Yes, quit! Again, here is the critical juncture at which Keshi is an excellent exemplar. As I said above, he ought to have pushed back against no-good administrators. He didn’t. Then history put him on the spot in Sudan. When his Super Eagles lost to Sudan last month in Khartoum in a Cup of Nations qualifier, it was a historic loss for Nigeria and a historic victory for Sudan. It was reported that it was the first time in 40-plus years that the Nigerian national football team would lose a match to Sudan. That is historic, however one looks at it. That ought to have been the ultimate affront to anyone’s professional dignity. In other societies, the sense of self of the coach would have made him or her decide that, as the coach, the ultimate responsibility lies with him or her. The dignified, graceful response would be resignation.
But not in Nigeria. Outside of Tai Solarin, in the eighties of the last century, who resigned his office on account of an appearance of impropriety—he was not even directly accused—I can’t recall any public office-holder in Nigeria resigning his or her portfolio on account of historic, spectacular failures on their watch. What did Keshi do after the disaster in Khartoum: he begged for patience and understanding; he accused unknown others of seeking to sabotage his efforts; and so on. At no time did he have the guts to say the only thing that would show that he had any self-respect as a person and as a professional: “Dear Nigerians, I am sorry. For whatever reason the debacle in Khartoum happened, as the coach, I am responsible for the failure. I quit.”
Not only would that have been the right thing to do, it would also have been the classy thing to do. Contrary to his thinking, owning your failure does not diminish your worth. To the discerning mind, one who is able to recognise when she has fallen short is more likely a better manager of talent and matériel than one who forever disclaims responsibility.
Unfortunately, this is not how we behave in Nigeria. Back in 2009, after the elections and the subsequent attack against the opposition in Iran, the Police Minister there resigned after the police invaded the students’ hostel at Tehran University and one student was killed. He took responsibility. The South Korean minister in charge of maritime safety resigned in the wake of the ferry disaster that claimed the lives of so many school children earlier this year.
Our Interior Minister presided over the loss of multiple young lives in an exercise that he concocted for which he charged the candidates exorbitant fees to participate and he is still in office. He did say that he took responsibility but, in his warped mind, that did not include the shame of failure making him to hand in his resignation. It is obvious that neither he nor we, in whose name he holds office, really, truly, understand what responsibility means in the modern setting.
Of course, he and we can always deploy the canard: “Nothing spoil if we do not understand what responsibility means; English is not our mother-tongue.” I guess no mother-tongue in Nigeria has the equivalent concepts of shame, failure, and responsibility to make us be alert to their meanings and entailments. It is why a vice-chancellor at the ObafemiAwolowo University, Ile-Ife, would have eight students lose their lives to mindless, on-campus, violence under his watch and would have to be removed by the appointing authorities. It never occurred to him to say: “I do not deserve to continue in office after this catastrophe.” And, horror of horrors, he has now metamorphosed into a so-called leader of Yorùbá people. If being led by people of that ilk is part of what it is to be Yorùbá, please let me off that train right now! I am sure that becoming a governor or a senator is in Abba Moro’s future.
The list is endless. It does not matter how many air disasters occur, the aviation minister took responsibility but did not feel the need to resign till she was reshuffled out of office. What if the same road—the Lagos-Benin Expressway––had been built over and over again, and the roads have become killing fields on account of poor management, the minister of works can sleep well at night; he is responsible but there is no need to vacate office. Our eminent professors of science and technology are content with presiding over non-functioning electricity generation and distribution systems as long as they are V.I.P.s. Whatever failures may attend their tenure cannot be their responsibility.
The appointing authorities, too—the President, state governors, university governing councils, etc.—share the same mentality: the minister has already taken responsibility. Obviously, for them, saying so is enough! Why fire her, again? The problem is much deeper, though. Just as office holders have no discernible selves that could be held to account, the conditions of appointment and the expectations that attach to office-holding are cut from the same cloth.
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