Here and now, the leadership question

E. Ablorh-Odjidja, Ghanadot

July 13, 2010

I am prompted to write a response to the perennial search for leaders in this land of ours and the comfort we take in the answer "The Beautiful Ones Are Not Yet Born" sentiment.

My response is that the sought leaders are here among us - here and now, as they have always been.

But in case they are not, then the question becomes whether we have the capacity for leaders to grow and prosper amongst us?

This is an existential question that must be answered as a group. 

Note that I didn't say we lack the material to make good leaders. I’m only focusing on our spiritual capacity to do so.  And whether in the collective, we do have that capacity to make the desired leadership happen.  

For now, the quest for this leadership has been sometimes more like act of fantasy.  Always yearning for the future to produce magically the right leaders (the chosen ones), which then must imply the belief that any current leader in position is useless for our cause. 

It is this thinking that produces automatically the lethargy.  Any current “leader” so positioned is not "beautiful" or good enough for the title and, therefore, will not be able to produce the outcomes we need.

Sadly, this mindset is already formed. And the result is the tendency to put our expectations on the future.  Instead of pushing for a catalyst for change in our immediate circumstances, we are now conditioned to accept the hope in "the beautiful ones" to come.

For reasons of the “beautiful ones” to come, we go on tolerating some of the current useless ones we have today.  Perhaps, we owe the advent of this mindset to the book “The Beautiful Ones Are not yet Born,” written by the renowned Ghanaian writer, Ayikwei Armah. 

Armah's theme was centered on an idealistic hope, that our salvation was to be found with children yet to be born.

This theme promptly established a nadir for despair in Ghana, when in reality we were at the apex - an age of renaissance for our country. 

There were some intellectuals of the time, who were extremely opposed to Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, the president at the time, who therefore promptly accepted the notion of the “beautiful ones” and concluded that present governance under Nkrumah was the mark of our dark days.

Ayikwei Armah’s book, published in 1968, talked about corruption in the immediate post-independence era. But there was no disguising the fact that he had Nkrumah as the target in his book.

Consequently, the book had a dramatic appeal for those who craved for Nkrumah's downfall because it painted the Nkrumah’s regime as dark and the most corrupt. 

Some 40 years later, and unfortunate for Ayikwei as a prophetic writer, Nkrumah is now hailed as a great and selfless leader and the least corrupt leader we have had so far.  

Thus, the reality of Nkrumah set in long after the “beautiful ones" concept was proposed but unfortunately the idea continues in place. 

The lesson to learn is we cannot forever push our hope for good leadership and governance into a vanishing future.  Constantly waiting for this phenomenon to happen can mean something else - the creation of a vacuum for something usually unpalatable to happen.

And as could have been expected, we have big-time loudmouths and incompetent bullies parading as leaders now. The result is the morass in governance on the continent.

Perhaps, we may not need stellar leadership throughout the generations, after all.  But a competent leader, one like President Kufuor, is a must at all times. 

And also, there will always be among us those who can from time to time hold on to the the promise as we wait. 

As for Armah, he became an instant celebrity when Nkrumah was deposed.  But years later, Nkrumah was to be acknowledged as the most transformational leader in Africa and has been accepted as such since. 

In Nkrumah, there was the sought after “the beautiful one.”   Armah and his horde of intellectuals could not tell what was in front of their noses at that time.  So, how could they be that qualified to have a clearer vision of the future?

Looking back to what happened under Nkrumah, in comparison to what followed him, could only cause heavy disappointments among many now.

We, the contemporaries of Nkrumah, overlooked the opportunities available to us at the time instead of accepting the leadership available to us under Nkrumah as worthy - a real leadership that could have served us better. 

We went on to dream about the "beautiful ones" in the future.

As romantic as Ayikwei Armah’s notion of “The Beautiful Ones Are Not Yet Born” was, with its expression of faith in the future, we did a disservice to our present at the time. 

We had the colossus Nkrumah, but we undermined him.  We used the "beautiful ones" notion to salve our conscience and to build up our expectations.  In the end, our expectations collapsed under the weight of unreality.

 Say Nkrumah now anywhere on the continent of Africa and we can only conjure up glimpses of how better the future might have been.

It is acceptable to appreciate this notion of hope in the "beautiful ones."  And to present it to our children as an inspirational idea; one meant to inspire them to surpass us in glory and achievements for the future.  This way we can promote healthy progress and sanctify continuity in aspirations for the generations to come.

But it must not be acceptable to use this tendency of the “beautiful ones” to suppress hope in the present. 

A sentiment of hope for a better future that is built on a conviction of a bad present is a dangerous approach to making progress.  And a faulty one because it already has a grave foundational problem – trading the good in the present for the unknown.

The "beautiful ones are here," we should have cried out.    

Nkrumah’s leadership was exceptional and a necessary benchmark.  It must be remembered that as we aspire for progress, each generation will have its issues and problems that may need to be resolved immediately and not wait for that future of the "beautiful ones.". 

The sensible response should then be to wish among us today individuals who at the critical moment would have enough common sense to govern adequately; at least, not to make matters worse than they were before they came into office.  Only the bold and the intellectually honest must be allowed into offices, even in our villages.

In contrast with the “beautiful ones”, we must guard against the new folly that is creeping up on us - the “Obia Nye Obia” mentality; meaning, we are all equal in skills.  The butcher and the surgeon are all equal.

E. Ablorh-Odjidja, Publisher www.ghanadot.com, Washington, DC, July 13, 2010 

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