comes, the people will choose you. However, you don’t become a practical leader on social media, you can get the know-how, knowledge and inspiration from, say, LinkedIn but you must go out and work.

Don’t seek titles, seek courage!

Imagine how beautiful Nigeria would be if everyone works and earns his words before he can speak the way a worker earns before spending. And immediately we speak, we get the reward whether good or bad. Put differently, what if speech is not a natural ability and free, but something bought in the market according to our different purchasing power?

Would we waste it on curses and insults? Would we convert it to hate speech? Would we use it to blaspheme? Would we use it for gossip? Would we use it for destructive criticism? No! We will speak only when necessary and after a long reflection on the effects.

However, the reality is that, speech is a free gift and an inalienable right of every man. It is the most significant creative (and destructive too) force in the world since creation. No one can deny that spoken and written words have power. Things happen when certain words are either spoken or written. Both curses and blessings take effect when pronounced either immediately or later. By this, it is apparent that there are always two opposing forces, negative and positive, keen to bring to reality spoken words.

I believe you reading this can remember some events of how your words and those of others have influenced your life. I will share with you two of my own before I address how we have destroyed Nigeria with our careless words and also how we can rebuild her, for we have no other country if we set her on fire.

Back in my secondary (high) school days, I had an Economics Teacher (May his soul rest in peace) who often made mockery of his aged mother in-law in his classes just to amuse us and win our affection. He would mimic how she talks, walks, and eats. Then he would say he didn’t want to live that long and look stupid. I was in my second year in the university when I heard of his sudden death at the age of 50. I was not moved because his words became his reality.

My second experience of the power of words is this. One morning I called the office and reported sick. It was a lie because I wanted that day work free to attend to a personal concern. My boss and my colleagues all called to wish me well. I acted so sick that I was awed by my pretense. Despite my instantaneous penitence, before noon of the same day, the exact ailment I lied about afflicted me. It was so terrible and lasted for three weeks. I suffered in silence going to work every day.

Back to my purpose for writing. The youths are said to be the leaders of tomorrow, but when the youths fail to understand that tomorrow is a function of their spoken words, they make nonsense the words of the elders. Four years ago, two of my colleagues came to meet me aside just after we had the morning devotion before work started. They said I was funny and naive. Why do I always pray for Nigeria every time I am asked to pray, they quizzed me. “How can you be praying for a useless country? A country that will soon divide. A country that has no future for the youths. A country with selfish leaders. A country led by c*ws…?” This, unfortunately, is the mindset of many Nigerian youths.

My response was, “Your parents met themselves and got married in this country. You were born and bred up in this country. You work and earn a living in this country. One of you is married with children in this country, and you also are planning and living out your destiny in this country. If your ancestors had cursed this land the way you are cursing it for your children, what would have been your fate? It is true that our leaders have failed us; must we beat them at this?.

I continued. “Our founding fathers, patriots like Herbert Macaulay, Nnamdi Azikiwe, Obafemi Awolowo, Aminu Kano, and the rest worked and bequeathed this land to us, their children. What will we leave for our children? A divided country on fault lines? Would our children say,”There Was a Country?”

In summary, my fellow compatriots, have we not doubted our unity and cursed our future enough? How long should our words be our swords? Where has it led us to? Is a garden not beautiful, nature not abundant, and the world not unique by diversity? It is said that only fools keep doing (or say) the same thing and expect different results. Let us be wise and start rebuilding Nigeria today with choice words and actions.

I love you as you are.

God bless Nigeria!

In 2018, the World Poverty Clock estimated that about 90.8 million Nigerians live below the poverty level. That report earned Nigeria the title, “The Poverty Capital of the World”, that didn’t go down well with many Nigerians. But more light has been thrown into the report of the World Poverty Clock by the World Bank through its recently released report on the poverty rate in Nigeria.

The World Bank report, titled “Advancing Social Protection in a Dynamic Nigeria”, was based on a research conducted in Nigeria from 2011 to 2016, but it was published on 28th January, 2020. This report stated that there is geographical inequality in Nigeria because poverty is mostly concentrated in the North and in rural areas.

The reports states, “Nigeria experiences high inequality along geographical lines, with poverty mostly concentrated in the North and in rural areas.” To buttress its point, this report expresses that, “poverty in the northern region of the country has been increasing, especially in the North-West zone. Almost half of all the poor lived in the North-West and the North accounts for 87% of all the poor in the country in 2016.”

One couldn’t help but wonder why there should be such “inequality” in the poverty stratification in the country when one considers that northern part of the country is duly represented in every arm of government, federal allocations, endowments by natural resources and federal government employments. One thing everybody is sure of in this country is that no northern state is marginalised in any way. So the big question remains, “Why should the North-West be the poverty capital of Nigeria?”

Of course, the report said that northern Nigeria experiences a high rate of poverty, so North-West is not the only affected zone.

In its bid to identify the causes of poverty in the country, the World Bank reports placed blame on insurgency, conflicts, poor education system, poor infrastructure and social service delivery. To buttress this, the following excerpts are culled from the report:

• Insurgency and Conflict as Causes

“Disasters and conflict have displaced many Nigerians, especially in the North-East. According to estimates provided by the International Displacement Monitoring Centre, there were more than two million internally displaced persons in Nigeria on 31 December, 2018.”

• Poor Social Service Delivery as a Cause

“Social protection measures in the country are neither well-suited to respond to conflict, nor well-placed to anticipate and mitigate the risks of natural disasters caused by climate change.”

• Poor Infrastructure as a Cause

“Poverty remains high in Nigeria due to its dire social service delivery and lack of basic infrastructures.”

• Poor Education System as a Cause

“Nigeria has the highest number of out-of-school children of primary school age in the world with nine million children out of school.”

• Poor Healthcare Delivery as a Cause

“There has been little change in vaccination rates over the last 25 years and Nigeria is set to overtake India as the country with most under-five deaths in the world.”

Note that the above-mentioned factors are given as the causes of poverty in Nigeria. This means that these factors affect every part of the country. But somehow, only the northern part feels the impact the more.

There is something in the report that might truly point to the major culprit. The report states, “Regionally, the North lags far behind the South in every HUMAN CAPITAL outcome.”

It is good that the World Bank realises that despite bad governance, some people from some parts of the country have been able to develop themselves and pull out of poverty. If you ask me, I will say that this is what the Northerners are yet to embrace.

Professionalism and innovations are rare in northern Nigeria. Don’t get me wrong, we have professionals from the North but there are not many. Before, I thought that the overly relaxed attitudes of the northerners towards career pursuits and self development was a result of their religion. But then, I met Yoruba Muslims and found out that religion has nothing to do with this at all. From my experiences with some of the northerners, I think the underlying causes of this include:

A different kind of mindset.

It was in the north that I found people that believe that poverty and wealth come from predestination. The poor are content with their poverty and wouldn’t want it any other way. They don’t struggle to climb even a rung up the ladder of social mobility. To them, they are where they were meant to be. This makes me wonder if the World Bank considered these people’s way of life as they carried out this research.

Talking about mindset also brings up the issue of almajiri in the north. Unless the mindset of these people is reformed, almajiri will not stop in the nearest future.

Information Underload

This might not go down well with the Northern leaders, but they need to hear this. A lot of northerners are deprived of important and life-changing information. The World Bank report talked of Nigeria not capturing a lot of young children through vaccination, but it failed to say that vaccination is hard to administer in the North because the northerners rejected it due to misinformation and information underload.

Information underload is also the reason out-of-school children are more in the north. A lot of them do not see the need to go to school; they will rather go to Islamia schools, which is only there to uplift their spiritual lives and not their social or financial well-being. Some parents believe that regular schools teach Western education and religion, and so keep their children away from them.

Let’s be honest here, most of the people living in rural areas in northern Nigeria are ignorant. Worst is they have no one to ask. Those that are curious may end up asking the wrong people that will pass on worse information to them. By the end of the day, poverty continues to permeate deep into them.

Waiting on the Government for Everything

I think this is something the northerners need to learn from the South-Easterners and South-Westerners. Depending on the government to provide everything, including employment, is also the bane of the North. For instance, an Igbo man knows he has to develop himself, build his house, construct the road that goes into his house, supply his electricity and water, and so on. He waits for no government to give him a source of living; he has to develop himself in order to become employable in the competitive world. He has to make life comfortable and easy for him. This attitude and ideology is quite foreign to Nigerian northerners, who wait for the government to do most of the things for them.

Anyway, as I stated earlier, I don’t think the World Bank considered people’s ways of life before ascertaining which zone is the poverty capital of Nigeria (because ‘poverty’ still remains a relative term). The people that are considered poor in this report may be content with what they have. However, the northern leaders can improve the living standard of their people by working on their mindsets, giving them access to important information and eradicating insurgency.