UNCREATIVE LEADERSHIP

As I woke up this morning from a disturbing nightmare, I keep thinking if we going to get any better as a people and as a country.
Are we forever going to remain a nation of consumers (like the locusts) and fraudsters? Are things ever going to improve or have we set ourselves up for one endless bottomless fall to becoming a failed state? Let me not attempt to share my nightmare with you, least it becomes your “day mare.”

How did we find ourselves in this rot? Why did we allow ourselves to sink this low? Are we all guilty or is it just the fault of most of the uncreative leaders we have had for donkey years? Our lives can be filled with creative moments, whatever we do, as long as we are flexible and open to new possibilities, willing to pulse beyond the routine.
America is going through one of the toughest times ever; yet, everyday I watch CNN, I can feel the concern of the leadership. Poor Obama inherited all the mess: debts, unemployment, which his predecessors created. I hear his words of encouragement to Americans. I see his all hands-on-deck attitude approach to leadership. He is aware that his people have never had it so bad. He is going the extra mile to change the face of Washington and politics, just to calm the pulse of frustrated Americans, whose American dream may be crumbling. Are you with me?
Am talking about bright ideas that get you out of a logjam, like figuring out how to squeeze three more feet of closet space out of your bedroom, or how to pack more time into your day, without giving up any of the other things you have to, or love to do.

The other day I was with one of the ministers and he kept complaining about how he can’t even find time to answer his phone anymore; how his friends and village people keep packing themselves to Abuja; how, because of all the winches, he can’t concentrate and do his work. Hmmm! If a minister is saying that, what will your president say, having in mind the Nigerian situation and condition? So, all you people in Aso Rock and on the corridors of power, could you please tell me, how President Obama manages to do his exercises in the morning, makes time with his family and special time for his two lovely kids everyday, in the middle of all the wahalas he inherited?Consider the myriad faces of creativity.

Groundbreaking ideas, like debts-for-land swaps that save tropical forest while helping impoverished countries; Ghandi’s strategy of protesting injustice with non violence; Grand visions of hope and truth that show the way to others; the bill of rights; Martin Luther king’s “I have a dream” speech. Whether great or small, each of these examples points to the essence of a creative act, one that is both novel and appropriate. An innovation is different from what’s been done before, but that’s not enough; it can’t just be bizarre or eccentric. It must “work.” To be creative, it must somehow be correct, useful, valuable, and meaningful.

However, it’s not enough just to be novel and useful. An important dimension of creativity, especially the kind of efforts that influence others and for which people become famous, is the audience. There is a crucial social dimension to the creative act. “Being creative means you do something, which is, first of all, unusual, that other people take it seriously. I mean the Charly Boy image has always been unusual, but the reason many no longer dwell on the persona any longer is because they have found the image somehow adaptive to first arresting attention long enough to pass serious social and political messages, and bottom-line, it being effective.

So, if I say I have found a way to convey twice as much information in the same period of time to make you enjoy it more, that’s creative, and even if it’s very unusual, it would catch on because it’s an effective thing to do. Indeed, many of the world’s most creative people have had to spend years pursuing their crafts in a lonely vigil, hounded by “badbeles,” people who just didn’t get it at first. Virtually none of the great men and women whose creative drive has transformed the discipline in which they worked was met with acceptance at first. Most were attacked, (like Charly boy) but knew in their hearts that theirs was a right course anyway. Any creative effort that does not take hold in a given field must be persuasive to others; this social dimension makes creativity akin to leadership. A successful leader is a successful creator.

A successful creator is someone who gives other people a different way of looking at things or at the world. People who are creative are always thinking about the environment in which they work and operate in. They are always tinkering. They’re always saying: “What makes sense here; what doesn’t make sense?” and if it doesn’t make sense, can I do something about it?

However, in Nigeria, as usual, we become narrow minded in the ways we think about creativity. We tend to think of creativity as rare field, artists are creative; musicians are creative, poets, filmmakers, dancers etc are. What about the bricklayer, the politicians, the ministers, the lecturers? For them to stand out, they must be creative.Creativity begins with an affinity for something; it’s like falling in love.
The most important thing is for an individual to feel some kind of strong connection to something. People who are passionate about what they are doing don’t give up easily. When frustration comes, they persist. When people are resistant to their innovation, they keep going anyway. Sticking to it is the genius.

The word leadership has a lot to do with role modelling, strong and quality character, sincerity of purpose, motivation and influence, humility, commitment, service, passion and most importantly creativity. Emphasis is placed on the later because it is the nucleus that sustains the rest with an ambiance of beauty, innovation, effectual quality for governance and true leadership.
Creativity, in itself, defines leadership because true leadership can only be achieved in an atmosphere of outlandish creativity. Leadership sets standard, defines the standard, epitomizes the standard, communicates the standard, implements the standard, replicates the standard, reviews the standard and most importantly, leadership translates the standard into tangible, accessible and substantive realities.

Our country Nigeria has continuously suffered wickedness of all sorts. The leadership has not been able to rise to the occasion for want of creativity. Crimes, ranging from bribery and corruption, siphoning of public funds, abject poverty, infrastructural collapse, moral decadence and social vices and much more, have now become the order of the day.
Most of our leaders have travelled abroad to see how things work in other countries; they enjoy themselves in the host countries and admire how things work. And I will always ask, how come they never learn anything from all that they see? How come from one government to the next, it’s always the same story, no difference, nothing to show for all our years of independence? How come we have always had leaders who lack passion, who never want to standout or do something great, leaders who are never interested in writing their names in the book of history, thieving leaders who are bent on impoverishing Nigerians? Is it that they really don’t care?

Charles Oputa (Charly Boy) in the sun