Nomination of Justice Tanko Tanko and the Reality of Leadership Standards in Nigeria

There are some people who no amount of training or grooming or education can make literate or progressive in their outlook, gravitational orientation or conduct, basically, their mannerism and world vision and biases are already hard coded in their personalities.

There are others (like me) whose accent cannot change despite living and interacting with all manner of people at various levels overseas, while there are others who come and spend one summer abroad and acquire a European (“acata”) accent for life.

In the field of leadership there are those like Buhari, who despite undergoing the best leadership training program Nigeria has to offer, end up coming across as lacking intellect, polish and finesse and who display shockingly poor leadership skills if you believe all the stories you hear on social media.

The newly appointed CJN is one such person, who despite sitting on the bench for donkey years and submitting briefs and supposedly acquiring a PHD and cross training in sharia law cannot properly explain a technicality within the context of the legal scenario described by the Senate during his nomination hearing.

As in most things in Nigeria a lot of deference is given to age, composure and bearing in public situations, and many leaders or appointees are protected by followers from scrutiny or from situations that would expose their intellectual deficit, they are just given the benefit of doubt that the know of should know what they are doing from being in the position.

Like many, the Senate went ahead and gave the CJN the benefit of doubt by approving his nomination perhaps because the either believe he did not understand the question or it is a moot point in the general scheme of things in Nigeria where knowledge is immaterial or from the futility of rejecting his nomination that the status quo would not tolerate.

The CJN, from his nomination as a judge does not owe his appointment to certified knowledge, but from a quota system and it is not farfetched to believe that as he was elevated over the years he was assigned very competent clerks to write his briefs, he just receives political directives and passes it on to his clerks who do the job for him by writing his briefs. 

It is the same way Obasanjo has the presence of mind to get writers to serialize his experiences into books and now he is an author. Buhari and Abacha have perhaps never written a speech in their lives, but read speeches prepared for them by speech writers whom they gave broad overviews, all they needed to have was to be literate enough to read the speech, no small feat and mostly overlooked by Nigerians who categorize military leaders as illiterates. 

What is worrisome is not Tanko indiscretion on the Senate floor, but the low level of intellectualism needed for positions in Nigeria today. In developed countries Judges most times have experience serving as adjunct professors of constitutional law at universities which gives them the learned skill of breaking down a question by counter questioning to understand the question before responding, they would also have had SAN level experience litigating in court and being cross-examined endlessly to hone the speaking craft at a master level to not be exposed at a confirmation hearing in responding to intellectual not political issues. 

Other times the legal questions on the bench are so complex from over 200 years of jurisprudence with so many counter arguments and precedents that a strong fundamental grounding in the law is required and its absence would be exposed in lower courts when judgements are overturned, ridiculed by colleagues or a brief cited for criminal plagiarism.

Now while, Tanko May have been caught unawares and exposed does not necessarily mean that his colleagues on the bench are any better given their lack of exposure, base education or lack of continuation of intellectualism or education once appointed to the bench.

It has been alluded that Buhari as a General never passed any of the military promotional or staff college exams he attended, the same goes for Abacha who even performed abysmally as an instructor yet they went on to become Generals. In developed climes extensive intellect is required for some positions of leadership, for instance, a submarine commander needs to understand physics and engineering to be put in charge of a billion-dollar submarine or a general in charge of nuclear missiles, in such cases it is a national security necessity to have specialized knowledge to avoid a catastrophic accident. 

In they area of finance you cannot have any CEO below the level of quant because one mistake could lead to the loss of billions overnight, a finance minister of such an economy needs to dream and sleep quadratic equations and other economic models to prevent a nation slipping into bankruptcy.

Therein lies the confusion in Nigeria where the public is constantly being inundated with reports of Governors and even Senators who claimed nonexistent degrees and certifications, the issue is not filing false certificates, but wondering how on earth they got into leadership positions and acquired wealth with a shocking lack of theoretical education necessary to be effective in such positions beyond mere likeability and personal knowledge to be a transformative leader. 

It is time for the nation to begin to address these issues from the grassroots through weeding out incompetents through certifications, for instance the civil service and army have exams as prerequisites before promotions and more qualifications need to be statutorily enacted into law to qualify for positions beyond a mere school leaving certificate.

In the end, the system may not be as sophisticated as we think it to be if anyone regardless of “academic” qualifications can do a job, because in all honesty what do all the outdated books studies in universities to acquire a useless degree have to do with wading through Nigeria’s sociological and foundational problems.

Conclusively, Nigerians at the root level need to stop showing and exhibiting an anti-intellectual bias, you cannot vote for Obasanjo over Falae or vote for Buhari over Jonathan without in the end promoting low intellectual or communicative ineptitude.

But the fact that the communicated sufficiently to gain the vote of Nigerians forces one to begin to reassess what exactly we require in leaders, because clearly it is borrowed and needs to be redefined from European to Nigerian standards.

By Terhemba Osuji