NFF: Limits of executive recklessness By Bola Bolawole

Not long ago, the United States’ President Barak Obama counseled that Nigerians should build strong institutions and not strong men. Because on issues concerning Africa, First World leaders are always duplicitous, it is natural to suspect their panaceas to our multifarious problems, especially when past prescriptions by them have exacerbated rather than ameliorated our circumstance. In a sense, strong personalities acting in the right direction are needed to tackle the gargantuan problems that confront us. Time and again, we have seen the adverse effects of weak leadership on governance. Weak leaders are often ineffective and unable to assert themselves even where they seemingly have good intentions; thereby giving rein to impunity and all manner of corrupt tendencies. The caveat, however, is that strong leaders may not necessarily translate into good leaders; we have had strong personalities who have been ruinous and banal. Strong leaders operating within weak institutions are sure recipe for disaster as they ride roughshod over everyone and impose their whims and caprices. We have suffered so much in the hands of leaders who take advantage of weak institutions to wreak havoc on the polity.
Therefore, it is safer to have strong leaders and strong institutions going hand-in-hand. Incompetent leaders in strong institutions wreak havoc all the same, like George Bush Jnr. in the United States, but where the institutions are strong enough; their aridity is mitigated, even arrested, to some extent. Our bane has been that institutions here have perpetually been weak – whether we have weak or strong leaders. Therefore, where we have had assertive but cantankerous leaders, they have imposed their fancies. Weak institutions are never able to restrain strong but bad leaders. Where, on the other hand, leaders are weak, weak institutions are unable to step in to fill the void. Under Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, Nigerians grappled with a weak leader operating within weak institutions. The outcome was impunity at an astounding level. Now under Muhammadu Buhari, we are confronted with a strong leader intent on riding roughshod over weak institutions. So far, it has required the collective effort of a motley crowd of strange bed-fellows to keep Buhari in check.
Here, executive power is the next thing to recklessness. Little wonder, then, that governors love to be addressed as “Executive Governor”. It is a warning to anyone who cares to listen that the person so addressed has “full powers” to do and undo. In the days of yore, political theorists, in an effort to define the almighty powers wielded by Parliament, likened its might to being able to change a man into a woman and a woman into a man. No more! That description more aptly fits the Executive in today’s Nigeria. And it is not only the President or State Governors that wield executive powers with reckless abandon; heads of Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs) of government, chief executives, both in the private and public sectors are also Lords of the Manor in their own rights. Which is why we are daily regaled with tales of humongous amounts frittered or embezzled outright by chief executives all over the place. Once an official has executive powers, the whole organisation – human and material – is at his beck and call. With executive power, their every word carries the force of law and they become he or she “whose orders must be obeyed”. Executive rascality or lawlessness has poisoned the Nigerian system so terribly; I dare to say that it is at the roots of the monumental corruption that threatens to torpedo the country.
Take, for instance, the Nigeria Football Federation, whose executive (!) president, Amaju Pinnick, said recently would never again appoint an indigenous coach for the senior national team, the Super Eagles. And should Pinnick have executive powers, then, that decision is final; except, of course, someone else with bigger executive power than Pinnick’s countermands the NFF boss. Reminds one of Chukwuemeka Ike’s “My Mercedes Benz is bigger than yours”; if my own executive power is bigger than yours, then, I can countermand you and get away with it; until someone else with bigger executive powers shows up to also countermand me. There is no system in place. No organisational goals and procedures. No institutional processes. No traditions and no cultures. All there is to it are the whims and idiosyncrasies of the Chief Executive. His voice is that of God. But the moment he leaves, the new man who steps in can, in just one day, reverse everything that had been done. He, too, begins to ride rough-shod as he deems fit. Is that not why we have policy summersaults; abandoned projects all over the place; moving backward and forward and wasting valuable time and scarce resources? Pinnick overshot himself, however, when he spoke with an air of finality on the suitability or otherwise of indigenous coaches for our national teams. Will he always be there as chief executive?
Assuming even that the Pinnick outburst approximates the considered opinion of the NFF, so many points stand against it. One: Times like these when the country is going through financial crisis in not opportune to engage in the money-miss-road jamboree of wasting scarce foreign exchange on foreign coaches. Two: Unemployment figures are not only staggering already, they are also climbing at an alarming rate; giving jobs Nigerians can do to foreigners is a most insensitive thing to do at this point in time. Three: Foreign coaches do not jump from the sky but are products of painstakingly efforts of other countries. Going after the finished products rather than learning to produce the products confirms our mentality as insatiable consumers of imported goods as against being a producer-nation. From the importation of tooth pick, we now add the importation of football coaches! We prefer to go beg for fish to eat rather than learn to catch fish. This way, we shall never become self-sufficient in anything. Four: Oliseh was not a good pick from the word “go” and everyone familiar with the trajectory of the ex-Super Eagles captain knew where the amorous relationship between him and NFF would end right from the outset. So, the Oliseh case cannot be said to be representative of indigenous coaches. Five: Is there any indigenous coach that the NFA/NFF have not had problems with? Can we say in clear conscience that all the indigenous coaches have been bad while only the NFA/NFF have been the saints? Six: Foreign coaches that have come here have also had their own fair share of problems with NFA/NFF, with some of them even leaving in circumstances as sudden and embarrassing as Oliseh’s.
From Samson Siasia to Stephen Keshi to Sunday Oliseh and now the NFF has run cap-in-hand back to Siasia. “But it has happened unto them according to the true proverb, The dog is turned to his own vomit again; and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire” (2 Peter 2: 22b). Time has come for NFF to engage in serious soul-searching and heed Cassius’s advice to Brutus in William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar: “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings”. Need we say more?