Strong Men Are Disrupting Nigeria’s Progress – Pat Utomi

Respected Professor of Political Economy, Prof. Pat Utomi, has reiterated his call for a principled-based leadership that will enthrone strong institutions as against the present situation where strong men dominate the polity.

He made this known in an interview with Daily Sun published on Thursday.

When asked whether the country was moving in the right direction considering the present state of affairs, he responded: “I am not sure that right or wrong direction is the appropriate word to use. The process of change is not a straight line graph. It is chaotic; it is not all that straight.

“Obviously it is understandable that Nigeri­ans are disappointed with the way somethings are going. I think it is something that helps us to reflect on how we guide and guard change and how we understand the process. To be quite frank with you, my understanding of the change process that will bring lasting solutions to our problems, it has to be very principles based. It has to be methodic. It has to look at the insti­tution that will make things happen effectively rather than people, Nigerians looking for a mes­siah. The messiah complex is a very dangerous one.

“You know Barack Obama on his first visit to Africa, the very first speech he made in Ghana, he repeated the point I made the day before in Lagos that what Africa needs is strong institu­tions, not strong men. But very often we turn around looking for strong men. Strong men are traditionally disruptive of progress in the sense that even when they manage to get some progress to take place, because they did it as strong men, the next strong man would want to put his im­primatur on progress. This may mean discount­ing what the strong man before him has put in place. That is why we have weak institutions. We need to progress with strong institutions.

“I had a small debate on the platform on Oc­tober 1 last year with my friend, Bishop Has­san Kukah. He was saying that strong men can help bring about strong institution.

“I was making the point that it is not whether we need good leaders. We need good leaders. Strong leaders doesn’t take away from strong institutions. When you don’t instititutionalise, you have a prob­lem.

“Our experience is that the trouble with Nigeria clearly is leadership. Nigeria is still not being led rightly. For me personally, 2015 was a huge disap­pointment. This is because what I had hoped for, what I expected that it was a classic opportunity to lead Nigeria, to bring everybody into a boat, saying this is the direction we are travelling. And with every body’s energy in Nigeria we will move towards that.”