‘You cannot have two captains in a ship’ is a settled societal belief which rests on the notion that the buck must stop with one person who is considered the Captain of the ship, whatever that ship is. I often wonder however, what would happen if the buck stopped with a wrong Captain as it so often happens. Would the Titanic, for example, have escaped the iceberg and the ensuing catastrophe if another captain was in charge of the ship? Would its fate have been any different if there were in fact, many Captains putting heads together to chart its voyage? If two heads are said to better than one, then surely five heads should be better than two as in Presbyterian Democracy, or Round Table Conference? Or do ‘too many cooks always spoil the broth?’.

Leadership is a fascinating concept. It is one that has intrigued me for a long time. Destiny threw me into the rarefied realm of leaders when I was given an interview column at the Punch newspapers. For almost a decade, I met and interviewed leaders in various fields across the globe. From politics, to diplomacy, to business, to sports, to entertainment, to heads of world and regional organisations, I met them all. I met the taciturn and the voluble; the flamboyant and the simple; the arrogant and the humble; the intelligent and the stupid – yes, many leaders are not very intelligent. I soon realized that all the human foibles and weaknesses reside among leaders as well. That realization led to a loss of some of their mystique for me. This probably helped in doing my job better because I was no longer awed by even the best of them. In any case, I was the one who asked the questions and directed proceedings for the hour or so that the interview would take, so I was ‘the leader’ in the room. The first Nigerian M.D of Nigeria’s defunct sugar company – we did produce sugar in Nigeria at a time, but that is another story for another time – told me at an interview that to get to the top, your ‘face must fit’. That buttressed by belief that many leaders ‘found’ themselves in positions of leadership due to factors extraneous to intellect, knowledge, conviction, strength of character, and integrity – attributes we all assume leaders must possess. It also gelled with my experience that there are very few natural leaders out there. Many in positions of authority have been rewarded for their greed, lust, ambition, obsequiousness and duplicity. That belief and my experience have heightened my fears about leadership at home and abroad.

They should heighten your fears too when you realise that it has always taken a few leaders to alter the course of history in the world and how loose the criteria for picking those leaders have become. What is happening in Nigeria, and the world at large today, has brought the issue of leadership again to my consciousness. Would there have been the two World Wars if Hitler and Stalin had not found themselves in positions of power at the time? And would there have been a World War 111 if a different leader between Khrushchev and Kennedy had blinked first during the Cuban crisis? And now, how long would it take before a couple of unstable, megalomaniac leaders lead the rest of us to another World War? The world population hovers around eight billion; yet those who are truly capable of triggering the process of World War 111 are just about half a dozen – a rough ratio of 1: I billion. It does worry me that these leaders are not the best for the times. The past three decades have witnessed festering tension in sme troubled spots around the world. Any of those spots could cause a World War if badly handled. Today, at least two of those spots are inflamed. They need to be properly handled before they escalate further. They need calmer heads than we currently have because there is no clearly defined right or wrong in the Israel/ Palestine conflict just as there is no clearly defined right or wrong in the Russia/Ukraine conflict since all the sides can lay legitimate claims to being wronged. That it has taken wars to bring the festering issues in these areas to the fore is a failure of world leadership especially that of the United States which has shown obvious partisanship in the wars. The U.S, this self-chosen policeman of the world, is losing its place everyday as an effective arbiter. This development is unfortunate because America is the only Superpower in the world at the moment. Is Biden the right U.S. President for this tense time? All the sides to the two wars are hoping the military outcome of the wars would be favourable to them. But victory in a war is pyrrhic at best. It just suppresses the resentment of the vanquished until another war as we have seen time and time again. And the scars of war are difficult to erase.

Talking about leadership, would Nigeria’s trajectory have been different if we had a different set of leaders at Independence? Would we have had a war? And having had one, could we have handled our post war experiences better? Successful countries have had good leaders at critical periods of their history. We have not been lucky in that regard. Which is why we seem to be diving into one crisis after another. Unfortunately, we as a people do not seem to know what we want from our leaders. We focus more on primordial sentiments than the ability to get things done for the good of all.

The attribute of an effective leader in my opinion, is the ability to solve whatever critical issue is at hand which means these attributes vary depending on the situation. But if I was to choose three attributes of an effective leader from years of study and interaction, I would choose vision, intuition, and strength of character. Vision includes the ability to see the bigger picture, intuition includes empathy and an understanding of human dynamics and strength of character includes the ability needed to focus and to push their vision to the end.

Finally, do I believe some people are born leaders? Yes. But born leaders are fewer than we think. And unfortunately, most of them don’t seek power. Most people in power across the world are opportunists. It’s a frightening prospect given that our survival depends on them.

•Muyiwa Adetiba is a veteran journalist and publisher. He can be reached via titbits2012@yahoo.com

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