From the classical theory of the essence of leadership to its basic concept, the bulk of all arguments settles on “problem solving”. Effective leadership is capacity to deal with problems of immediate concern to the people. The success or failure, thereof, is the capacity or lack of it to square up with any challenge that is of immediate concern to the people. Critical and knotty challenges must be confronted with critical and sometimes unconventional approach.. It cannot be anything otherwise. Such will only lead to fruitless boring repetition of same actions many times over and expecting a different result, which has been attributed to insanity.
Both primitive and modern human society, at various times, had to contend with challenges demanding quick solutions. Some were of such intensity that they threatened the survival of human society. Had humanity not explored its creative and imaginative capacities to combat challenges, the present generation would not have made it to this point of its economic, technological and socio- political development.
Having enjoyed the flagrance and flavours of freshly minted CBN commandoes for the task of rescuing the economy from the doldrums, Cardoso and his lieutenants obviously now know that party time is over. They have had a first feel of the immensity of the task ahead. The response of the economy to their initial attack measures has been one of stubborn resistance of continuous slide in major developmental indices. Of immediate concern is the inexorable stubborn slide of the naira against the dollar to hitherto unknown limits, added to the runaway inflation, the hit on the already weakened purchasing power of the average citizen is deep and terrifying.
Already, there are distant and feeble voices calling for the resignation of Cardoso. Penultimate week, the Centre for Social Justice, Equity and Transparency (CESJET) issued a statement calling for the resignation of the CBN boss, on the ground that he lacks the ideas and experience to drive the economic revolution that Nigeria urgently needs.
No matter how feeble and distant the voices calling for the resignation of the new CBN boss are, it underpins a fundamental reality that his approach so far to the immediate problem of concern to the people is grossly ineffective, giving the impression that in spite of the abundance of experience and qualification on parade from the new actors of the CBN, their understanding and approach to the problem have been overstretched to elastic limit yet with unimpressive result.
As such, the new team must go back to the drawing board and be abreast of the fact that at times like this, laborious repetition of previous actions would not yield different result. Something massive and out-of-the-box must take place. The new team must prove its capacity by lifting some chapters out-of-the-box. The previous injection of $2 billion, followed by the recent $500 million to cushion the pressure on the relentless slide of the naira all seem to have gone unnoticed by the response of the problem it was meant to solve. Deep down, the success of any economic policy is judged by the quality of life it affords the ordinary citizen and the ease of doing business. Nothing of note, at the instance of the injections of funds, seems to have appreciated in the right direction.
Neither the CBN nor the informed section of Nigerians were surprised about the outcome. At present, huge chunk of crude oil sales, the backbone of our FOREX inflow, is staggered to offset foreign debt obligation and backlog of forex owed to businesses. What is left to service current needs and demand is grossly inadequate.
A problem as massive, pervasive and deep rooted like the cantankerous foreign exchange conundrum would need more than the perimeter of experience and approaches being presently deployed by the new management team to size it up. The power of creativity, imagination and will power to do the extraordinary are the critical paraphernalia needed in times of critical knotty challenges. You cannot solve a problem you don’t understand. The type of approach and appliances deployed to confront a challenge are contingent on the nature and thorough understanding of the problem.
Albert Einstein, the genius of our time, in his famous quotes on understanding problems and solution application, which wholesome validity has been acknowledged at all times, said, “If you cannot explain it to a six-year-old then, even you don’t understand the problem”.
A thorough understanding of a problem, no matter how complex, is the capacity to break it down to simpler units such that even the weakest member in the cycle would understand and appreciate the effort. So far, the new team has not proven its understanding of the problem. Little wonder, its effort fell flat and proved ineffective. The solution to a complex problem may not be too difficult yet unusual, but the sixth sense, the power of imagination and creativity, is needed to dig it out.
Nigerians wouldn’t need further boring and lengthy economic jargons and vocabularies, which are beyond the understanding of the majority of the population to know why its previous set of actions fell flat in arresting the slide. The new CBN commandoes, even before initiating a fresh set of approach to tackle the problem at hand, should prove to itself that it thoroughly has a firm grasp and understanding of the problem.
The validity of its understanding should be tested for reasonability and acceptability to the mental and intellectual threshold of the weakest link of the Nigerian citizen enterprise who are the worst hit. Any economic initiative or action which cannot be explained to the understanding of the people worst hit by the problem, and ineffective in solving the absurdity of the present nasty economic down turn is simply a clumsy tepid shot at a terrifying headwind .
It must be said though that the present CBN management cannot be held liable for the problem created by the failures and corrupt practices of the past leadership. The failure of political leadership and corruption in the civil service are contributory to the present woes. The new CBN team must however be honest to itself by opening up its approach to more creative solutions that are deep in critical surgical lobotomy of the entire economy. It matters not if the insane appetite for luxury and undue privileges of people in government, the civil service and top private sector actors who played active role in bringing about the present administration are injured.
The CBN as presently constituted is top-heavy in redundancy overload of children of the ‘who is who’ in Nigeria. Their only qualifying criterion for being in CBN is being children of the mighty and influential. In view of the present state of the nation and the exigency of the task before the new team, we cannot afford having the CBN as a luxurious resort for children of people who are not innocent, if not culpable, in the present sad reality of the Nigeria situation. Those that have been identified as intellectually unproductive and a huge clog in the wheel of critical reform effort that the CBN urgently needs to undergo must be shipped out.
All options must be on the table if Nigeria stands any chance of coming out of the deep valley of economic downturn. The yanking of the insecure hands of the NNPC from crude oil sales, which has now been devolved to the CBN, was one good surgical move .
More of such composite actions across various sectors of the economy must be performed. The alleged role of the government in the recent closure of bureau de change operations in Abuja is a pointer to its desperation to get things fixed in time. CBN should capitalise on this and be firm and bold to itself by subduing and snubbing temptations within its rank, refuse filthy and improper advances from the corridors of power and be courageous in applying critical but remedial solutions.
Mohammed Nuru Yakubu writes via
