On Sunday, Uruguay’s iconic leader, Jose Mujica, handed over to Tabare Vazquez who emerged victorious at last year’s November elections. It was a seamless and smooth transition underlined by the famed simplicity of Mujica who attended the event in his trade mark casual attire of a black suit and a shirt without a tie. Mujica who hit global headlines at the beginning of his Presidency by shunning the splendour of the presidential palace, choosing to live on his farm; and by donating 90 per cent of his salary to charities has spawned a legacy that fixes him in the ranks of the world’s most outstanding leaders. Before teasing out useful lessons for Nigeria from an eventful tenure featuring a social contract drawn inclusively to accommodate rising salaries for workers and all-time low unemployment, let us chip in that the world is in the middle of a severe recession of visionary leadership.
Consider for example, that the Barack Obama phenomenon with its promise of racial healing and momentous leadership has petered out. The financial stimulus of 2008 has failed to stimulate an economy which is taking a long time to tide over a great recession. Not just that; Obama has presided over an economy in which inequality has not only risen but has become spectacularly high with the top one per cent owning almost as much wealth as the rest of the nation. Do you want to look at Britain which goes to the polls in May with hardly any excitement or inspiration as there is little to choose between the leader of the two major parties neither of who has an approval rating of up to 50 per cent? David Cameron, to expand the point, no doubt has a superb speaking style but no one pretends any longer that he is a visionary leader in the mould of Britain’s great conservative statesmen.
Japan to take an example from Asia, once celebrated as a haven of innovative leadership, has in the last two decades with one grudging exception witnessed a recycling of inept and visionless leaders, many of them humbled by political scandals. It is this landscape of famished leadership and mediocrity that makes the advent of Mujica, a former Marxist guerilla fighter who spent 14 years in jail and later transformed into a democratic socialist, more arresting. Undeniably, his astonishingly austere lifestyle constitutes a loud rebuke of Nigerian politicians, prodigal, loud and showy in their entirety. To be sure, matters were not always this degenerate.
Chief Obafemi Awolowo, his daughter, Tokunbo recently reminisced, went to work from a modest apartment in Surulere accompanied by a police orderly. He was at the time vice-chairman of the federal executive council. Similarly, Aminu Kano and Mokwugo Okoye both reinforced their advocacy of socialism with self-denying lifestyles which bonded and resonated with the poor masses. Over time however, ostentation and the vulgar display of wealth underlined by decadent societal values which glorified little work and easy money became the norm. Surprising still is the fact that across the political class and perhaps with a few honourable exceptions, one does not discern a consistently reformist and sacrificial mindset along the lines of the just retired president of Uruguay.
This writer, noticing this syndrome among both the ruling party and the opposition has often lamented the tragedy of reforms without reformers. Too often, the establishment is not authoritative enough because of a moral deficit while the opposition does not interrogate in any fundamental sense prevailing values because it does not bring to the table a new set of norms or any different ethical profile. Hence, in contrast to the outrage where our legislators appropriate obscenely high salaries and emoluments, Mujica offers a refreshing paradigm of governance by empathy with the majority.
I do not minimise the difference between Uruguay, a small country with a population of three million and Nigeria projected as one of the world’s most populous countries two decades from now. But even when we take account of population and historical evolution, there is a lot Nigeria and indeed humanity can learn from Uruguay’s former leader. Indeed, his example suggests that, influence is not necessarily the result of size or material endowments, but accrues frequently from moral stamina and the auspicious profiles of honest leaders with a sense of mission. In the same manner, as Nelson Mandela put South Africa on the world map by the audacity of statesmanship, Mujica through visionary governance and leadership by example has created a new identity for his country.
If Nigeria will be respected abroad, it must somehow find a way to create a moral niche for itself in a global environment featuring the capture of state by vested and self-serving interests. The other lesson that Nigeria can learn from Uruguay’s hero is the power to make a difference by simply being yourself rather than a mirror image of others. Too many times, Nigeria exists only as an echo of the prevailing fashions in the industrialised West. Overlooking the fact that the state as an emancipatory project is in serious recession in the West, Nigerian leaders are hooked to the latest governance fashions and economic models from countries that are themselves in throes of self-doubt and turmoil of failed experiments. In a world searching for alternative governance systems and redemptive models, the small country of Uruguay offers a welcome departure from the over-recycled, neoliberal economics dominant in the West.
A few weeks ago, Nigeria’s former Foreign Affairs Minister, Prof Bolaji Akinyemi, regretted the practice whereby our leaders are increasingly making important pronouncements not in Nigeria but in Chatham House, London. Said Akinyemi on a Channels Television programme, “I can hardly believe that this is the same country in which I was Foreign Affairs Minister.” In the not so distant past, some Nigerian leaders understood the need to exhibit national self-confidence by rendering stewardship to Nigerian citizens rather than to the West.
National self-revalidation compels us to re-imagine a Nigerian nation that is not seeking to be more like the West but is eager to present itself to the world on its own terms. Part of the trouble is that our political culture is not articulately fed by a vigorous intellectual system that can challenge established assumptions. This is not the case in Latin America where a robust intellectual tradition has produced for example liberation theology and the recent “no capitalism.” The shallowness of Nigerian political conversation manifests itself in the current avoidance of debate on policy issues and the resort to sharp verbal polemical exchanges and the threat of law suits. In Mujica, we encounter an unrepentant bookworm and a mind consistently replenished by an active reading culture and intellectual debate.
To be sure, Mujica was not without blemishes as he sometimes crossed the threshold between daring and policy adventurism, an instance being his legalisation of the consumption and sale of marijuana. Overall however, he beckons to us as a shining example of the creativity of the human spirit in the area of policy innovation and lasting legacies. In a season when personalities and models around the globe are in disrepair, Nigeria can draw fresh inspiration from the remarkable interventions of Mujica.