How poor leadership has kept Nigerians in poverty
Fifty-six years ago when Nigeria became an independent nation after a century of British colonialism, the euphoria of that era symbolically suggested the birth of a new nation on the verge of greatness. The indices had pointed to a country with huge potential waiting to be harnessed. Indeed, there was every reason to hope in a nation blessed with abundant human and material resources. The intellectual power houses of that epoch of Nigeria’s political development consist of its first generation leaders, strong educational institutions and an effective civil service that had executed some of the best regional policies and programmes ever witnessed till date.
In the south west with Ibadan as its capital, Chief Obafemi Awolowo provided the leadership and vision that made the region a talking-point of development years after independence. The late politician did not have the benefit of oil which though discovered in Oloibiri in 1953 did not have commercial value. All major infrastructures were built with the agricultural resources of cocoa and other products. In the South east, Nnamdi Azikiwe, Michael Okpara, Akanu Ibiam, visionary leadership developed the eastern part of Nigeria with the resources accrued from the vast coal mines of Enugu and the oil palms in what is now Imo state which was complemented with drive of the Igbos for business and industry.
In the northern part of Nigeria the legendary tales of the now extinct groundnut pyramids in Kano and the irrigated agricultural lands that made the region the food basket of the nation evokes the nostalgia of a paradise lost. Now we can only imagine the lost opportunities in a country where the promise of greatness disappeared even before it could materialize. The brief period of Eldorado after independence had since disappeared like a candle in the wind.
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