JOURNAL ON AFRICAN PHILOSOPHY ISSN: 1533-1067 Issue 2 (2003)

John Ayotunde Isola Bewaji

Abstract:

This essay is aimed at provoking dialogue on the often neglected aspect of the African and Diaspora academics’ philosophical reflective obligation to each other, to their contemporary societies and to posterity - leadership. I question the notion of “leadership” as is prevalent in the discourse of contemporary developing societies of Africa and its Diaspora, whereby anyone who assumes power or attains prominence is described as “leader”. I argue that, especially in these societies, there is a disconnection between the governed population and the “leadership”, which is a consequence of a dysfunctional leadership metaphysic, epistemology and psychology. I prefer to delineate “leadership” from “rulership”, to separate de facto Africa and Diaspora realities from de jure (Cf. Burns 1978: 2). This is because “leadership”, as I understand the concept, is a normative concept to which “rulership” is not necessarily a synonym. Thus, Western media and their satellite appendages’ Africa and Diaspora media references to “leaders” is often uninformed, at the most charitable, and mischievous, in plain language.

I propose to do three things in this essay: first, to highlight the “leadership” issue as a problem in Africa, Caribbean and Diaspora polities; second, to dilate on the different origins, causes, effects and implications of the problem in these societies, and third, to indicate why I think a philosophical approach to the analysis of the problem will help find solutions to the problem, especially by indicating what criteria will have to be met for the development of an adequate Third World sensitive theory of leadership.

Introduction – Theorizing Leadership

A philosophically robust concept map of “leadership” is critical to understanding the socio-economic, political and technological challenges faced by African, Caribbean and Diaspora polities. I have been interested in determining the extent to which, for example, the type of “leadership” that a society has, is responsible for the type of society that arises and is developed; two, in investigating why has “leadership” not been a philosophically interesting concept to African and Diaspora academia, whereas sex, death, gender, happiness, life after death, punishment, trust, culture, justice, identity, community, war, peace, meaning, truth, science, art, mind, belief, knowledge, evil, God, existence, globalization, etc., have all been considered fundamental philosophical issues deserving of critical and analytical discourse; three, in determining why we require references from former teachers, employment supervisors, church leaders and even sureties for employment to positions of responsibility and management while we do not conduct background checks, examine school records or ask for recommendations from people foisting themselves on third world societies as “leaders”; and four, in inquiring why do Western societies tolerate so-called (inept, morally bankrupt, visionless and even despicable predatory parasites as) “leaders” for other societies (especially African and Diaspora societies) which they will not, at least openly, tolerate for themselves.

The most important understanding of philosophy that I favor is one that regards the discipline and practice not as an arcane, rarefied, pedantic and irrelevant speculations of idle white middle/leisure class males but as one which reflects and is a reflection on human efforts to understand themselves, their environment as determinants of their cognitions, aspirations and limitations. Consequently, I delved into intrinsically contemporary philosophical texts to see if there would be illuminations on the concept from which dialogue on the matter may commence. I was very disappointed that there was no direct philosophy text that deemed “leadership” fundamental enough to give it space and critique. Discourses on leadership in philosophical circles in the West are so meager and far in between to be helpful. Apart from Plato’s Republic, St. Augustine’s The City of God, Nicolo Machiavelli’s Prince, discussions of virtues in society have been either in terms of morality or escapist and evasive prescriptions of lives for the general population as in Rawls’ A Theory of Justice. The works of African and African-American (including Caribbean and Caribbean Diaspora) intellectuals and statesmen like Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Du Bois, Marcus Mosiah Garvey, Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere and Obafemi Awolowo, to mention a few, have not attracted mainstream commentary and the intellectual engagement they deserve in African and Diaspora academia. But I have found Garvey and Essien-Udom (eds.) More philosophy and opinions of Marcus Garvey (1977) very interesting, though lacking in the type of exercise that philosophers call rigor of critique and analysis.

In the light of the above, I turned to sociology, psychology, social psychology, organizational behaviour, and political science, to see what I could glean that would be philosophically interesting on leadership. I found psychology, social psychology and organizational behaviour had very interesting entries on “leadership”, but, as to be expected, these entries were of the genre of descriptive discourse. In political science one finds discussions of leadership, but these discussions are not any more analytically or critically rigorous than in other social sciences. The philosophical issues have to be distilled and ferreted out of the maze of data provided. This is not an easy challenge, but it is not a challenge that should be shied from.

In this essay I do not intend to encroach on the disciplinary boundaries in psychology or social psychology or the applied areas of both, organizational behaviour. Even if this were to inadvertently occur, it will be because I wish to follow through on Charles W. Mills’ perceptive questioning of the rigidity of disciplinary boundaries foisted on subsequent generations out of an inexplicable fiat of exigencies of intellectual interest, existential circumstances and attendance to curiosities of epochs. He says, concerning the proper concerns of philosophy vis a vis boundaries of discourse, that,

In many cases this directing of attention will be perfectly reasonable, indicating the existence of genuine disciplinary boundaries. But sometimes what purport to be objective definitions of appropriate limits of the world of philosophical inquiry and authoritative pronouncements about what is conceptually interesting in that world have a more questionable provenance. Sometimes they arise out of specific life-world and local interests of particular populations. Thus the seemingly universal view from nowhere may well be a view from somewhere; the magisterial voice from the heavens turns out to be broadcast from earth. And sometimes it is only through the emergence of alternative views and voices that one begins to appreciate how much of what had seemed genuinely universalistic was really particular. In the dazzle of their official illumination, the canonical images blind us to different possibilities (Charles W. Mills 1998: xi.).

When I say that not much philosophical discussion of “leadership” has been undertaken, I do not mean that persons may not have so recognized the need. One clear effort was made by James McGregor Burns (1978) in his very interesting and perceptive book titled Leadership. In this work the author raised germane philosophical questions about the nature, sources, appraisal and determination of leadership, but being a political scientist and being more concerned with an analysis of leadership in the United States of America experience, his discussion is vitiated by the limitations of disciplinary interests and goals of ending with a prescription from this American model to universal “leadership” understanding. Because of the insights he provides I will spend some time on his ideas. I will not spend such time on the discussions of leadership in Sociology or Psychology for that matter, because I have not found similar issues raised here, by Burns and myself, in Sociology or Psychology.

Burns begins by identifying the crisis of leadership in the American experience as being due, largely, to mediocrity or indiscipline. He says:

The crisis of leadership today is the mediocrity or irresponsibility of so many of the men and women in power, but leadership rarely rises to the full need for it. The fundamental problem underlying mediocrity is intellectual… Leadership is one of the most observed and least understood phenomena on earth (1978, 1-2).

Clearly, as Americans will say, Burns was right on the money here. And one would think that he has in mind the African, Caribbean and Diaspora leaders. He went on to look at the effort of Plato, who analyzed the expected personality of the philosopher king and the place of a) the influence of upbringing, b) social institutions, c) economic institutions and d) responses of followers, to the making of the leader. He also considered Confucian leadership philosophy, which emphasized the moral element and precept in leadership development, the idea by Plutarch that leaders should converse with philosophers, and the teaching of Christianity concerning non-violence (2). What he did not bring out is the effect of the educational prescriptions in Plato’s Republic and the Christ’s own idea that the leader must be the servant, this being the real understanding of minister or secretary. Burns says further, that:

There is, in short, no school of leadership, intellectual or practical. Does it matter that we lack standards for assessing past, present and potential leaders? Without a powerful modern philosophical tradition, without theoretical and empirical cumulation, without guiding concepts, and without considered practical experiences, we lack the very foundations for knowledge of a phenomenon – leadership in the arts, the academy, science, politics, the professions, war – that touches and shapes our lives. Without such standards and knowledge we cannot make vital distinctions between types of leaders; we cannot distinguish leaders from rulers, from power wielders, and from despots (2)

What is important in the passage is the fact that ‘leadership’, as a concept, has, according to him, suffered from a paucity politically scientific and philosophical interesting analysis. By talking about absence of a “school of leadership”, there creeps in an ambiguity, because one could understand him to be suggesting either an ideology of leadership or a particular institution devoted to the teaching of leadership. I take it that he means the latter, but if so his position will be inaccurate, because leadership is taught in various parts of the educational (formal, non-formal and informal) curricular. But what is important is the lack of emphasis on the nature of leadership, bearing in mind its role in our lives.

Sharing the view of Mills, he echoes the need for inter-disciplinary collaboration to approach the issue of leadership. He is rather presumptuous though in thinking that what will help solve the conceptual problem of leadership is the collection of data, as almost three decades after his work we still have no clue about leadership in spite of those data that he celebrates. He says,

Although we have no school of leadership, we do have in rich abundance and variety the makings of a school. An immense reservoir of data and analysis and theories has been developed. No central concept of leadership has yet emerged, in part because scholars have worked in separate disciplines and sub-disciplines in pursuit of different and often unrelated questions and problems. I believe, however, that the richness of the research and analysis and thoughtful experience, accumulated especially in the past decade or so, enables us now to achieve an intellectual breakthrough. Vitally important but largely unrelated work in humanistic psychology now makes it possible to generalize about leadership process across cultures and across time. This is the central purpose of this book. (p. 2)

Clearly this passage exhibits unlimited optimism. Is it possible to generalize on leadership across cultures and across epochs? What is the role of culture in leadership? Can one extrapolate from data gathered in one culture to pronounce on the behavioral pattern of leadership in another culture? These are some of the questions that his book has not answered, or where answered in an American-centric manner we cannot transfer his answers to apply to other socio-cultural and political environments without undue injustice to such societies.

He went on to lament the bifurcation of the leadership literature into considerations of leadership and followership typologies, as in such studies devoted to biographies, heroic or demonic leaders, famous and important persons, etc., by contrast with the effects the leaders have/generate on/in audiences, masses, voters, opinion polls and election results. His synthetic contribution consisted in looking at leadership dynamically, in terms of winning and losing, adversarial contestations, conflict and power, social change, collective purpose of leader and led, satisfaction of needs and expectations, and sociological and biological determinants of leadership (3).

His ideas of transactional and transformational leadership have been very popular and are probably adequate with regard to American (USA) political situation where everything must have a bottom line, but his contention that leaders are neither born not made makes little empirical, analytical or logical sense (4). In fact, it clearly flies in the face of evidence from America and other societies where investments are made in identifying and nurturing leaders for the purpose of smooth transition at the expiration of the tenure of incumbents – either because of death or as a consequence of demitting office of incumbent at the end of term. In the same vein his decision to settle on two essentials of power (motive and resource) as the determinant of elements of leadership does not have the capacity to exhaust our analytical requirements (12).

In spite of these limitations Burns analysis is very valuable in understanding the narrow experience of political leadership in American culture. It fails miserably, as we shall see, in furnishing an understanding of the varieties of leadership, or even political leadership historically and contemporaneously in Africa or the Caribbean and their Diasporas; the areas of our interest, as traditionally leadership in many societies has not always been a quid pro quo. But that is not the only grouse we have with Burns. We do expect that the insights developed in our discussion will be useful for students of leadership, not in being transferable from one culture to another, but in the sense of providing us with a road map with which we may attempt the navigation of leadership concepts in Africa, Caribbean and Diaspora polities, and possibly other polities as well.

Having failed to find our questions addressed in as analytical a manner as we would wish we must make our own suggestions for later evaluation. The first point we would affirm here is that leadership shapes society and consequently determines leadership expectations. Clearly this runs against the grain of popular wisdom that “a society gets the leadership it deserves”. It is the clear conviction of this writer that the masses of the people are like boats on the volatile sea with no person to guide them where there are no leaders. It is true that some leaders get into positions of leadership by accident, but such situations raise the issue of legitimacy, which can be determined only with the acquiescence of the people over whom they rule. Numerous examples in history show the points we have made. More will be said about the relationship between development and consciousness and leadership later, for now, let us turn to the second question.

Why has leadership not been a matter of concern to Western political philosophers? It seems to me that the simple reason is that, strictly speaking, there has not historically been much of a crisis of leadership in Euro-American polities (at least, till the 2000 Presidential Elections in USA). In these societies there are clear requirements for aspiring leaders; these range from education, pedigree, experience, economic to social and moral. Background checks are conducted to determine the suitability of the aspirants to leadership. In African, Caribbean and Diaspora polities these are not always the case. Even when there are laws to determine the selection process, we find these laws bent or ignored or repealed. There have been instances in Nigeria when prospective leaders have procured forged educational documents in order to qualify for posts to which they aspire. In which case, there are no rigorously enforced or enforceable criteria of leadership in these polities; hence no encumbrances to prevent rogues from becoming leaders, once you are able to procure the support of the key figures, ‘king-makers’ and players in the system. Because of this fact Western political philosophers can take for granted issues of leadership – that is, they can ignore the epistemological, logical, metaphysical and axiological issues related to leadership, but African, Caribbean and their Diaspora philosophers can only do so at great intellectual, social, economic and cultural cost to themselves and to their societies.

On our third question, why reference reports are not required of political aspirants, seem to raise issues of taking for granted the moral and intellectual probity of aspiring leaders. In Western societies it may not be out of place to make the assumption that those who offer themselves up for service would be among the most upright in society. Even when errors of judgment arise in putting in office persons of questionable character the term limitations and the various checks and balances would prevent social disaster from ensuing from such mis-judgment (even though calamitous decisions may be hard to redress for years after such leaders may have left the stage). In this wise there are protections for Western societies against bad leadership, which were also present in most traditional African societies. But with the destruction of the cultures of the various African societies by the double assault of Christianity and Western education on the one hand, and economic dis-empowerment and expropriation on the other hand, the new leadership had scant regard for culture or law. Hence, the conventions and protections that make Western societies enjoy continuity and development are lacking in these new or emerging African and African Diaspora societies. In the case of the Caribbean and its Diaspora polities the situation is even more complicated. Because, having been severed from their ancestral cultures and the checks and balances, the new leadership lack both the proper cultural background (grounding) of their African ancestors and proper understanding of the inner cultural conventions of either the UK Westminster system of government or the Presidential American system of government. The further problem of the “marginalization of the Caribbean male” as a consequence of slavery and through a warped childrearing system that poorly socializes the male Caribbean male/person, creates a double jeopardy, whereby society looks up to the male to lead, but fails to provide the male with the necessary equipment for leadership. Most Caribbean leaders are deadbeat leaders, defaulting in the promises they make (in many instances never actually expecting to be held by their public to the promises they make) and lacking in moral conviction to do what is right. Not requiring character reference only compounds the problem.

To our final initial question, why do Western societies tolerate poor leadership for African and Diaspora emerging societies (that is, societies from slavery and colonialism)? This is not anything difficult to understand. For one, who wants another Singapore or Hong Kong in the Caribbean or in Africa? For another, if Caribbean or Africa societies become self-sustaining, who will be the lackeys to the metropoles from which ultimate intellectual and material power devolve? Finally, if true leaders emerge in these post-slavery, post-colonial societies, where would the sustenance for the metropoles, in the form of unending payment of bogus national debts be derived, and markets for all kinds of manufactured goods, as these leaders will instill discipline in their cultures, economies, and peoples, making them independent. Hence, the longer there are cerebrally challenged and culturally defective leaders in these post-colonial societies, the better for the economic and political domination by the former colonial masters and the new imperial power, America.

African, Caribbean and Diaspora Polities and Leadership

Let me say first that African and Caribbean polities are not undifferentiated in nature and the leadership requirements are not of identical natures. But there is some simple similarities that make conjoined commentary on them easy to grasp and meaningful, that is, profitable, to comparatively interpret.

Since the demise of the black Nile Valley Civilization (and the subsequent denial and reaffirmation of the genealogy of the same in Western academe), the fall of the various succeeding Empires and Civilizations of black peoples and the occupation of African continent by foreign peoples, the black persons’ experiences have been like no other. It has been stories of disaster after disaster. The psyche of the black person has been assaulted, traumatized and subverted, her/his intellect appropriated and debauched in the extreme, her/his generosity negated and interpreted as stupidity, her/her contribution to civilization and humanity denied and appropriated, her life reduced to tatters with no sense of foreboding or pang of conscience, her current existence negated and her future pauperized and mortgaged millennia in advance. In consequence the black person does ‘not’ exist, ‘cannot’ exist and ‘will not’ exist on equal terms as other persons, as the playing field has been deliberately distorted, tilted and slanted to create inequities and inequalities. Where blacks as a group suffer aggression it is turned face down and around to indicate that the aggression was actually favor done to her to save her from worse fate from nature and her ignorance; where her glory is trampled it is suggested that there was no glory initially and one could not suffer from an absence of what one lacked or never had originally. Yet the universal epistemologies of existence have continued to hark back to the old cognitions of traditional peoples of Africa and elsewhere, from plastic technology to genetic metaphysic.

The current crises in Afro-Caribbean and their Diaspora polities, however, are not simply understandable unless critical and diachronic analysis is undertaken. But how does one do such an analysis where the thematic of the ontology and epistemology of “leadership” are clouded in negation, where there is a confluence of denial and derogation of indigenous education, where there is snobbery of traditional religions with their insistence on high moral standards and retributive concept of punishment and determination of guilt in absolute terms, where even highly competent local expertise is scorned in favor of second rate imported technical personnel? One could multiply, ad nauseam, the debilitating aspects of the crises of African, Caribbean and Diaspora polities. It suffices to insist that the absence of intellectual, philosophical and critical dialogue on this related issue of “leadership” is more of collusion of Western academia and their surrogates in African, Caribbean and Diaspora ivory towers and the mental escapism and self-denial of the ‘roast breadfruit’ clones of Western intellectuals that suffuse these African, Caribbean and Diaspora centers of learning and corridors of power, than a consequence of the well-being of the polities we are interested in.

Why go back to pre-slavery, pre-colonial and contemporary Africa to commence a philosophical understanding of African, Caribbean and Diaspora leadership crises? The simple reason is the similarity of the trajectories of their histories and the carry-overs from these historical experiences into contemporary leadership fiasco. Take Nigeria as a case in point. Contemporary Nigerian leadership is a carry-over form British style of rulership during the colonial period. The colonial ruler-group are ‘foreigners’ and did not mix with the locals, they had no reason to, and they did not see their destinies as tied up with that of indigenous Nigerians. At independence the inheritors of power were rulers who descended from an elite group who were distant from the people they governed, being that as a consequence of their acquisition of Western classroom based education they felt they were only nominally part of the masses of the people, they had lost touch with the people as a consequence, or absence, of their “education”, they fail to see themselves as part of the people who had invested in their acquisition of Western “education” and being distant they fail to understand their heritages, values, cultures and histories; and as a consequence, their aspirations were not those of the people, their newly acquired behavioural patters were different and more British or American than indigenous and they exhibited arrant contempt for, and they disdain, the people they rule over as these forebears and peers and junior ones were regarded as illiterate, less fortunate, stupid, gullible and poor people.

In a very serious sense we see the Nigerian leaders avowing the same intellectual and practical response to the indigenous culture, similar to the ways in which the Western anthropologists Lucien Levy Bruhl, Placide Temples, Robin Horton and early African theologians like John S. Mbiti, Bolaji Idowu and others which they saw as inferior to Western and Christian systems and metaphysic. These scholars had celebrated the primitive mentality, illogical, unscientific, etc. mentality of Africans, and the new elite groups, products of the Western educational centres now claim that their own peoples were uneducated, poor illiterates and common masses, as Smythe and Smythe exhibited above. It is not any wonder that in their ignorance they became aliens in their own countries.

Writing in 1960 the Smythes showed a good understanding of this factor in the psyche of the new Nigerian elite group. They stated:

Already there is discernible among the new elite a sense of separation from the less privileged classes, which the betray unconsciously through references to “these people” or “the uneducated classes” which are indicative of a distinction between those who “belong” and those who are outside the fold, as well as a growing sense of being “better” than some of their fellow Nigerians (Italics mine for emphasis). (100)

Explaining the origin of this feature of the new elite, they say,

This lack of identity with the masses follows the example of the British, who evolved a self-contained colonial way of life characterized by frequent home leaves and few, if any, social or cultural contacts with the indigenous population. As Nigerians have acquired education, and a higher standard of living, they have found little common interest to share with the average person who lives in mud house without modern amenities. (1960: 100.)

To exhibit their lack of interest in their compatriots and their misplaced identity orientation, according to the Smythes, these new group do not interact with the locals:

A member of the elite is rarely reported in association with the masses except during the … political rally, when he may make a campaign speech, or on such an occasion as the dedication of some public building at which the masses form a crowd of onlookers. Even on such occasions the elite do not rub elbows with their less privileged fellow Nigerians; they are sheltered from the crowd by the police, an official escort, or some rail or raised platform (101).

This is just one example of leadership dislocation. This is not the only problem with the Nigerian leadership at independence. They are numerous and will be indicated at the appropriate time. Meanwhile, let us go to our first issue, the historical antecedence of leadership poverty in African, Caribbean and Diaspora polities.

Historical Antecedents

Contemporary society is in a peculiar mess of having to marry egalitarianism with the demands of high moral probity in public life, without provisioning for the requisite modalities for eventuating a harmonious marital relationship for both. What is even more difficult to understand is the dubious socialization and educational mechanisms that we now advocate in contemporary societies. (Now, I must insist on the caveat that, by speaking of contemporary society I intend this to mean Western Society writ large and of which African and Caribbean polities are part). Here we find that all the old methodologies of instilling moral beliefs and discipline in the youth are under serious challenges while we, as humans, in the West, have failed to provide workable replacement for what we are eagerly jettisoning.

Let us go back a little in history. All civilized traditional societies have clear-cut methodologies (formal, non-formal and informal) of instructing youth in the ethos and mores of the culture. These are passed down from generation to generation, through formal, non-formal and informal methods of instruction and reinforcement. Also, determining whether the product – the adult – has become a well-formed member of society is not difficult to discern. But that is not all; civilized cultures also devise careful mechanisms for nurturing leaders. They do not leave them to luck. Those to whom leadership will devolve (albeit hereditary) are carefully selected, groomed and instructed in the ways of the culture of their societies and they are carefully imbued in the sensitivity to right and wrong, to the extent that we do find that such persons, on attaining the esteemed positions for which they were prepared, are able to perform without too much of paparazzi and tabloid media hounding. In fact, it was the responsibility of all the leaders of thought in societies to properly bring up those who would lead.

The example of the failure of the first Jewish experiment with kingship is not difficult to understand in this regard (Old Testament: 1 Samuel 8). The only qualifications we are told that the person selected (in the person of Saul) to rule over the Jews had was being very tall and handsome. There was no indication about what type of family he came from, what type of upbringing he had, and how cultured in the ways of the Jews he was. The incapacity of such a person to carry the burden of leadership (Saul’s inability to function) is not difficult to understand, under the circumstances.

It would be interesting to see if any of the tall, handsome persons around today can just be picked on account of those superficial attributes to occupy the White House. (It has been suggested that part of the problem between the Hutus and the Tutsis in Rwanda is a consequence of this warped understanding of human physiognomy and leadership competence, whereby a certain group was selected on account of appearance for leadership to the disadvantage of other members of the society who happen to have numerical majority). At best we would have them engineered into Basketball programmes from youth. And hardly do many of them have much of a life at the end of their playing careers if they do not go back to school or if they have not been fortunate to have been properly brought up in good homes.

Let us start from the continent which has finally been agreed is the cradle of Homo sapiens - Africa. Undoubtedly for Africa to have originated the type of developments and achievements in writing, mathematics, science, technology, civilization, art, culture and social engineering that created the wonders and curiosities unravelled all over ancient topography of Africa by scientists, archaeologists, culturologists, linguists, anthropologists, philosophical historians, etc., there must have been some level of sophisticated and highly devoted leadership capable of harnessing the human and natural resources to request of the environment to make available that level of development that we (most serious scholars) now acclaim as authentically African.

One way or the other, this highly sophisticated leadership yielded to the invasion of the continent by negative forces. While we may speculate about the proximate and remote causes for the enslavement, colonization and subsequent cultural and scientific asphyxiation of the great Africa of our ‘Diasporic’ nostalgia, the fact remains that current leadership has no avenue for continuity or connection with its historical antecedents. One can safely contend that African traditional leadership that gave birth to the civilizations which tamed the Nile, created the Great Desert Art, developed Great Zimbabwe, performed surgical feats, studied the outer extremities of space, etc., died with the colonization and enslavement of Africa, creating a leadership vacuum which all forms of charlatans now fill by default, while there has not developed any cadre of leadership of merit in the miscegenation called society in the New World African Diaspora.

Why is this so? In many African societies, for example, the first crop of youth sent to “the white man’s schools”, when Western education came to hinterland Africa, were not the cream of the breed. Why? There was a high level of suspicion of the white man’s ways – his education that is confined to some space and time span, his justice system that often compensates the criminal rather that the aggrieved (presumption of innocence of the accused till proven guilty without safety valve for the aggrieved in any primary sense and the possibility of plea bargaining are examples of the white mans strange judicial system) and which facilitates sophistry, by contrast with truth and fairness, his disrespect for the traditions and cultures of the indigenous societies emanating from ignorance of life, society, nature, the environment and the super-sensible realm, and his belief that the Supreme Being can and must be worshipped on only one day of the week and in an enclosed space outside of which all shenanigans are possible, among others. This sending of the second or third best of the breed to the white man’s school cannot be without justification. For one, leadership in Africa was not something you just happen by. It was not without long periods of tutelage. For years and years leaders identified are schooled in the traditions of the people, the culture that they must uphold, the religions and moral ethos that are implicated by social existence and affirmations of life inextricably weaved into existence. Because of this African traditional societies took great care to nurture leadership. Even where leaders were determined by heredity and lineage, care is taken to ensure that the final product that inherits the mantel at the transition of the incumbent is well prepared for the challenge of leadership and commitment to society and the proper representation of the ancestors.

This must not be interpreted to suggest that there were no misfits or that all was always perfect, but the important point being made is that effort is clearly made to identify and develop leadership in all civilized societies. To take care of the errors that may be humanly unavoidable in leadership identification process clear checks and balances are carefully developed to ensure that leadership was imbued with humanity. Second, most traditional African parents could not see how life could be meaningfully influenced by the less than six hours of work that takes place in the white man’s educational space, over five days of the week, compared with the life long nature of education and leadership training that takes place under the traditional system of education in the African society. Third, since the children sent to the white man’s schools were never expected to amount to much anyway, it was not regarded as a disaster that the products turned out to be servants to the white man and menaces to the indigenous cultures and institutions. Finally, the products of Western education were expected to be persons able to speak with forked tongues, thereby capable of the chicaneries associated with curious oddities that white ways of life constituted to indigenous Africa (Ajayi and Espie eds. 1965: 162).

Some of the products of the system were even more dangerous to the African societies and the cultures and civilizations of African peoples than the alien white folks that they replaced and whose ignorance can be pardoned. A reading of the first crop of African theologian scholars would clearly make this point, as their denial of African religious experience and understanding of the Supreme Being were more indicting than that of their Western counterparts. I have discussed this at length in another forum, but we may merely mention here the works of Mbiti, Idowu and Awolalu as examples to make the point.

The long and short of the story is that in polygamous families those who initially went to the white man’s school were, first, the children of wives that were not very liked by the husbands; second, children who were regarded as lazy and who showed a proclivity toward indolence; third, children who showed evidence of being cantankerous, disrespectful, disobedient and dishonest. These were children whose fathers could care less how their lives turned out, hence it did not matter what the white man did to/with them. The nefarious activities of the products of these educational experiences, and how they exerted their pound of flesh from the society that ‘dissed’ (Jamaican for “disrespect”) them, is told in many of the novels by Cyprian Ekwensi, Chinua Achebe, Ola Rotimi, Wole Soyinka and others.

That some of these very products then turned around to demand independence for their societies is not difficult to understand as they easily recognized that for as long as the white man remained the overlords in the African colonial countries they, the clones and surrogates, must continue to play second fiddle. This recognition, out of self-interest among others, therefore, indicated that they strive for and attain independence for their countries. It is not by accident that most of these nationalist fighters were law, medical and commerce graduates, etc., not engineers, agriculturalists, etc. Being in the parasitic professions, they were able to comprehend their limitations and had a will to power that was not equalled by a culturally matched will to leadership and an understanding of the nature and process of leadership (Ajayi and Espie, 1965: 161).

Thus, when independence was granted, the questions that were never asked during the struggle for independence still did not arise: independence for what? What society would we want to have in fifty years time? What legacies would we wish to leave behind when we join our ancestors? Who shall continue the process and carry on the work of shepherding the society to green pastures in the full glare of the glutinous enemy at the gate? Where would our different societies stand in the community of societies in future generations yet unborn? For one thing a group without a proper leadership “home training” could not be expected to be anything but upstarts mimicking the gesticulations of their admired and hated overlords, hence one sees, for example, some of these rulers trying to out-do their colonial foster parents in three, four, five piece suits in the hot tropical climate, without noticing any incongruity in the suffering they endure just to be the “roast bread fruits” that they are (these are people who, according to Jamaicans, are black persons by skin pigmentation, but who are whites in the mental dispositions, practical predilections and cultural affinities exhibited in their appearances, gesticulations and genuflections, intellectual preferences and even non-preferences).

Because of a lack of understanding of the concept of leadership, coupled with poor preparation for leadership, it soon became clear that for these African and Caribbean rulers (what Soyinka referred to as the “wasted generation”, which I prefer to call the “wasting generation”), what was more important is attainment and retention of power, as a means of oppressing their hapless compatriots. Power became the end in itself primarily, and secondarily a means of accessing state funds for personal selfish use.

The Nigerian example does not cease to fascinate me. Here, at independence, was a spectacular enthronement of a government of ignoramus. For one, the British falsified the demography of the country to favour the most ill-prepared segment of the country and followed this by rigging the election so that we had a Prime Minister who had neither a basic schooling in either traditional home training that is necessary for leadership, nor even a proper mastery of the educational system of the colonial master. Since then Nigeria has not had any modicum of leadership that is comparable to what Old Oyo, Kanem Bornu, or Benin Empires had. Second, the rulers that Nigeria has had could hardly define the word “leader” if seriously pressed, and in some cases could not spell the word “leader” by themselves. Third, they (political administrators) neither have an awareness of the Black Person’s history in the world nor of the contemporary situation of the Black Person globally and on the African continent. Fourth, most African heads of state (Nigeria in particular) have suffered from a sit tight syndrome as a matter of necessity – given the travesty of justice perpetuated by them they usually are frightened by their own shadows. Finally, having not received what is anywhere near the best of education that their society could afford – traditional and Western - they have been out of their depths in the fortuitous positions of power they have found themselves.

Apart from their alienation from their indigenous communities, there were other problems with the inheritors of leadership at independence. They were, in many cases, a) unable to understand the concept of public life and public property, as they were not disposed to use public property, especially public funds, with diligence and propriety, for only official business but were busy wasting funds and engaging in all kinds of fraudulence; b) unable to separate their private income from public funds, seeing opportunities to serve as opportunities to embezzle public funds with impunity; c) unable to recognize a difference between the tactics and stratagems that gained their societies independence and strategies for developing new states from colonies, hence the same tactics of sabotage, subterfuge and antagonism used to fight for independence, from the foreign overlords are they were called, are now employed against the new enemy, that is, indigenous critics of their uncouth and scandalous behaviour in office; d) unable to see that leadership is a call to service , hence, operating with the same mentality of alienation and separatism of the “educated elite”, so that having attained public positions means being even more special and alien, and e) unable to understand that their countries are part of a big world in which it is survival of the fittest. Consequently, they were not prepared for the task of nation-building.

We often wonder why contemporary Africa, Caribbean and their Diaspora polities are decadent, cerebrally diminutive, innately corrupt, corruptive, corrupting and morally bankrupt and spiritually retrograde and culturally retrogressive. We easily forget the historical antecedents of contemporary African and Caribbean political elites, clowning around in leadership garbs. Dialectically, “leadership” is a function of historical transitions over time and space. One cannot talk of “leadership” in cultural, educational and historical vacuum. Nor can one get any clear vision on the notion of “leadership” culture and education without examining the underpinnings and presuppositions of the social metaphysic and the epistemic attitudes and attributes prevalent in the societies under examination.

While sociologists, psychologists and their ilk can describe as much as they like the variations in the themes of “leadership” essential for the existence and survival of the technologically engineered industrial society, mostly in instrumental and utilitarian terminologies, such enunciations must be of minimal value, in the context of our discourse, if not predicated on the larger issue of societal “leadership” itself. Consider for example the paucity of content that will derive from a study in the leadership of Coca Cola or IBM or General Motors outside of the philosophical foundations of Capitalism. Imagine how puerile a debate of the management structure of the large multinationals will turn out to be if the underpinning presuppositions relating to the bottom line were negated and privated. In essence, history is very illuminating in understanding the parlous state of leadership in Afro-Caribbean polity.

The Caribbean example is not any better. In the cases of Jamaica, Guyana, Haiti and Dominica Republic, it could be said that there was a singular opportunity on the part of the political directorate to get it right at independence. But what did we find? Here are countries that could be the Caribbean examples of positive all-round greatness in the region, with so much potential in terms of land space, population size, natural resources, and proximity to the hemispheric giant that has always been favourably disposed toward the islands as a matter not only of self-interest but also of strategic economic market.

Let us look at Nigeria and Jamaica as examples of African and Caribbean countries attaining independence about the same time. While the Nigerian disaster can be understandable and even excused as a deliberate product of the British perfected divide and rule system – vide the fact that Britain is a classic example of divide and rule country in the world with Irish, Welsh, Scottish matters never resolved – and that the British does not balk from committing fraud as part of official government policy by falsifying the demography of Nigeria and rigging the Nigerian Independence Elections to install a stooge government that we have mentioned, Jamaica, on the other hand, cannot be easily get away with a luxury that has proved so pernicious and debilitating. In fact, in the Jamaican situation, by comparison with Nigeria with over three hundred (300) distinct language, ethnic and culturally identifiable peoples, the shared heritage of slavery common to over 80 percent of the population would have indicated a necessity for bonding and a charting of a common fortune and future. Rather members of the same extended family, who had the fortune of making the Island the paradise in the sun that it has the capacity and probable destiny of being, have contrived to create political partisan identities of otherness that have remained irreconcilable, with attendant cruel antagonisms, worse than between the Igbo and the Hausa-Fulani during the civil war in Nigeria or between the Arab and the Jew in present day Palestine. While in Nigeria, because of short-sightedness and idiocy of the political class, we have differentiations on grounds of ethnic identities and state of origin, in Jamaica what obtains is which party card one carries, which entitles one to advantages and disadvantages. The clannish system is tribally polarized and erupts into warfare periodically – more frequent as the resources for pillaging becomes more scarce and limited.

I have also found that, unlike in Jamaica where ethnic differences are non-existent, but was created by the fiat of members of the same extended family to carve for themselves fiefdoms, in some other Caribbean countries the existence of any semblance of ethnic differences is good enough excuse for polarization of society through the same myopic mechanism of leadership insecurity enunciated by the egocentric William Lynch syndrome of divide and rule – better construed as divide and conquer. (I am mindful of the literature on Rastafarianism and the Maroons of Akompong as distinct ethic groups within the Jamaican body politik, but my view is that compared to Nigeria, that is stretching the meaning of ethnic a little too thin, hence, I ignore such dilutions of discourse aimed at obfuscating serious issues.) Thus, the political elite finds it easy to fan the embers of discord by playing on primordial fears of the other – the unknown and the alien. Those from Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana will not find it difficult to identify with the issues raised here. Clearly the political directorates in these countries are not remise to hide their ineptitude under the cloak of enemies at the gate, and today the enemies are, first, the “leaders” themselves, second, the lack of education they have and which they continue to deny to their people, and third, the global village with all the contestations and polarizations deriving from the struggle for economic control.

What I am suggesting here is that the situation at independence in Nigeria and most African countries parallels that of most Caribbean societies, regardless of the differences in the historical trajectories that preceded the independence. In clear terms the elites (the political class, that is) never raised the questions that had the most relevance: political independence for what? What they sought first was the political kingdom, believing that once attained, every other thing shall be added unto their societies with little, if any, effort at all on their part.

At independence in Nigeria, the political elites were a pack of visionless, simple- minded people who thought that the world would wait for them. This visionlessness was the most important factor that, to my analysis here, led to the civil war, and even with that (that is, the conclusion of an unwarranted war) no lessons were learnt. It must be said that the military has been the scourge of most countries where they came to power. The situation of the Nigerian military is even worse than in most other countries in the world, as members of the armed forces at independence were not of high educational training in the Western sense and the were not highly morally endowed in the matter of personal development and home training as decent children never went to the army. When Nigeria found oil in commercial quantities the nitwits in power were of the opinion that “money was not Nigeria’s problem but how to spend it”. We had a megalomaniac political class that neither understood African heritage, yet embarked on FESTAC 77. This was a period when the Nigeria currency was stronger than the US Dollar or the British Pound Sterling, and we went all over the world shopping for every conceivable gadget. In fact, we coined another phrase that “if the West will not sell technology to Nigeria, we will steal it”. Shortly thereafter we found, in Nigeria, that having oil (the so-called black gold) is no recipe for success, as we bred a set of power mongers who counted their importance in terms of billions of dollars they have stashed away in Swiss and Cayman personal loot accounts. In many instances loans are taken on behalf of their countries and divided among themselves into their foreign accounts, then turning round to ask the foreign governments to forgive or reschedule the loans for their countries, when their stolen personal ‘wealth’ could pay these loans debts plus interests many times over.

In any case, by the time I was in high school the only people who went into the army were school dropouts, touts and other never-do-wells in society. Decent people do not send their children to the army and children with ambition would hardly see fulfillment in an army established as “kill an’ go”. It was the new white man’s school for depriving the youth of their sensibility and freedom of self-expression as you “obey the last command” or “obey before complain”! It is not by accident that the most educated of the Nigerian military rulers has been the one who voluntarily relinquished power only to attain it twenty years later. And the worst that could happen to any country if for the military to take over power.

In the Caribbean, most people from the region are by far more familiar with the political class history first hand than I am (and surely Puerto Ricans will be better in this regard than I could attain at this stage of my research), but the manifestations of the malady remains the same, hence the need for to venture into this analysis. Being mostly lawyers, the political class or elite group in the Caribbean are adept in the intellectual game of obfuscation of issues – saying so much while saying nothing. All they have mastered is probably the flip side of their “master’s voice” (remember the age of the gramophone!). The consequence remains a region that is externally financed and directed rather than inward looking in the generation of motivation, sustenance and destination. In fact, the political class has little respect for the intellect of their indigenous people, and are scornful of themselves, knowing fully well that as parasites on the resources of their respective countries, they often collude to determine the negation of the interest of their societies – especially when they are aware of the political omnicide that continued antagonism would spell for all concerned.

I wish to conclude this segment of the analysis with another contention. I argue from the forgoing that African and Caribbean polities are still pervaded by the disruptive, divisive and pernicious “ours-theirs” dichotomies inveigled in tribal politics and adversarial legal frameworks which the rulers inherited from their erstwhile slave masters and colonial mentors and have not made any effort, in fact have not seen reason to make any effort, to transcend these negative and destructive legacies. (It may be surmised that maybe the type of education they received from Ox-Bridge and LSE (add in recent times Harvard) is not one that can make them appreciate their destiny in history or the destiny of their peoples toward dependency and nothingness, hence their inability to introspect and cogitate the dilemma of their peoples in the global environment where the peoples of colour must contest to attain to the rights that even pets in Euro-America take for granted). Ingrained in any variety of this kind of legacy is the mentality, first, that government property is no one’s property, hence, no compunction to care for it in any serious way; second, a predisposition to tax evasion as no sense of community has been developed and no accountability has been insisted upon to ensure judicious use and disposal of government funds; third, destructive attitude to public property in the form of arson, theft, neglect, as replacement mechanisms are loaded with contractual kick-back mechanisms for personal monetary gain, etc.; and finally, the perception that public funds are largesse or “God’s blessing”, to be disposed of for self and acquaintances while the opportunity lasts with impunity. Parenthetically, one could add for comic relief that fact that many helpers in Jamaica do not see as stealing the employers property, as the helpers believe such “taking” cannot constitute contractual infraction to persons who can afford to employ others in their home when they are not government or companies!

The consequence that this breeds is that the same techniques that were employed to get rid of the colonial masters and salve masters are now used by the mentally and culturally “alien” rulers in the African and Caribbean polities. The poor and the masses are the new enemies that must be brought to heel, they are the targets of all type of deceit, they are blamed for being lazy, for being difficult to lead, while those who profit from the corrupt and unjust systems the new rulers have created are the least willing to acknowledge the existence of injustice and the beneficiaries of corruption are hardly willing to admit the iniquity of their unmerited advantages. Thus, like leadership in African polities, the Caribbean leaders find scapegoats everywhere and are never guilty of any wrong. In consequence there is so much “Anansism”, or “ginnalship” or “bandolooism” (Jamaican words) – a system of rulership by deceit, kleptomania, corruption, and all manner of abuse of public office and privileges of public trust with arrant impunity and distrust. What this has done in the Jamaican situation is entrench a psyche of callousness, viciousness and cynicism. Thus the poor and the disadvantaged are easily provoked, and irritability without proper educational temperament to master stress leads to invidious violence and reckless homicidal tendencies.

While still on this historico-philosophical analysis of leadership one may mention in passing the two leaders Nigeria never had. The first was Obafemi Awolowo, while the second was Moshood Abiola. The first was a product of the colonial legacy who left a great record of management and development in the old Western Region for the emulation of other regions in Nigeria in the 1950s. The second was elected by popular ballot in an election conducted by a military dictatorship and Nigerians, to their dismay and chagrin, had the election annulled by the same military. These gentlemen were not only schooled in the traditions of their people, they excelled in Western education also and combined these educational experiences with very humble family backgrounds where memories of early deprivation instilled in them the understanding that leadership is a privilege to serve and to improve the lives of the people. They were industrialists and educationists who know what makes for success in developing and running businesses, not armchair analysts and critics like most others. They were not afraid to work with their hands to put into practice what they conceived in their minds, hence they were in the forefront of the effort to create wealth rather than simply manipulate or tax and spend what others have created.

What is indicated from the above is the fact that it takes an intellectual leap of faith for the oppressed to correctly diagnose the origin of their oppression. This is why in Afro-Caribbean polities the aggression and anger of the larger segments of the populations are wrongly targeted. This is because the rulers have contrived to keep the populations under a “veil of ignorance” (to borrow a Rawlsian terminology), both educationally and psychologically. While persons who steal a goat would be jailed for three years, other more “privileged” persons who steal hundreds of millions of public money or who cause the collapse of state institutions are given state honours at elaborate functions. Thus it requires the persevering intellectual exercise of the will to accurately prescribe corrective measures to African, Caribbean and Diaspora rulership maladies. This is not only happening in parts of Nigeria where misguided politicians hold people to ransom under so-called Sharia law, cutting off fingers of thieves and ordering the stoning of fornicators will they themselves are stealing billions of dollars from public coffers without having to account to anyone. In essence, the situation is most degrading for both the political oppressors and the oppressed, as the way all these atrocities reflect on the intellectual integrity of the coloured person is negative. Consider public officials negotiating the cancellation of national debt with the Paris Club whose executive members have less than a million dollars each in their accounts with beggars who each have billions of dollars their countries owe in their private accounts.

Having justified why we consider “leadership” to be a conceptual problem worthy of philosophical analysis and establishing why thinkers from societies which suffer most for a paucity of leadership have an obligations to address the issues, we now move on to the next levels of discourse – indicating the criteria that would need to be met to have an adequate philosophy of leadership. Or, formulated another way, theorizing leadership in a non-purely empirical or descriptive manner, as social scientists are wont to do.

Leadership

It would have become clear that I have been very cautious thus far not to have described the political elites and rulers in Africa, Caribbean and Diaspora polities as leaders. This has been by design, because, on my Richter scale of leadership, I have not been able to identify any single Afro-Caribbean ruler of the 20^th Century that could pass as leader. This is because one way or the other they have failed to meet the requirements of the Psalmist. The shepherd analogy comes in handy again here and we may enumerate some of the crucial requirements of the shepherd that have aided other contemporary peoples of the world and past epochs of Africans to become great. The shepherd is a leader who does not put self-interest above sheep interest, does not rest until the sheep is provided for – not just for the immediate needs, but ensuring the needs of the future are guaranteed also – consequently the shepherd envision the unknown tomorrow and plans for it. The shepherd is the protector of the sheep and exemplified the virtues of righteousness requisite of followership. In this regard, the shepherd as leader leads by example and does not have to ask for respect before getting it.

Parenthetically, one need not get unnecessarily carried away; hence, I must here temper the analysis with realism. The Tanzania experiment I find worth commending. The Nwalimu, Julius Nyerere, we are told, retired from public office without any mansion of his own. The weakness of his period has been described as exogenous and a consequence of the conspiracy of vested interest coupled with over-zealousness. This does not detract from the viability of the leadership offered by Nyerere. And at the pain of being dubbed a totalitarian, one could mention Fidel Castro and Khadafi here for good measure.)

What is “leadership”? I tried checking Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (Mass: Merriam Webster Inc. 1981) to see if there would be a definition that may be a starting point, but only found “leader” defined as someone who leads, and “leadership” as the office or quality or capacity to lead. These circular definitions fail to help. Robbins defines leadership thus:

. . . leadership (is) the ability to influence a group toward the achievement of goals. The source of this influence may be formal, such as that provided by the possession of managerial rank in an organization (413).

Clearly this is a utilitarian, profit and loss definition of “leadership”, but we still can glean aspects of the ideas we have highlighted earlier from it. In human society writ large contrasted with the simple business environment, the leader needs more than just a capacity to make people achieve goals. From the biblical shepherd example, it is clear that a leader needs to be a visionary. Clearly the purely utilitarian perspective is weak, as it does not take cognisance of collective purpose and the requirement of the evolutionary dynamics of social and cultural needs of the led which must inform leadership focus.

While we will come to this, let us consider what Robbins’ review of literature reveals. He examines trait theories – charisma, enthusiasm, courage are necessary attributes of leaders. This is true, especially when group goals have been clearly defined, even though there are times those of lesser ilk may think that leaders with these traits are fools – as they seem to have no sense of danger to self, no understanding of basic requirements of self-survival and welfare in the undue dangers they search for and bring to themselves and those close to them. Other attributes were found in behavioural theories espousing toughness, intensity and autocracy, while contingency theory (and its variant, situational theory), indicates variations contingent on the context and group or society that is to be led. Clearly, as usual, social scientists have failed to provide clues that could be followed in the solution of societal problems. The failure is not unexpected because the effort at stereotyping humanity is doomed ab initio.

What do we learn from this that can be of philosophical moment? In the first place, when we wonder why the countries of the Pacific rim – at the head of which you find a Japan that was badly battered in the Second World War – were able to rise from oblivion within a spate of four decades to dominate the world technologically and financially, or why USA has been able to blend hetero-ethnicities into a vibrant polity – even with the usual unresolved issues of racism, racial profiling, and implications of the last Presidential Elections in the state of Florida, among others, are still festering; why Russians are a proud people, in spite of the collapse of the Soviet Union, etc., many scholars would easily indicate in concession (concurring with the views here proffered) that it was not the colour of the skin, nor the intellectual superiority of the population, nor the climatic generosity of the environment that made the difference. Many will easily indicate and concede that the difference is “leadership”!

What the psychologists and social psychologists were searching for would not be found in any textbook, as the moral component and force of leadership are not written in bold letters in society’s statutes for efficacy, even there are those high sounding codes of ethics for ministers and officials of government. Hence, any discussion of the concept of leadership that stops only at the manifest components must be short-sighted.

There is an allure among academics of what is called current or recent literature. In this regard, it is believed that reading or using literature that is older than five years in publication is evidence of lack of currency, as if recent research has a prerogative of insight and erudition. Why I am inclined to think this is a fallacy is a rereading of Pitirim A. Sorokin’s (1948) The Reconstruction of Humanity (Boston: The Beacon Press). A superficial reading may suggest that he is canvassing the view that if one were to look at human societies from a reconstructive perspective one would believe the author was against clear-cut leadership development or enculturation process because they seem at times to fail to deliver on the expectations of humaneness and protections of rights by contrast with others, especially totalitarianism which at times may be benevolent at times. But clearly what Sorokin laments if fact that the faults of democracies are easier to recognize and in the public domain as a consequence of its systemic openness. While there is no time to dwell at length on his discussion here, it should interest readers to look carefully at his criticism of democracy and the possibility of tyranny of the majority, nay, tyranny of the minority in contemporary democracies as the percentage of the population that determines the government more often that not is less than fifty percent of the entire population.

Before we go on to sketch the criteria that “leadership” by contrast with mere exercise of power would entail, we need to briefly discuss what a philosophy of leadership will look like. On the logical side, we would like to see a critical interrogation of the meaning, content, manifestations and consequences of “leadership”. The social scientists have fastened on only one side of this logical equation. They have been more concerned with the descriptive, inductive and de facto aspect of the concept to the utter neglect of the analytical, deductive and conceptual aspects. This has vitiated a proper understanding of the concept and problematic of leadership. As a consequence, even when Burns craved for a synthesis of the various conceptual aspects of leadership, this would not be forth-coming because only the empirical aspect was being addressed. In other words, we look logically at leadership from inductive and deductive angles, but we are also mindful of other possibilities in interpretation of leadership, such as intuitive and reductive logical expositions.

Coming on the heels of our logical prescription must be the epistemological requirement. Here it may simply be indicated that many factors are called for here. These include the cognitive, intuitive, emotive and dynamic, introspective components. In this regard, we may indicate that there are two sides to this: a) the epistemological base of leadership and b) the epistemological base of followership.

Let us dilate a bit on the first. Leadership must originate from the vantage position of “knowledge”. We can see that all the great thinkers are agreed on this, from Plato, to Jesus, to Awolowo (the last one here calls it the regime of mental magnitude). In a sense, the reason why Plato prescribed the philosopher king as the person fit to rule is because such a person would have attained a level of understanding of the universe, people and him/herself to be fair to all and just in the dispensation of justice. In another sense, we may simply encapsulate this epistemological requirement by indicating that the leader must be wise, not simply knowledgeable. This is because there is danger in mere requisition of knowledge, as many persons are specialists in various areas by regrettably poor in most others and unfit for leadership. So competence in some profession or acquisition of skills or “techne” or expertise is no indication of capacity to lead. Hence, the better we conceive of leadership holistically as requiring wisdom. The leader would have attained this through proper upbringing, attendance at the school of life, knowledge of history and culture of her/his society, an awareness of international relations and forces of history, familiarity with the psychology and pathology of suffering or being downtrodden in an inclement international environment, capable of an analysis of the sociology of poverty, the metaphysic, economics and politics of dependency and the historical interaction of races and ethnicities in the global village. More than these, the leaders would have to acquire a great perseverance in the mastery of the knowledge of self. For the blind cannot lead the blind without both of them being endangered.

We are not making an unreasonable demand of leadership here. What is being suggested is that the leader should be intellectually rounded and epistemologically astute. When we look at Booker T. Washington (“The Atlanta Address”. 1895), we find that he exhibited so much mastery of the attributes we have put forward here, but his generation was unable to understand the tactical nature of his leadership philosophy. Hence, they often thought he was a sell-out when he preached industry, frugality and education. They thought that he meant in his lamentation of the poverty of his contemporary African American’s poverty, ignorance, immorality, that he was talking of an innate and hereditary attributes. But being aware of the forces arrayed against his black contemporaries who were just emerging from slavery, he knew that the challenges were not for the fickle and there would be no accolades won without serious effort, and that while a white person will get recognition with excellence, it would require a super excellence effort and accomplishment for the black person to attain the same recognition.

This is what brings us to the second prong of our epistemological requirement. Knowledge is critical in the followership also. For is the blind were to be leading the sighted into a ditch, the sighted would cry foul and resist the perdition that await them. This is the reason some philosophers advocate that the citizen must have a right to civil disobedience or even violent revolt against oppression and tyranny.

Now, it is important to understand how the coalescence of unhappy circumstance can conspire to facilitate the greatness of a people. One may use the analogy of the Jews in this regard. Washington was aware that the successful person of colour was an endangered specie, hence he preached lying low and creative use of little latitudes gained from oppression through constructive and diligent effort. This requires, therefore, that blacks whether in Africa, the Caribbean or the Diaspora should not forget her history in the last five centuries, how she got to where she is and strive to endure that her leadership be not ensnared into complacency which could either perpetuate for ever her and her descendants eternal dependency on other peoples of the world as consumers of the trash coming from other races. One must never forget the wisdom in the Yoruba proverb that, bi owo eni ko i te eku ida, a kii beere iru iku to pa baba eni, that is, if you have not attained the power necessary to confront the opponent you do not ask why or how he/she killed your father. For, doing that is asking to be killed yourself, and the only way you can have the strength and resources to do that is by acquiring knowledge and resources to stand on your own, before demanding freedom. Thus, giving period during which he lived, his leadership, based on matured epistemology of reality has been vindicated. The prematurity of the activism of the abolitionists abolitionists and militants was clear in limitation of the achievements of racial justice before the right time in the second half of the last century.

In Blacks in America since 1865 edited by Robert C. Twombly (1971), we find a reinforcement of the epistemological requirement. From the perspective of Washington, one great service leaders must undertake is to search for and continually obtain information. This means that leaders must read, they must listen, and they must think. To speak without the exercise of these epistemological foundations as basic backgrounds is to condemn themselves and their society to ignominy and serious social and political dangers. It is no wonder that Eusi Kwayana emphasizes this epistemological factor when asserting that,

To understand the collective psyche of a people, we have to learn to listen not only to speech, but to non-speech and to a whole complex of responses… We have also to have periods when we fade and allow ourselves to absorb universal wisdom, listening with eyes, ears, skin, and the secret tuition we all have to some extent, known as in-tuition… When leaders throw aside reason, it seems that non-reason takes over, with or without their help. (Internet source provided in reference section).

Even if we are not too sure about the source of the universal wisdom, we would agree that a lot of intuition and consciousness is necessary for successful leadership, and the fact that a lot of the negativities in Caribbean polities are consequences of ignorance and insensitivity to the destinies of these societies by selfish and self-seeking rulers suffering from intellectual myopia and moral bankruptcy.

Let us take the third leg of our requirements, the metaphysic of leadership. Here we confront the most difficult aspect of theorizing or philosophizing about leadership. But that should not deter effort. Starting with the ontology of leadership, two questions will have to be asked: Is there “leadership”, and if there is leadership, “How do we recognize it”? On the first, there can be no denying the existence of leadership, but what we find in that identifying it, because of the so many families of attributes that constitute leadership has been a problem. This is where the social scientists have tried and failed because, unifying all leadership qualities makes if difficult to understand, and thinking that by listing these and teaching it success in some field will translate into success in other fields makes a mockery of the who philosophy of leadership.

This is what leads us to the suggestion that given the diversity of the families of attributes which make up leadership, the ontology of leadership will have to deal with relativities of time, space, context, cultures, groups, goals, etc. These are critical to the attribution of leadership, and in human affairs we do find that perception is a critical component.

Clearly it may have been expected that by talking of the metaphysic of leadership I intended some eternalistic, supernaturalistic or even metaphysical understanding of leadership. While one would have wished there was a failsafe method of divining leadership, this expectation on the part of those who have harboured them have proven of little value. This is where we find the problems with various forms of theocracies in human history, and this is where the expectations of people who look for divine intervention in the solution of human and social problems have been disappointed time and time in history. Human beings have always had to be proactive, knowing where they want to go before they can start getting anywhere near there. In many instances those who turn out to be instrumental in the achievement of progress and development in various historical epochs in human history have been regarded as divine intervention, dubious as this seems logically, we may permit persons with proclivities toward religions exuberance to feel comfortable in this zone. For the purpose of this dialogue however, it is clear that in history leadership has never been Manna from heaven, it has been human, and full of sacrifices and opportunities for satisfaction of group and personal goals.

Taking the axiological turn, we now must emphasize the normative nature and the norm generating nature of leadership in any society. It is clear that leadership should constitute the embodiment of the very hopes, aspirations, identity, dreams and realities of a society. Baring this, it is clear that there will ensue a drift in society that will be disastrous. It is important in this regard that should be clear standards and channels for the enforcement of these standards on both the leaders and the led, especially on the leaders. This is because, when leadership disregards the least of the norms, ethos and statutes of a society with impunity, the signals sent reverberates through the entire fabric of the society, having consequences not easily redressed.

While certain modes of behaviour will be tolerable for citizens, such allowance cannot be made for leaders, because giving small room for indiscipline and disobedience of the laws would lead to further and further infractions of the statutes. Societies with great civilizations have endeavoured to ensure that leadership transcends the regimen of the ordinary folk. While ordinary folk can operate at the level of normal reaction, leaders require more. Now, normal reaction implicates a complex matrix that is predicated on group behaviour and/or consciousness that has as its elements a) intellect, b) memory and c) association, all of which implicate a complex neural system differentiated on socio-cultural predications of rationality. In personal affairs, this complex plays out in relation to perceived latitude of behaviour, while in social settings, the latitudes are even more complex! Consequently, humans not only manifest a plethora of relationships but they seek out sources that help them to discriminate these relationships.

On the other hand, emergency reactions breed a stimulus response different from the normal situation. Some factors do not impinge on decision making mechanisms here, as the tendency is to involuntarily launch into a fire-brigade mode – that of crisis management. This indicates the abbreviation of the social milieu of certain actions, as normal reaction is supplanted by the abnormal. But then this does not mean the total negation of the social, unless the situation becomes so privating that the only reality is the preservation of the ergo, the self.

Clearly in many of our Africa, Caribbean and Diaspora polities, especially the Nigerian example, the exigencies of life and the existential situation has not only become so privating, it has created a siege consciousness with the attendant situation of a Hobbesian state of nature, characterized by bellum omnium contra omnes – a war of all against all, and especially of the leadership against the led, with enthronement of mutual suspicion and antagonism as the order of the day. The Jamaican experience is only a little different, hence the high of level of cynicism about leadership and corporate social existence.

So we see that in leadership matters, when we are concerned about norms, values, rules and regulations in public life, the leadership orientation and development must combine intellectual with a high level of sophisticated discipline that enables leadership to transcend normal reaction level, as conditions of leadership imposes on the leader this as part of everyday experience. Leadership places on those who assume it social obligations a high level of sensitivity requirement.

Imagine for a moment a situation in which leadership exhibits a generalized survival, self-preservation, ego-protection and individualistic orientation. At such a level everything must conduce to self-preservation and entrenchment. Imagine a situation where political leadership is construed as an instrument of determining who gets what, where and when. Where politics is a game for determining between “tribes whose members are perpetually at war with each other” and where the winner takes all and the loser ceases to exist literally. Imagine for a second a politics that is divisive, rather than uniting, where those who play by the rules get shafted and where leadership does not believe that the laws must shackle them from committing destructive blunders at the expense of the citizens. Imagine a situation where leaders are above the law, and where they can set their agents to kill and maim opposition with arrogant impunity. These will definitely lead to anarchy and mayhem.

Thus, when we are examining the ethical foundations of leadership we find that leaders are required to allow their consciousness to shift gear into the supernormal mode of cognition, behaviour and relationship with the people under acute stress situations. They must not just be normal persons or even ab/sub-normal that we mentioned above, society expects them to put society interest above self-interest. It is at this stage that the true test of leadership can be determined. This third stage is where the leader becomes only an instrument for the realization of society’s consciousness, where the leadership becomes the tool for the propagation of organic existence of the society. This is where leadership education, orientation and preparation kicks in automatically in advanced or civilized societies. Some may call this the spiritual level of leadership, but it is simply the level where that popular saying becomes significant – I am, because we are.

For our purpose, it will be useful to indicate the following attributes as important and critical in the analysis of the concept and moral content of leadership:

a) Vision And Some Level Of Idealism

A leader must have a vision of a better society. This vision must be informed by the realities of the historical antecedents of one’s society, contemporary realities of the world in which the society exists, and the potentialities and possibilities that the endowments of nature and human resources can transform for posterity. We have mentioned the importance of education in leadership development, but we must reiterate that factor of historical education, which will create in the leaders an awareness of how other peoples have related to his/her peoples and the consequences of such interaction. In which case the leader would be better prepared to use such knowledge for the advancement of the interest of his/her own peoples.

Why it is important for a leader to have a vision and a dream of a better society arises from the need to plan for future generations and ensure that the plans are realistic. It is necessary that leaders be able to lead from the front and be good examples for followers if there is to be effectiveness in leadership. In this wise, it is important that leaders be well educated in the traditions of their society as well as the associated histories of societies that have impacted on the traditions and that will continue to so impact as we mentioned just now.

b) Honesty

Honesty is a requisite of true leadership. Honesty necessitates transparency and fairness. The infectiousness of honesty cannot be underestimated as the character of the leader shapes the demeanour of the followership in many instances. Nigeria, under the Muritala Muhammad regime (albeit a military dictatorship) at the initial stages of the administration was a study in this requirement and part of the reasons for the short-lived span of this regime was the wavering of the leadership from the path of honesty and trust in the people.

Clearly, it may be asked why not follow Nicolo Machiaveli’s prince who need not be good but needs only appear to be good. The immediate retort to this is the Marley view that “you can fool the people some time, but you cannot fool the people all the time”.

In fact, the degree of cynicism that pervades the Afro-Caribbean consciousness is a consequence of the Anasism of the leadership. In consequence, it is clear that if we cannot trust the leader, how can we follow the words emanating from leadership?

Elsewhere I had analysed the apathy and the tendencies toward anarchism of large segments of the populations of Africa and Caribbean polities as by products of an elite labouring under the lethargic jet lag of colonialism and slavery. On this occasion it is merely worth noting that African and Caribbean polities have not accepted their own part of the blame. They still look for scapegoats for their failures. They are quick to point fingers at slavery and colonialism, while forgetting that for every finger pointed the remaining four on the hand indicates self-reference. Honesty requires that leadership accept blame for missed opportunities, wasted resources, excesses in governmental exploitation for self and connected parties. The first step is repentance – that is, willingness to confront the populace with the truth. An acknowledgement of error, rather than the mystification of power and the harassment of the poor into submission, is the first step in atoning for the pernicious effects of dishonest leadership that has pauperised the societies of Africa and the Caribbean.

We may say that the first decades of post-independence in many Africa and Caribbean polities were periods of euphoria and hence we had not settled down to serious business, but what explains the drift in the subsequent years? Can we say we have no means of divining what fate attends our failures in the community of nations? Or would we suggest that we never had the opportunities that the Asian Tigers had (even with the temporary collapse of their financial sectors in the mid- to late-90s, which still left these societies better than those without similar financial crises)? We must honestly confront our mirror images and ask the questions the leadership must face.

c) Ability to Listen Patiently and Attentively to Others (Diverse Views), and to be Educated

It is important for leadership not to arrogate to itself omniscience. In Yoruba society, it is said, that, “the young is wise, and the old is wise, is the pillar on which the ancient town of Ile-Ife was built.” In my essay, “Olodumare – God in Yoruba belief and the problem of evil” (See African Studies Quarterly, an electronic journal by University of Florida, Gainesville, 1998), I had discussed the importance of the weakness of Western theistic theology, theocracy and divine rulership espoused in Judaeo-Christian tradition which arrogates to the Supreme Being infallibility, even in the face of counterfactuals as in the Genesis. In Yoruba theology it is not regarded as strange for Olodumare, the Supreme Being, to consult His diviners to ensure that things move properly in the affairs of the universe. This would serve as a humbling lesson to humans that they cannot and should claim what they have not, indicating that they need to encourage consultation and respect for the wishes of the people.

What we see here is the need, therefore, for dialogue between leaders and followers, because it is in such feedback mechanism that right can be right and wrong righted. The consequence is loyalty and willingness to endure difficulties together as one, rather than having leadership preaching belt-tightening while their own rank is bulging at the waistline and a swelling parasitic membership procuring larger and larger cloth and shoe sizes, cars and homes and other expensive luxury consumption, even including buying homes in Europe and having fat accounts in various offshore banks. How would one square a situation where at the negotiation table for the rescheduling of loans that the representative of the poor begging country wears the most expensive designer outfit of all at the meeting?

Part of the appeal of President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria when he campaigned for Presidency was the fact that he was the only military ruler in Nigeria to have ceded power voluntarily. Also he tried then to live what he preached in form of “austerity measures” whereby the most expensive car was the Peugeot which all middle class Nigerians used in the late 1970s and “green revolution” in the form of farming which helped many civil servants survive the harshness of the austerity measures and which profession he turned to after retiring from the army. His campaign for eschewing exhibitionist consumption patterns resonated with the people as the balance of trade and payment situation of the country reflected a need for austerity and his government was willing to make the sacrifices they were calling on the people to make – not empty calls.

d) Dedication to the Cause of the Society and Transparency

Even situated as the Caribbean countries are, there is no escaping the fate of weaklings and failures as the fragility of Caribbean economies are daily emphasized by threats from international conglomerates such as Chiquita. While Darwinism may be discredited as explanations of the evolution of the species, we must honestly confront that as a truth in Global economics. The strong simply gobbles up the weak and the weak simply loses identity – even for distant Islands, this must not be forgotten.

Consequently, it is immediately urgent to understand that leadership needs transparent dedication to the cause of society. This is why in civilized societies one cannot indicate that there are no distinctions between private and public lives of leaders. The “official secrets act” in many third world countries are outdated, counterproductive and antithetical to the interest of the people whose interest is being protected.

In Lieu of A Conclusion

As I said earlier, this piece is a part of a bigger project on the philosophical analysis of Africa, Caribbean and Diaspora polities. What is presented here is but the preface. But it is hoped that many able minds would join the debate and provide fertility ingredients for the discourse in the minds of the fringe academia that Africa, Caribbean and Diaspora intellectuals constitute. I will not be able to end the introduction to a concept that I believe has been neglected by those who need the discussion most without bringing in the words of Garvey. He said,

There comes a time in the life of everyone, as well as of races when we settle down to look ahead and see what is before us. The Negro, making up his mind to look ahead, has before him a very dark and gloomy future, brought about by his own neglect at a time when the opportunity presented itself for him to engage himself in the undertakings of world re-organization (115).

While the re-organization that Garvey intended was at the United Nations level in the aftermath of World War II, our interest is even more modest now. Our interest is in the re-organization of our polities in line with the demands of fairness, justice, equity, love, dedication, and values that we can be proud to be remembered for by posterity.

Our situation in the various African, Caribbean and Diaspora constituencies call for drastic measures. In the multi-ethnic, multi-linguistic and multi-cultural societies like Nigeria, for us to continue as if we are really doing well is no more than grand self-deception. In the Jamaican situation, the dispossessed and the economic and social outcasts are outside of the system and constitute a big challenge to leadership. This creates a false pluralism not different from what obtains in multi-ethnic or multi-cultural societies. While it is true that those who benefit from a system, either because they belong to the ruling majority (minority) or partisans in power, always find it difficult to understand the resentment of the minority for the domination they suffer, just as the powerful has always found it incomprehensible why the weak is suspicious of their good intentions of domination. We must bear in mind that the incentives for embracing non-accountable rulership is overpowering in young democracies. These incentives make it difficult for our polities to get rid of the disease of electoral malpractices.

No group in a pluralistic society voluntarily accepts the leadership by another group. It is clear that for acceptance to occur there has to be transparency in the allocation of power and in the allocation of resources. Unless a means is found for judicious power sharing, there will always be rancour. This is where the matter of mettle of leadership comes in, to transform the contentious issues to areas for consensus and unification of destinies.

It is clear that democracy as bequeathed to the various African, Caribbean and Diaspora polities have not been very successful. There are two interpretations of democracy that we may bear in mind here. First, we understand democracy (not “dem-all-crazy”, as Fela Anikulapo Kuti said) as meaning that all who are affected by a decision should have a chance to participate in making that decision, either directly or through their representatives, or two, simply allowing the will of the majority to prevail. While in a homogenous society the latter may recommend itself, in a multi-ethnic society it would seem that the first would be more likely to be just to the interest of all concerned, while at the same time allaying the fears of domination that some segments of the society may have.

Our understanding of leadership would indicate that we endorse, as the fountainhead, as historical responsibility and as a temporary stopping place for this discussion, the views expressed by Garvey. We would be able to defend this in philosophical and sociological (and indeed historical) terms, as the soundness of the reasoning originating it would be borne out by the good consequences or results of such commitment. He said:

Yet the thing that lives in history, the thing that goes to the credit of man, is not how much wealth he has piled up for himself; is not how comfortable he has lived, but how good he has done for the rest of humanity. The present world generally worship power, influence and wealth. It is very easy to find sycophants who will fawn before such, and who will pay unreasonable compliments; but those who encourage and help the poor are few, and when they do engage themselves in such labour there is nothing else transient for them but condemnation (118).

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*I want to thank the Centre for Caribbean Studies, Hunter College, City University of New York, New York, USA, for the generous Caribbean Exchange Scholarship, in May – June, 2002, which made further research on this project possible. I also want to thank the scholars at the Centre for their encouraging, constructive and critical comments at the presentation of the draft paper at Caribbean Exchange Scholar Seminar, June 4, 2002. I thank the participants at the Caribbean Culture 2 Conference, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, Barbados, 2001, for critical comments on an earlier effort at reflecting on the issues raised in this essay. And I also thank the Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Botswana, Gaborone, Botswana for giving me the benefit of their facilities as a Visiting Scholar on Sabbatical Leave, to further develop these ideas in the academic session 2002-2003 and for the comments of colleagues in the Department on the final draft. I hope this final product meets some of their criticisms and further develops the issues we explored together. Any errors that may remain in the essay are entirely mine.

Citation Format:

John Ayotunde Isola Bewaji. “Leadership–A Philosophical Exploration of Perspectives in African, Caribbean and Diaspora Polities,” Journal on African Philosophy: Issue 2, 2003.

Copyright © 2005 Africa Resource Center, Inc.