When Bad Counsel Becomes Bad Governance

Leadership suffers when those closest to power are chosen for loyalty, mobilisation and flattery rather than competence and wisdom.

Across Northern Nigeria, some political leaders appear increasingly surrounded by people whose greatest value is their ability to organise rallies, dominate social media, provide religious rhetoric or maintain access to the corridors of power. Thugs are mobilised for political gatherings, influencers and entertainers are deployed for online campaigns, while religious extremists and loyalists are sometimes treated as political advisers.

There is nothing wrong with engaging young people, entertainers, religious leaders or grassroots organisers. The problem begins when political usefulness is mistaken for intellectual capacity.

A person who can mobilise a crowd cannot necessarily design an industrial policy. A social-media influencer cannot automatically formulate an economic strategy. A religious preacher may command respect without possessing the expertise required to create jobs or attract investment.

This is where some northern governments appear to be failing.

Beyond roads and public ceremonies, where are the strategies for industrialisation, commercial agriculture, technology, tourism, manufacturing and private-sector investment? Where are the professionals designing economies capable of absorbing millions of young people entering the labour market?

Social interventions, including mass marriage programmes, may provide immediate assistance, but they cannot replace economic development. Marriage does not create factories, jobs or sustainable livelihoods.

The danger is that governments may spend billions addressing immediate political or social pressures while failing to build the productive economy required to sustain future generations.

Northern Nigeria does not lack intelligent people. It has produced world-class academics, professionals, entrepreneurs and technocrats. The question is whether its political leadership is willing to listen to them.

Governors need advisers who can challenge them, not sycophants who merely praise them.

The North needs a new political culture—one that replaces patronage with competence, political mobilisation with economic mobilisation, and short-term popularity with long-term development.

A governor’s greatest achievement should not be the size of his political crowd, but the number of productive citizens, industries and sustainable jobs his administration leaves behind.

By Abdul Kezo IkonAllah
Public Relations Professional, Public Affairs Analyst & New Media Specialist