Zulum’s Chinese leadership model prescription

NIGERIA’S leadership deficit is glaring from afar: the leadership is self-centred, corrupt, and clueless. It is the classic recipe for underdevelopment despite the potential for greatness. To counter this, Governor Babagana Zulum of Borno State recently argued for the Chinese leadership model as a panacea for Nigeria’s leadership crisis.

He says the Chinese leadership model emphasises a structured, merit-based system over traditional elections. This is a major departure from the ideals of democracy, which emphasises people selection.

“In China, they do selection versus election,” Zulum said. “They first identify credible leaders with proven integrity based on their records. They evaluate the performance of those who have held public office, then select the best, and afterwards, they subject the chosen men candidates to an election.”

It is assumed that this recommendation comes from the governor’s observance of a leadership deficit that is evident at all levels of government in the country and the glaring dearth of leaders who are genuinely willing to serve but are feathering their nests.
Although China is not a democracy in the real sense of the word, the high quality of leadership has helped transform it into an economic and military superpower.

From Mao Tse Tung to Deng Xiaoping and the incumbent leader, President Xi Jinping, it is obvious that the high quality of leadership has propelled the country forward.

Another country in Asia, Singapore, is a shining example of how meritocracy can uplift a country. Singapore has become a bastion of meritocracy and incorruptibility based on the quality of leadership offered by the ruling People’s Action Party.
The founding father of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, ensured that meritocracy was enshrined as the guiding principle of the PAP. The fact that the ruling system using the best, brightest and incorruptible is still working in the country today shows that it is practicable in a democracy.

In Nigeria, in the first and second republics, the leadership recruitment processes adopted by the political parties seemed to have been better than now.

Most of those presented to contest political offices then were people with unblemished records in public and private practices.
Some were accomplished educationists, lawyers, journalists, technocrats, businessmen and others who attended verifiable institutions.

However, since the advent of the Fourth Republic, which has been the longest in the country’s democratic experiment, leadership quality has been declining. Accountability has also sunk to a deplorable level.

The current political parties seem to be picking candidates based on their deep pockets and how well-connected they are to godfathers, rather than what they bring to the table in terms of high quality of character, unblemished records, and educational attainment.

The result has been atrocious: the country is rated low in most development indices and being plunged into unimaginable economic and political crises.
Rescuing the country from the leadership crisis will entail raising the bar of the leadership recruitment system to ensure that the best and the brightest come to the fore to pilot the country out of its crisis.

This is not an advocacy for the wholesale adoption of the Chinese and Singaporean systems. Therefore, conscious efforts should be made to encourage parties, the major recruitment centres for leadership in a democratic system, to up their leadership recruitment criteria by embracing meritocracy and integrity as parameters for choosing candidates.

The electoral law could be amended to promote independent candidacy to enable more competent leaders to emerge from the electoral process. 

Currently, the leadership recruitment system at the party level is skewed in favour of money bags. 

The political parties can redeem themselves by promoting meritocracy, and deliberately fielding candidates above board.