 leadership versus rulership. Popular American novelists, late Frank Herbert once said, and I quote, good governance never depends upon laws, but upon the personal qualities of those who govern. The machinery of government is always subordinate to the will of those who administer that machinery. Hence, the most important element of government, therefore, is the method of choosing leaders. And I dare to ask this question, do we have leaders in Africa or are we just ruled by rulers? For me, leadership is some really the capacity and the will to rally men and women to a common purpose and the character which inspires confidence. In view of this definition, I like to disagree with the popular saying that Africa is backward because of bad leadership, because you have to first of all have leaders before you experience good or bad leadership. Suffice it to say that Africa's problem is that she has been plagued by rulership for too long. I like to say that a ruler is someone who behaves like a mathematical ruler. A ruler is rigid and not flexible or adjustable. And the moment you try to bend it, it breaks. A ruler dictates the pace and does not want too many changes. Otherwise, they are bound to break due to lack of emotional intelligence. On the other hand, a leader is someone who behaves like the deed of a pot. Whether you flip the lead upside down or put it in the way it's supposed to be, it will still get the job done. That being said, a leader is a person who is flexible and allows creativity in his or her workplace or constituency and has high emotional intelligence to back that up. In another perspective, rulers are those who rule. To rule is to control, to direct, to impose rules, to dominate and to exercise ultimate power and authority over an area or its people. In contrast, leaders are those who lead. To lead is to guide, to direct on a course, to serve, to take responsibility, to represent and to be on the forefront of positive change. Not the kind of change JPC brought to Nigeria anyways. Leaders have leading, willing followers while rulers have dominated subjects. Rulers impose their authority. Leaders, on the other hand, can end their authority as a matter of expertise, emotional intelligence and people-orientedness. Essentially speaking, good leadership is not about power, benefit or exercise in authority. It's about guiding people to a common peoples in a way that represents common interest. It's about the people and not about the leader or the power. And that is why in same continents and countries, leaders resign when they lose favor with the people who elected them to represent their interests. In Africa, however, resignation does not exist in our political lexicon. Most democratically elected presidents in Africa think like monarchs. They would rather die than really wish power before their tenor elapses or before they are violently ousted from power. Now it's possible that Africans in general and Nigerians in particular may have found no mouse in rulership. But like Lewis Blackwick once said and I quote, a day may come when all hope is lost. When the oceans run red with our blood and our darkest hour is upon us and when that day comes, the red day of reckoning, we turn my days not to our rulers in good times but to our leaders in bad times. Yeah, thanks for that. I'll just quickly chip in here and I'll say that rulers and leaders are non-identical from one another. So you have rulers, people who tend to rule. A ruler can't be simply a smaller controller. Rulers normally rules over the individuals against their will just to tell them what to do. They pretend to do it because of the power that emanates from this individual. There's no charisma, there's no personality attached to it. It's just the power, pure power and they use power of authority. And the very purpose of a ruler is to rule people's lives. On the contrary, I'll say leaders are individuals who lead and they tend to lead by example. They attract followers using their strength of ideas. Well, whereas rulers are quite poor in the idea management side of things, leaders don't demand allegiance. They use the power of attraction, like I said. Rulers tend to be arrogant but leaders are modest and always stay open to suggestions. So a leader can have a suggestion which might seem in his or her head something that is very smart but having considered other people's opinions is liable to change it, might not be immediately but open to suggestions and doesn't believe he's the smartest or she's the smartest person in the room. I can't say rulers are leaders but not. I can say that rulers are leaders but not all front runners are rulers. Right, so I'd like to come from another perspective. Now I tend to be a non-conformist but the thing about leadership, leadership is not soft, it's not flaccid, it's not indecisive. Leadership does not pander to emotions and I think that's when we come at this issue of separative leadership and rulership that we come from that perspective of emotion or sentiment. A leader knows how to appeal to follow us, a ruler is firm. The truth is you can't separate leadership from rulership because in assuming authority, in assuming a forefront position over other human beings, there are times you have to put your foot down, you have to assert your voice, you have to assert your opinion, you have to assert your authority. So I think in a nutshell it's about semantics and personal feelings, sentiments. When we try to separate leadership from rulership and say one is good or the other is bad. I tell you the truth, it's worse to have a leader at the helm that seems to have no direction or has not the power to insist and move people into a particular direction for the greater good. I don't want to mention names but it's a lot easier to have a family that someone who is based on the descriptions, you call a ruler who is not really in tune with the needs of his people but moving us in the direction of progress. That's fantastic. I think a good leader should be able to combine fairness with people-orientedness, right? It's like the difference between rulership and leadership in this context is like the difference between democracy and autocracy. In a democracy, why the leader is looking forward to protect the interests of the people who have elected him? He also understands that there are times when, as a leader, you have to be firm and stick to your decisions. Unlike in the other system where what people want is not really important to the leader. The leader has absolute power, okay? And the idea behind this is in Nigeria we have elected people who seem to be doing what they want to do and not necessarily what the masses want them to do. You know, for me, I'm going to come from a governance perspective. First, I don't agree we have leaders in Nigeria. From that perspective, our two chemics perspective. So what we have in Nigeria is that we have people in political position and not a government. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And if you look at the trace of everything, last leaders I think Africa had were pre-colonial era. We cannot say the colonialism structure did not leave, do a number on our thought process. I look at the early leaders in Africa as Shaka Zulu. Who wasn't even a softie? Right, yes. You know, leadership comes with direction. But then command that direction. If there's anything you're going to pick from leadership for me or I would look at, leadership comes with chatting a course. Every leader had a course. You can pick leaders from different times. Alexander did great. He wanted to expand his nation. You know, Napoleon was a clever vision. Queen Amina of Zarya took her kingdom from Zarya, which is northern Nigeria, extending it up to Ghana. She died somewhere in Ghana. She was killed in a war somewhere in Ghana. And that was leadership. So, but when the colonials came in, we cannot divorce them from this. They taught us how to follow the gunpowder. Because then you'll be like, okay, you have your gods. We have one true god. And if you argue with them, guns. So we've gone to that level. It's gotten so bad that I'll give an example with the National Assembly. National Assembly summons the president on security matters. And the attorney general of the federation comes out and says, you can't summon the president. Yes, in the constitution, it's not written anywhere. But Marku, in the act that creates also in the same constitution that plays in National Assembly, it states that the National Assembly can summon any Nigerian at any point in time, as long as the president is a Nigerian. So we don't even understand this thing. I think we're just used to the gun approach. We have a lot of people in politics who are not in governance. And that's a big problem. In political policy, but not in governance. So the problem is Professor Piero Lumumba of Kenyan legal luminary. He once made a statement. I was listening to him. He said that the problem with Africans is that Africans have a lot of affinity for people without ideas, right? During elections, you see people who have powerful ideas about how they want to transform the nation or the continent, the charts they want to take the nation to. But you discover Africans going for people who have political and economic clout, choosing them over people who have ideas. And that is why at the end of the day, we end up electing politicians and not leaders because people can't give what they don't have, right? If you don't have an idea, you don't have something you want to achieve. You don't have a clear vision. Once you get to that power, you discover that at the end of the day, you just end up exploring the power and not necessarily doing anything with governance. There's something key I always think about, especially in Nigeria. I mean, because I've run for office before, I kind of understand this funny part about Nigerians. Nigerians' problem is that it's not that they don't know which politician is good or not. They do. They clearly do. They always do. The problem is that the entire Nigeria sees Nigeria as a buffet table and everybody's waiting for his turn at the buffet. So what happens is, what happens is, ah, you know, I won't distort Mr. E while he's in power because me, I want to chop my head. I want to chop my head. Ah, no, no. This guy wants to stop everything. Does that appeal to the electorate or just the electorate? It appeals to the electorate because I'll give you an example. You enter power today, I can tell you. Your causes are going to come from the village to Abuja. Where's our contract? Where's our this? Where's our official car? Where's this? Where's that? And we don't want it to spoil because if someone now comes in and says, if someone now comes in and says, okay, I'm going to stop official cars. I'm going to stop. All people in governance are going to be any minimum. Right. It's like, is it my own service? You're not speaking about what you are. I remember once coming down from a hotel, I was coming out of a hotel and then I saw a car drive in and then everyone was like, and then I looked at the man at the back of the car. He looked like one of the governors in the South South. And I was like, oh, is this not this governor? And as he came down from the car, and I was like, you're excellency, you're excellency. But I said, the resemblance is not really there. Guess what? He was a younger brother to the governor. And I almost lost my mind. Like, I was living with him. I can already tell you. I was living with him. You know, he was accepting all the accolades and responding to your excellency calls. And I said to my assistant with me, like, what kind of a joke is this? Oh, that's interesting. You know, even for that, that's even a little close, the brother. Well, we have people that are barbers to his excellency in governance and they have business cards. I know, right? It's a thing. It's really a sad thing. It's time to take some of your comments on the issues discussed here. Ohale Odehora says, reforming the Nigerian constitution is important. Define a new vision from our country. Pull out all the reactionaries, wherever the base, education, healthcare, energy transport and put the entrance beyond the demand of the citizens. Phantom 2K10 says, great build, great minds and great platform. And follow us on our social media platforms on Facebook at plusTVAfrica, hashtag the advocate NG, or on Twitter and Instagram at plusTVAfrica, hashtag the advocate NG. To catch up with previous broadcasts, go to plusTVAfrica.com slash the advocate NG. It's time for our music lessons with Yemi, but only after this break.