The Horn Of Africa States: The Failures In The Choice Of Leadership – OpEd
The failure of many countries or for that matter any community or state always goes back to its choice of leadership and more often imposed leaderships. To lead a nation is a critical matter as the lives of millions of people depend upon the actions a potential leader and the decisions such a leader would make.
It is a vitally important element which most people of the Horn of Africa do not pay much attention to, but which determines not only the wellbeing of the populations within a certain area, a country but also those of neighboring countries and regions as well, and at times, the whole world.
Most citizens of the Horn of Africa ultimately belong to tribes and clans and sub-clans, before belonging to a state, which paradoxically shows the ultimate loyalty of the individual. It is how societies and countries of the region have failed abjectly. It is often the worst among a tribe and/or a clan who come forward, because one is loud and offensive towards others, which silences the good guys, the efficient, the qualified, the better persons and distances them from power. Eventually it appears that societies in the Horn of Africa States region throw up the worst among them to the positions of power.
No wonder, the region reaps the fruits of the wrong choices it makes. Such fruits include among others civil wars, wars with neighbors, hunger, refugees running out of the region, diseases, religious terror groups and extremists that kill and maim, for no apparent reason, poor people in small markets and streets or innocent travellers in hotels and other accommodations, and ultimately underdevelopment.
The tribes and clans of the region, who find themselves in countries, not of their making, fight over the power echelons of the state governance and since the leaderships have not come through the selection of the competent people or visionary leaders but through those who can insult most, the other tribe and/or clan, the affairs of nations in the region fall into the wrong hands.
How would democracy then work in such an environment? Democratic processes need nominating the best, most competent, most qualified candidates, with meticulous emphasis or detailed exposure of these qualities including asset declarations, good conduct and moral integrity. Qualification does not refer to only education but also humanitarianism, visionary leadership, moral integrity and the skills related to public service.
Most good people shun public service as it puts them in difficult positions which requires them to face powerful others on the wrong side of the law. Good leaders are those who have the moral strength to face wrongdoers, whoever they are, even from the same tribe and/or clan or family members, and it is they who should be selected as candidates for any position of power from a presidency to a prime minister, to ministers or any other position lower down in the echelons of power in governance. This is the only way forward towards transparent, responsible, and accountable governance in the region.
This is not limited to the executive branch of governance but also the legislative branch, where the election of candidates for a parliamentarian seat should also go through the same vetting process. The experiences, the educational qualifications, achievements, tax issues, good conduct and behavior within the public domain, asset declarations, and moral integrity of the individual should be some of the main determinants for selecting a candidate.
Leadership requires qualities that motivate, guide, and hence lead others towards a goal. It is natural but can also be developed over time with effort and learning. But above all, it requires honesty, integrity and instilling trust in people. It is a trait that seems to be missing in leaderships of the Horn of Africa States region, where fear and cowing others, appears to be the main tools applied by leaderships. This gives rise to the ever-continuing cycle of violence as it is natural for most people to respond to violence with violence, and more especially in the Horn of Africa.
It is a region where violence appears to be as natural as breathing of air. The Tigray ordeal, the ongoing Amhara war, the Afar/Somali war, the Oromo/Somali war, the Benishangul uprising, the Oromo/Oromo wars, the Ethiopian/Somali strained relations the Ethiopian/Eritrean continuing conflict, the Ethiopian push for access to a sea and its inability not accept its status as a landlocked country, all point to a region, which lacks visionary leaderships that can instill peace in the region and can have the countries develop together into an economically integrated region.
The concept of conquest and being strong when their populations are mostly hungry is difficult to explain on the part of the leaderships of the region. It is difficult to make them understand that a good leader is accountable, adaptable, trustworthy, empathetic, visionary and purposeful and can eventually communicate with his population well. They seem to be acting as kings of the past in this twenty first century where technology has exposed everything and the internet remains an open book, in this age of Artificial intelligence. Why should they be copying someone in the past who was maiming and killing people at his whim?
