Nigeria more divided now than 2 years ago - Utomi

Respected academic and political economist of note, Prof. Pat Utomi, has taken a hard look at unfolding developments in the polity and President Muhammadu Buhari’s 11-month old tenure and declared that Nigeria is more divided today than it was two years ago.
Utomi who played a key role in enthroning the current administration told The AUTHORITY on Saturday that the spirit of Nigeria is much challenged today, a situation that represents a failure of leadership.
His words: “I think Nigeria today is actually more divided than it was two years ago. The spirit of Nigeria is much challenged today. That is simply failure of leadership.
“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 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.”
Recalling that for the first time, Nigerians stepped out and aligned with the opposition resulting in the removal of an incumbent, Utomi regretted that instead of leveraging on the new reality, “the old hegemony game started.”
According to the erudite professor, “Nigeria came out and aligned with the opposition and for the first time, an incumbent was removed...That was why I said it was a classic opportunity for good leaders to bring everybody into the house.
“But that did not happen. What happened was that the old hegemony game started. People cornering something, excluding that person, pushing that person and they just couldn’t get it together.
“So everybody was pissing into the house and the house smells. But if everybody was inside the house, pissing out, we would be erecting an edifice going forward. It was purely a case of leadership failure.”
Analysing another arena of governance that he believes gives stability and sustainability to socio-political development, Utomi stated that what Africa needs is strong institutions, not strong men adding that strong men are traditionally disruptive of progress.
His words: “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 men before him have put in place. That is why we have weak institutions. We need to progress with strong institutions.”
Read full interview in The AUTHORITY on Monday.