ACCORDING to a renowned American book author, public speaker and leadership couch, Brian Tracy; “If you do what successful people do, you will succeed and if you don’t, you won’t.” As the search for the remedies to Nigeria’s economic woes continue, time has come for the country’s leaders to begin to take serious look at the example of nations of the world that have faced similar challenges in the past.
In the 80’s, India’s economy became so bad that she would have become bankrupt if nothing was done quickly to save the situation. One of the steps taken by the country was the election of a very experienced and tested leader to take over the mantle of leadership as the country’s Prime minister. The man, P. V Narasimha Rao became the Indian head of government in 1991 when the economic growth rate of the country was about 1%. He began his tenure with the appointment of Manmohan Singh as the country’s finance minister.
Leveraging on his experience and that of his finance minister, India embarked on economic reforms that saw the country’s economy grow from 1% in 1991 to about 6% in 1996 when Rao left office. Since then, successive leaders in India have continued to follow the economic blue print developed by P.V Narasimha Rao, leading her to occupy the 4thposition amongst the largest economies of the world today ahead of countries like UK (her former colonial masters), France, Japan, Italy and Russia.
For the records, Rao served in the Andhra Pradesh legislative assembly from 1957 to 1977 and held various positions in the state government, including that of chief minister from 1971 to 1973. He became general secretary of the Congress Party in 1975, and in 1980 was elected to the Indian parliament. Thereafter, he filled some of the most important ministerial positions in the Indian cabinet, including external affairs, home affairs, defense, human resources, and health and family welfare.
Rao was elected president of the Congress Party following the assassination of party leader, Rajiv Gandhi on May 21, 1991, during India’s parliamentary elections. The Congress Party emerged from the elections as the largest single party, and Rao became prime minister. He was 70 at the time he became prime minister and with governance experience spanning over 33 years.
Apart from Chief Obafemi Awolowo whom the citizens rejected in both the presidential election of 1979 and 1983 due to his own personal errors, no politician with relevant long years of strong and verifiable economic leadership position has contested the presidency of Nigeria.
Again, the present Governor of the Central Bank of India (Reserve Bank of India), Sanjay Malhotra is a career public servant who have served the country in various departments like financial services, power, taxation and Information Technology for more than three decades. Until his new appointment, Sanjay was the Revenue Secretary in the Ministry of Finance. On the contrary, Nigeria has never appointed core Central banking professional or career financial policy expert into the position of the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN for more than four decades. Even Senator Adams Oshiomhole’s voice few years ago along this line was not heeded during the search for the present helms man of the bank.
Notwithstanding the economic libralisation policy of Rao’s administration in India, the Country equally got engaged in a deliberate attempt to involve her Diaspora population around the world in the efforts towards the Indian economic revival. The over 30 million Indians in foreign lands were encouraged through various incentives to give priorities to remittances to India with a view to accelerating investments at home and contributing to the well-being of loved ones in their fatherland. They were also encouraged to invite investors from their host countries to India. The strategy worked like magic!
On the contrary, many Diaspora Nigerians have been left to live and die with their ingenuities in their countries of residence. For example, Chatham House, UK which has become the political tourism destination for intending African leaders, especially Nigeria has a Nigerian as one of the members of the board.
He is Kano State – born Professor Aliko Ahmed, the Regional director of public Health in-charge of the whole of East England. Others too, like Phillip Emeagwali, the computer wizard, Akeem Olajuwon, a basketball maestro that dazzled the whole world with his skill at one time are not known to have had meaningful discussions with Nigeria towards bringing back their acquired skill and wealth to the country.
Interestingly, many of the nation’s political leaders’ children are currently studying or working abroad. Since governance has sort of become subject to handing and taking over by leaders and their family members, it behooves them (political leaders) to prevail on their children abroad to always work towards returning to their father land with impressive patriotic leadership and productive skills.
The present crop of politicians jostling for coalition against the present leadership of the country must purge themselves of political selfishness and focus on choosing the best qualified among them as the next president of the country. Their criteria for choosing that leader must also be known to the people. And the first of these must be the proven integrity, detribalized nature, leadership and economic management qualification of the person.
Finally, if these traits are not found among the regrouping politicians, they owe the country a responsibility to look elsewhere for such or forget the political fight against president Bola Ahmed Tinubu and his APC.
