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Leadership recruitment

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Mahmood Yakubu, INEC chairman

Many countries are undoubtedly unhappy with their leaders. The situation is perplexing to political scientists, philosophers and thinkers. Predictably questions are asked about perceived shortcomings in leadership. Have these to do with character? Have they to do with education, knowledge or capacity? Has the flaw to do with vision and wisdom? Has it to do with lack of love for all men or inability to rally the populace or carry them along for a good and uplifting cause as it arises? What are the dreams of the leader? Has he a sense of beauty and what are his thoughts about the environment?

What the world has settled for is representative democracy. Two weeks ago, this column adverted its mind to considering what was called “The leaders of tomorrow.” As the column stated, a great deal of thinking has, for centuries, gone into the issue of leadership recruitment. Philosophers have propounded theories in the course of the development of man about how he can be governed to engender peace, orderliness and development. The column did remind us that we once had the Age Rights of Kings. With time, the power of the monarch was whittled down considerably for the emergence of representative democracy by which is meant the government of the people by the people and for the people. The term representative democracy came into being in 1790s following the English Bill of Rights of 1689 coming after what was described as the Glorious Revolution of 1688. This Bill spelt out the rights and liberties of the people. Britain became a democracy in 1832. It was not until 1928 that Britain became what many saw as full-blown democracy as it opened the floodgate to all men and women from the age of 21 to vote.

But the beauty of democracy is that by and large, where the election is free and fear, it represents the collective will of the people. Political scientists have come to the position that, although it is the best of government so far designed by man and he has come to know, representative democracy does not always and necessarily guarantee a good government, what it guarantees is change. Periodic change. Once a people are fed up with an Administration it is booted out at the next election. Representative democracy affords the people opportunity to recognise that their fate is in their own hands.

With the acrimony, disputations, chaos and confusion that come with elections, in many instances with manipulations, there is concern and renewed thinking on how the process can be refined and made crisis free to reap the full benefit of the system. India is the largest democracy in the world, election period there comes with a climate of fear and trepidation, and like in Nigeria and Kenya with desperation and a climate of war drums, when baboons are told to get ready to soak in their own blood, and indeed, in some cases shooting war. As it is in India so is it in Pakistan. So also is it in Venezuela, Kenya, Nigeria, Cote D’Ivoire or Liberia. The environment that is engendered by these can be shameful indeed as it is currently being witnessed in Edo and Ondo states where so-called godfathers have thrown decorum and grace out of the window. It must worry anyone who can think a little to ask if the leadership recruitment process is as it should be; whether it accords with the Will of the Creator. How can the system throw up the right caliber of people to assemble and to govern? Although overshadowed by the emergence of rampaging Mr. COVID-19, the recruitment process for leadership in the United States has begun ahead of November when presidential election and general elections will take place. There is a post circulating in the social media which puts American values against Donald Trump’s testimonial.

The score card listing his transgressions reads in part: White Supremacy; Dishonouring ‘Gold Star’ family; Cronyism; Environment sell out; Disrespecting veterans; Disrespecting women; Disrespecting Minorities; Mocking the disabled; Outsourcing jobs; Colluding with Russia; Discrediting CIA; Sell out to Big Business; Disrespecting POWs; Constant Tweeting; 2,500+ Lawsuits; Trump University scam; Five Military deferments; Three marriages; Tax Evasion; Sexism; Ignorance; Intolerance; Six Bankruptcies; Fake charities; Union Busting; Housing Discrimination; Childish feuds: Denying Science; Dishonesty; Jokes about incest and Wall Street Sell-Out.

Americans are being asked that if they want Mr. Trump and his “values” out of the White House they should signify yes. This is besides the polls that are unceasing and have regularly been putting Mr. Trump trailing behind his Democratic Party challenger, former Vice-President Joe Biden. What has been said about Mr. Trump can be said of several other leaders across the globe. All this can only go to show that man’s recruitment process cannot be as it should be, attractive as representative democracy is, as summation of a people’s will. The right leader with tolerable degree of shortcomings can be thrown up only once in a long while and even then hardly in the declining circumstances of the world today. General elections are proving increasingly incapable of giving mankind the right leaders.

As I have hinted before, leaders are not electable. They are born, not made. The will of God stipulates that the true leader should stand steps higher than the led. If the led choose their leaders, they can only elect their own kind, limited to within their own horizon, a mirror of how they stand inwardly, their strengths and weaknesses, but more of their weaknesses because these are more, cultivated from the proclivity of we human beings to choose the least line of resistance in all things. Therefore, in the wisdom of the Most High, recognizing that the earth is a school and where there are pupils, there also must be teachers and these are from higher planes than the led. They are those familiar with the lawfulness in Creation and are imbued with character, love, sense of service, selflessness, broadmindedness and compassion. They carry the tendency to demonstrate a unique application to duty.

What then is to be done in the circumstance to move forward? The problem is not in representative democracy since this makes for the excise of free will which is inalienable for the proper development of the human spirit. Besides, any suggestion of abolition of election of leaders would lead to chaos and confusion, if not war. It will be fiercely resisted. In compliance with the law of gradualism, therefore, what needs to be done is to clean up the process. If every community looks closely, they will find that their leaders are already in their midst. Every community must have experienced men and women who, without waiting to be called upon, apply themselves to addressing the problems of their communities. They sleep over the problems, turn them round in their minds, and get them solved. They serve unconditionally and selflessly, not seeking for public acknowledgement, adulation or compensation. They spend their own money even if they need to travel and brief a meeting of the community on the outcome. That was how it was in the early days. This gave way to the emergence of false leaders when to serve became competitively elective wrapped with perquisites and paraphernalia of office. The selfless leaders so identified would be sent to the state’s House of Assembly or to the National Assembly as the case may be. They would be paid only sitting allowance.

In the House of Assembly, they will only choose one among themselves to lead them. With the right attention, they would sense who their leader is without lobbying and voting. Everyone radiates what he carries deep within him which is what defines him. With attention it would be seen unmistakably that no one can cover a star with his hand. The arrangement would be presupposed and on the recognition that an over-centralized administration in a plural society with diverse natural tendencies is an abnormality. That country will not know stability except at gunpoint but with the concomitant danger that once the force is relaxed, as it must at a certain point, the union would fall apart. The need for devolution of powers in such a country becomes unassailable. People, according to the Creation Laws, are expected to govern themselves and develop at their own pace and in their own light. Real and beneficial governance must correspondingly then be at the local and state government levels.

In the Millennium, the prophesied 1,000 years of peace and tranquility on earth, only the Will of God will govern all lands and the free will of man that has been so wantonly misused for ages, will be suspended. Then there will be no false leaders anywhere in the world, but only those appointed from Above. Anyone familiar with Creation Knowledge and lawfulness that governs it would know that the afflictions sweeping through the world today are trumpets of judgment that will overtake all lands following which the Millennium will be ushered in. The trumpets are a warning that we had better begin to adjust as appropriate and rehearse how we would live in that Kingdom of God we can see is drawing near by the day!

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