LEADERSHIP?A PHILOSOPHICAL EXPLORATION OF PERSPECTIVES IN AFRICAN, 
CARIBBEAN AND DIASPORA POLITIES*
 

John Ayotunde Isola Bewaji

Abstract:
This essay is aimed at provoking dialogue on the often neglected 
aspect of the African and Diaspora academics? philosophical reflective 
obligation to each other, to their contemporary societies and to 
posterity - leadership. I question the notion of ?leadership? as is 
prevalent in the discourse of contemporary developing societies of 
Africa and its Diaspora, whereby anyone who assumes power or attains 
prominence is described as ?leader?. I argue that, especially in these 
societies, there is a disconnection between the governed population and 
the ?leadership?, which is a consequence of a dysfunctional leadership 
metaphysic, epistemology and psychology. I prefer to delineate 
?leadership? from ?rulership?, to separate de facto Africa and Diaspora 
realities from de jure (Cf. Burns 1978: 2). This is because 
?leadership?, as I understand the concept, is a normative concept to 
which ?rulership? is not necessarily a synonym. Thus, Western media and 
their satellite appendages? Africa and Diaspora media references to 
?leaders? is often uninformed, at the most charitable, and mischievous, 
in plain language.

I propose to do three things in this essay: first, to highlight the 
?leadership? issue as a problem in Africa, Caribbean and Diaspora 
polities; second, to dilate on the different origins, causes, effects 
and implications of the problem in these societies, and third, to 
indicate why I think a philosophical approach to the analysis of the 
problem will help find solutions to the problem, especially by 
indicating what criteria will have to be met for the development of an 
adequate Third World sensitive theory of leadership.
Introduction ? Theorizing Leadership
A philosophically robust concept map of ?leadership? is critical to 
understanding the socio-economic, political and technological 
challenges faced by African, Caribbean and Diaspora polities. I have 
been interested in determining the extent to which, for example, the 
type of ?leadership? that a society has, is responsible for the type of 
society that arises and is developed; two, in investigating why has 
?leadership? not been a philosophically interesting concept to African 
and Diaspora academia, whereas sex, death, gender, happiness, life 
after death, punishment, trust, culture, justice, identity, community, 
war, peace, meaning, truth, science, art, mind, belief, knowledge, 
evil, God, existence, globalization, etc., have all been considered 
fundamental philosophical issues deserving of critical and analytical 
discourse; three, in determining why we require references from former 
teachers, employment supervisors, church leaders and even sureties for 
employment to positions of responsibility and management while we do 
not conduct background checks, examine school records or ask for 
recommendations from people foisting themselves on third world 
societies as ?leaders?; and four, in inquiring why do Western societies 
tolerate so-called (inept, morally bankrupt, visionless and even 
despicable predatory parasites as) ?leaders? for other societies 
(especially African and Diaspora societies) which they will not, at 
least openly, tolerate for themselves.

The most important understanding of philosophy that I favor is one 
that regards the discipline and practice not as an arcane, rarefied, 
pedantic and irrelevant speculations of idle white middle/leisure class 
males but as one which reflects and is a reflection on human efforts to 
understand themselves, their environment as determinants of their 
cognitions, aspirations and limitations. Consequently, I delved into 
intrinsically contemporary philosophical texts to see if there would be 
illuminations on the concept from which dialogue on the matter may 
commence. I was very disappointed that there was no direct philosophy 
text that deemed ?leadership? fundamental enough to give it space and 
critique. Discourses on leadership in philosophical circles in the West 
are so meager and far in between to be helpful. Apart from Plato?s 
Republic, St. Augustine?s The City of God, Nicolo Machiavelli?s Prince, 
discussions of virtues in society have been either in terms of morality 
or escapist and evasive prescriptions of lives for the general 
population as in Rawls? A Theory of Justice. The works of African and 
African-American (including Caribbean and Caribbean Diaspora) 
intellectuals and statesmen like Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Du 
Bois, Marcus Mosiah Garvey, Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere and Obafemi 
Awolowo, to mention a few, have not attracted mainstream commentary and 
the intellectual engagement they deserve in African and Diaspora 
academia. But I have found Garvey and Essien-Udom (eds.) More 
philosophy and opinions of Marcus Garvey (1977) very interesting, 
though lacking in the type of exercise that philosophers call rigor of 
critique and analysis.

In the light of the above, I turned to sociology, psychology, social 
psychology, organizational behaviour, and political science, to see 
what I could glean that would be philosophically interesting on 
leadership. I found psychology, social psychology and organizational 
behaviour had very interesting entries on ?leadership?, but, as to be 
expected, these entries were of the genre of descriptive discourse. In 
political science one finds discussions of leadership, but these 
discussions are not any more analytically or critically rigorous than 
in other social sciences. The philosophical issues have to be distilled 
and ferreted out of the maze of data provided. This is not an easy 
challenge, but it is not a challenge that should be shied from.

In this essay I do not intend to encroach on the disciplinary 
boundaries in psychology or social psychology or the applied areas of 
both, organizational behaviour. Even if this were to inadvertently 
occur, it will be because I wish to follow through on Charles W. Mills? 
perceptive questioning of the rigidity of disciplinary boundaries 
foisted on subsequent generations out of an inexplicable fiat of 
exigencies of intellectual interest, existential circumstances and 
attendance to curiosities of epochs. He says, concerning the proper 
concerns of philosophy vis a vis boundaries of discourse, that,

In many cases this directing of attention will be perfectly 
reasonable, indicating the existence of genuine disciplinary 
boundaries. But sometimes what purport to be objective definitions of 
appropriate limits of the world of philosophical inquiry and 
authoritative pronouncements about what is conceptually interesting in 
that world have a more questionable provenance. Sometimes they arise 
out of specific life-world and local interests of particular 
populations. Thus the seemingly universal view from nowhere may well be 
a view from somewhere; the magisterial voice from the heavens turns out 
to be broadcast from earth. And sometimes it is only through the 
emergence of alternative views and voices that one begins to appreciate 
how much of what had seemed genuinely universalistic was really 
particular. In the dazzle of their official illumination, the canonical 
images blind us to different possibilities (Charles W. Mills 1998: 
xi.).
When I say that not much philosophical discussion of ?leadership? has 
been undertaken, I do not mean that persons may not have so recognized 
the need. One clear effort was made by James McGregor Burns (1978) in 
his very interesting and perceptive book titled Leadership. In this 
work the author raised germane philosophical questions about the 
nature, sources, appraisal and determination of leadership, but being a 
political scientist and being more concerned with an analysis of 
leadership in the United States of America experience, his discussion 
is vitiated by the limitations of disciplinary interests and goals of 
ending with a prescription from this American model to universal 
?leadership? understanding. Because of the insights he provides I will 
spend some time on his ideas. I will not spend such time on the 
discussions of leadership in Sociology or Psychology for that matter, 
because I have not found similar issues raised here, by Burns and 
myself, in Sociology or Psychology.

Burns begins by identifying the crisis of leadership in the American 
experience as being due, largely, to mediocrity or indiscipline. He 
says: 

The crisis of leadership today is the mediocrity or irresponsibility 
of so many of the men and women in power, but leadership rarely rises 
to the full need for it. The fundamental problem underlying mediocrity 
is intellectual? Leadership is one of the most observed and least 
understood phenomena on earth (1978, 1-2).
Clearly, as Americans will say, Burns was right on the money here. And 
one would think that he has in mind the African, Caribbean and Diaspora 
leaders. He went on to look at the effort of Plato, who analyzed the 
expected personality of the philosopher king and the place of a) the 
influence of upbringing, b) social institutions, c) economic 
institutions and d) responses of followers, to the making of the 
leader. He also considered Confucian leadership philosophy, which 
emphasized the moral element and precept in leadership development, the 
idea by Plutarch that leaders should converse with philosophers, and 
the teaching of Christianity concerning non-violence (2). What he did 
not bring out is the effect of the educational prescriptions in Plato?s 
Republic and the Christ?s own idea that the leader must be the servant, 
this being the real understanding of minister or secretary. Burns says 
further, that:

There is, in short, no school of leadership, intellectual or 
practical. Does it matter that we lack standards for assessing past, 
present and potential leaders? Without a powerful modern philosophical 
tradition, without theoretical and empirical cumulation, without 
guiding concepts, and without considered practical experiences, we lack 
the very foundations for knowledge of a phenomenon ? leadership in the 
arts, the academy, science, politics, the professions, war ? that 
touches and shapes our lives. Without such standards and knowledge we 
cannot make vital distinctions between types of leaders; we cannot 
distinguish leaders from rulers, from power wielders, and from despots 
(2)
What is important in the passage is the fact that ?leadership?, as a 
concept, has, according to him, suffered from a paucity politically 
scientific and philosophical interesting analysis. By talking about 
absence of a ?school of leadership?, there creeps in an ambiguity, 
because one could understand him to be suggesting either an ideology of 
leadership or a particular institution devoted to the teaching of 
leadership. I take it that he means the latter, but if so his position 
will be inaccurate, because leadership is taught in various parts of 
the educational (formal, non-formal and informal) curricular. But what 
is important is the lack of emphasis on the nature of leadership, 
bearing in mind its role in our lives.

Sharing the view of Mills, he echoes the need for inter-disciplinary 
collaboration to approach the issue of leadership. He is rather 
presumptuous though in thinking that what will help solve the 
conceptual problem of leadership is the collection of data, as almost 
three decades after his work we still have no clue about leadership in 
spite of those data that he celebrates. He says,

Although we have no school of leadership, we do have in rich abundance 
and variety the makings of a school. An immense reservoir of data and 
analysis and theories has been developed. No central concept of 
leadership has yet emerged, in part because scholars have worked in 
separate disciplines and sub-disciplines in pursuit of different and 
often unrelated questions and problems. I believe, however, that the 
richness of the research and analysis and thoughtful experience, 
accumulated especially in the past decade or so, enables us now to 
achieve an intellectual breakthrough. Vitally important but largely 
unrelated work in humanistic psychology now makes it possible to 
generalize about leadership process across cultures and across time. 
This is the central purpose of this book. (p. 2)
Clearly this passage exhibits unlimited optimism. Is it possible to 
generalize on leadership across cultures and across epochs? What is the 
role of culture in leadership? Can one extrapolate from data gathered 
in one culture to pronounce on the behavioral pattern of leadership in 
another culture? These are some of the questions that his book has not 
answered, or where answered in an American-centric manner we cannot 
transfer his answers to apply to other socio-cultural and political 
environments without undue injustice to such societies.

He went on to lament the bifurcation of the leadership literature into 
considerations of leadership and followership typologies, as in such 
studies devoted to biographies, heroic or demonic leaders, famous and 
important persons, etc., by contrast with the effects the leaders 
have/generate on/in audiences, masses, voters, opinion polls and 
election results. His synthetic contribution consisted in looking at 
leadership dynamically, in terms of winning and losing, adversarial 
contestations, conflict and power, social change, collective purpose of 
leader and led, satisfaction of needs and expectations, and 
sociological and biological determinants of leadership (3).

His ideas of transactional and transformational leadership have been 
very popular and are probably adequate with regard to American (USA) 
political situation where everything must have a bottom line, but his 
contention that leaders are neither born not made makes little 
empirical, analytical or logical sense (4). In fact, it clearly flies 
in the face of evidence from America and other societies where 
investments are made in identifying and nurturing leaders for the 
purpose of smooth transition at the expiration of the tenure of 
incumbents ? either because of death or as a consequence of demitting 
office of incumbent at the end of term. In the same vein his decision 
to settle on two essentials of power (motive and resource) as the 
determinant of elements of leadership does not have the capacity to 
exhaust our analytical requirements (12).

In spite of these limitations Burns analysis is very valuable in 
understanding the narrow experience of political leadership in American 
culture. It fails miserably, as we shall see, in furnishing an 
understanding of the varieties of leadership, or even political 
leadership historically and contemporaneously in Africa or the 
Caribbean and their Diasporas; the areas of our interest, as 
traditionally leadership in many societies has not always been a quid 
pro quo. But that is not the only grouse we have with Burns. We do 
expect that the insights developed in our discussion will be useful for 
students of leadership, not in being transferable from one culture to 
another, but in the sense of providing us with a road map with which we 
may attempt the navigation of leadership concepts in Africa, Caribbean 
and Diaspora polities, and possibly other polities as well.

Having failed to find our questions addressed in as analytical a 
manner as we would wish we must make our own suggestions for later 
evaluation. The first point we would affirm here is that leadership 
shapes society and consequently determines leadership expectations. 
Clearly this runs against the grain of popular wisdom that ?a society 
gets the leadership it deserves?. It is the clear conviction of this 
writer that the masses of the people are like boats on the volatile sea 
with no person to guide them where there are no leaders. It is true 
that some leaders get into positions of leadership by accident, but 
such situations raise the issue of legitimacy, which can be determined 
only with the acquiescence of the people over whom they rule. Numerous 
examples in history show the points we have made. More will be said 
about the relationship between development and consciousness and 
leadership later, for now, let us turn to the second question.

Why has leadership not been a matter of concern to Western political 
philosophers? It seems to me that the simple reason is that, strictly 
speaking, there has not historically been much of a crisis of 
leadership in Euro-American polities (at least, till the 2000 
Presidential Elections in USA). In these societies there are clear 
requirements for aspiring leaders; these range from education, 
pedigree, experience, economic to social and moral. Background checks 
are conducted to determine the suitability of the aspirants to 
leadership. In African, Caribbean and Diaspora polities these are not 
always the case. Even when there are laws to determine the selection 
process, we find these laws bent or ignored or repealed. There have 
been instances in Nigeria when prospective leaders have procured forged 
educational documents in order to qualify for posts to which they 
aspire. In which case, there are no rigorously enforced or enforceable 
criteria of leadership in these polities; hence no encumbrances to 
prevent rogues from becoming leaders, once you are able to procure the 
support of the key figures, ?king-makers? and players in the system. 
Because of this fact Western political philosophers can take for 
granted issues of leadership ? that is, they can ignore the 
epistemological, logical, metaphysical and axiological issues related 
to leadership, but African, Caribbean and their Diaspora philosophers 
can only do so at great intellectual, social, economic and cultural 
cost to themselves and to their societies.

On our third question, why reference reports are not required of 
political aspirants, seem to raise issues of taking for granted the 
moral and intellectual probity of aspiring leaders. In Western 
societies it may not be out of place to make the assumption that those 
who offer themselves up for service would be among the most upright in 
society. Even when errors of judgment arise in putting in office 
persons of questionable character the term limitations and the various 
checks and balances would prevent social disaster from ensuing from 
such mis-judgment (even though calamitous decisions may be hard to 
redress for years after such leaders may have left the stage). In this 
wise there are protections for Western societies against bad 
leadership, which were also present in most traditional African 
societies. But with the destruction of the cultures of the various 
African societies by the double assault of Christianity and Western 
education on the one hand, and economic dis-empowerment and 
expropriation on the other hand, the new leadership had scant regard 
for culture or law. Hence, the conventions and protections that make 
Western societies enjoy continuity and development are lacking in these 
new or emerging African and African Diaspora societies. In the case of 
the Caribbean and its Diaspora polities the situation is even more 
complicated. Because, having been severed from their ancestral cultures 
and the checks and balances, the new leadership lack both the proper 
cultural background (grounding) of their African ancestors and proper 
understanding of the inner cultural conventions of either the UK 
Westminster system of government or the Presidential American system of 
government. The further problem of the ?marginalization of the 
Caribbean male? as a consequence of slavery and through a warped 
childrearing system that poorly socializes the male Caribbean 
male/person, creates a double jeopardy, whereby society looks up to the 
male to lead, but fails to provide the male with the necessary 
equipment for leadership. Most Caribbean leaders are deadbeat leaders, 
defaulting in the promises they make (in many instances never actually 
expecting to be held by their public to the promises they make) and 
lacking in moral conviction to do what is right. Not requiring 
character reference only compounds the problem.

To our final initial question, why do Western societies tolerate poor 
leadership for African and Diaspora emerging societies (that is, 
societies from slavery and colonialism)? This is not anything difficult 
to understand. For one, who wants another Singapore or Hong Kong in the 
Caribbean or in Africa? For another, if Caribbean or Africa societies 
become self-sustaining, who will be the lackeys to the metropoles from 
which ultimate intellectual and material power devolve? Finally, if 
true leaders emerge in these post-slavery, post-colonial societies, 
where would the sustenance for the metropoles, in the form of unending 
payment of bogus national debts be derived, and markets for all kinds 
of manufactured goods, as these leaders will instill discipline in 
their cultures, economies, and peoples, making them independent. Hence, 
the longer there are cerebrally challenged and culturally defective 
leaders in these post-colonial societies, the better for the economic 
and political domination by the former colonial masters and the new 
imperial power, America.

African, Caribbean and Diaspora Polities and Leadership
Let me say first that African and Caribbean polities are not 
undifferentiated in nature and the leadership requirements are not of 
identical natures. But there is some simple similarities that make 
conjoined commentary on them easy to grasp and meaningful, that is, 
profitable, to comparatively interpret.

Since the demise of the black Nile Valley Civilization (and the 
subsequent denial and reaffirmation of the genealogy of the same in 
Western academe), the fall of the various succeeding Empires and 
Civilizations of black peoples and the occupation of African continent 
by foreign peoples, the black persons? experiences have been like no 
other. It has been stories of disaster after disaster. The psyche of 
the black person has been assaulted, traumatized and subverted, her/his 
intellect appropriated and debauched in the extreme, her/his generosity 
negated and interpreted as stupidity, her/her contribution to 
civilization and humanity denied and appropriated, her life reduced to 
tatters with no sense of foreboding or pang of conscience, her current 
existence negated and her future pauperized and mortgaged millennia in 
advance. In consequence the black person does ?not? exist, ?cannot? 
exist and ?will not? exist on equal terms as other persons, as the 
playing field has been deliberately distorted, tilted and slanted to 
create inequities and inequalities. Where blacks as a group suffer 
aggression it is turned face down and around to indicate that the 
aggression was actually favor done to her to save her from worse fate 
from nature and her ignorance; where her glory is trampled it is 
suggested that there was no glory initially and one could not suffer 
from an absence of what one lacked or never had originally. Yet the 
universal epistemologies of existence have continued to hark back to 
the old cognitions of traditional peoples of Africa and elsewhere, from 
plastic technology to genetic metaphysic.

The current crises in Afro-Caribbean and their Diaspora polities, 
however, are not simply understandable unless critical and diachronic 
analysis is undertaken. But how does one do such an analysis where the 
thematic of the ontology and epistemology of ?leadership? are clouded 
in negation, where there is a confluence of denial and derogation of 
indigenous education, where there is snobbery of traditional religions 
with their insistence on high moral standards and retributive concept 
of punishment and determination of guilt in absolute terms, where even 
highly competent local expertise is scorned in favor of second rate 
imported technical personnel? One could multiply, ad nauseam, the 
debilitating aspects of the crises of African, Caribbean and Diaspora 
polities. It suffices to insist that the absence of intellectual, 
philosophical and critical dialogue on this related issue of 
?leadership? is more of collusion of Western academia and their 
surrogates in African, Caribbean and Diaspora ivory towers and the 
mental escapism and self-denial of the ?roast breadfruit? clones of 
Western intellectuals that suffuse these African, Caribbean and 
Diaspora centers of learning and corridors of power, than a consequence 
of the well-being of the polities we are interested in.

Why go back to pre-slavery, pre-colonial and contemporary Africa to 
commence a philosophical understanding of African, Caribbean and 
Diaspora leadership crises? The simple reason is the similarity of the 
trajectories of their histories and the carry-overs from these 
historical experiences into contemporary leadership fiasco. Take 
Nigeria as a case in point. Contemporary Nigerian leadership is a carry-
over form British style of rulership during the colonial period. The 
colonial ruler-group are ?foreigners? and did not mix with the locals, 
they had no reason to, and they did not see their destinies as tied up 
with that of indigenous Nigerians. At independence the inheritors of 
power were rulers who descended from an elite group who were distant 
from the people they governed, being that as a consequence of their 
acquisition of Western classroom based education they felt they were 
only nominally part of the masses of the people, they had lost touch 
with the people as a consequence, or absence, of their ?education?, 
they fail to see themselves as part of the people who had invested in 
their acquisition of Western ?education? and being distant they fail to 
understand their heritages, values, cultures and histories; and as a 
consequence, their aspirations were not those of the people, their 
newly acquired behavioural patters were different and more British or 
American than indigenous and they exhibited arrant contempt for, and 
they disdain, the people they rule over as these forebears and peers 
and junior ones were regarded as illiterate, less fortunate, stupid, 
gullible and poor people.

In a very serious sense we see the Nigerian leaders avowing the same 
intellectual and practical response to the indigenous culture, similar 
to the ways in which the Western anthropologists Lucien Levy Bruhl, 
Placide Temples, Robin Horton and early African theologians like John 
S. Mbiti, Bolaji Idowu and others which they saw as inferior to Western 
and Christian systems and metaphysic. These scholars had celebrated the 
primitive mentality, illogical, unscientific, etc. mentality of 
Africans, and the new elite groups, products of the Western educational 
centres now claim that their own peoples were uneducated, poor 
illiterates and common masses, as Smythe and Smythe exhibited above. It 
is not any wonder that in their ignorance they became aliens in their 
own countries.

Writing in 1960 the Smythes showed a good understanding of this factor 
in the psyche of the new Nigerian elite group. They stated:

Already there is discernible among the new elite a sense of separation 
from the less privileged classes, which the betray unconsciously 
through references to ?these people? or ?the uneducated classes? which 
are indicative of a distinction between those who ?belong? and those 
who are outside the fold, as well as a growing sense of being ?better? 
than some of their fellow Nigerians (Italics mine for emphasis). (100)
Explaining the origin of this feature of the new elite, they say,

This lack of identity with the masses follows the example of the 
British, who evolved a self-contained colonial way of life 
characterized by frequent home leaves and few, if any, social or 
cultural contacts with the indigenous population. As Nigerians have 
acquired education, and a higher standard of living, they have found 
little common interest to share with the average person who lives in 
mud house without modern amenities. (1960: 100.)
To exhibit their lack of interest in their compatriots and their 
misplaced identity orientation, according to the Smythes, these new 
group do not interact with the locals:

A member of the elite is rarely reported in association with the 
masses except during the ? political rally, when he may make a campaign 
speech, or on such an occasion as the dedication of some public 
building at which the masses form a crowd of onlookers. Even on such 
occasions the elite do not rub elbows with their less privileged fellow 
Nigerians; they are sheltered from the crowd by the police, an official 
escort, or some rail or raised platform (101).
This is just one example of leadership dislocation. This is not the 
only problem with the Nigerian leadership at independence. They are 
numerous and will be indicated at the appropriate time. Meanwhile, let 
us go to our first issue, the historical antecedence of leadership 
poverty in African, Caribbean and Diaspora polities.

Historical Antecedents
Contemporary society is in a peculiar mess of having to marry 
egalitarianism with the demands of high moral probity in public life, 
without provisioning for the requisite modalities for eventuating a 
harmonious marital relationship for both. What is even more difficult 
to understand is the dubious socialization and educational mechanisms 
that we now advocate in contemporary societies. (Now, I must insist on 
the caveat that, by speaking of contemporary society I intend this to 
mean Western Society writ large and of which African and Caribbean 
polities are part). Here we find that all the old methodologies of 
instilling moral beliefs and discipline in the youth are under serious 
challenges while we, as humans, in the West, have failed to provide 
workable replacement for what we are eagerly jettisoning.

Let us go back a little in history. All civilized traditional 
societies have clear-cut methodologies (formal, non-formal and 
informal) of instructing youth in the ethos and mores of the culture. 
These are passed down from generation to generation, through formal, 
non-formal and informal methods of instruction and reinforcement. Also, 
determining whether the product ? the adult ? has become a well-formed 
member of society is not difficult to discern. But that is not all; 
civilized cultures also devise careful mechanisms for nurturing 
leaders. They do not leave them to luck. Those to whom leadership will 
devolve (albeit hereditary) are carefully selected, groomed and 
instructed in the ways of the culture of their societies and they are 
carefully imbued in the sensitivity to right and wrong, to the extent 
that we do find that such persons, on attaining the esteemed positions 
for which they were prepared, are able to perform without too much of 
paparazzi and tabloid media hounding. In fact, it was the 
responsibility of all the leaders of thought in societies to properly 
bring up those who would lead.

The example of the failure of the first Jewish experiment with 
kingship is not difficult to understand in this regard (Old Testament: 
1 Samuel 8). The only qualifications we are told that the person 
selected (in the person of Saul) to rule over the Jews had was being 
very tall and handsome. There was no indication about what type of 
family he came from, what type of upbringing he had, and how cultured 
in the ways of the Jews he was. The incapacity of such a person to 
carry the burden of leadership (Saul?s inability to function) is not 
difficult to understand, under the circumstances.

It would be interesting to see if any of the tall, handsome persons 
around today can just be picked on account of those superficial 
attributes to occupy the White House. (It has been suggested that part 
of the problem between the Hutus and the Tutsis in Rwanda is a 
consequence of this warped understanding of human physiognomy and 
leadership competence, whereby a certain group was selected on account 
of appearance for leadership to the disadvantage of other members of 
the society who happen to have numerical majority). At best we would 
have them engineered into Basketball programmes from youth. And hardly 
do many of them have much of a life at the end of their playing careers 
if they do not go back to school or if they have not been fortunate to 
have been properly brought up in good homes.

Let us start from the continent which has finally been agreed is the 
cradle of Homo sapiens - Africa. Undoubtedly for Africa to have 
originated the type of developments and achievements in writing, 
mathematics, science, technology, civilization, art, culture and social 
engineering that created the wonders and curiosities unravelled all 
over ancient topography of Africa by scientists, archaeologists, 
culturologists, linguists, anthropologists, philosophical historians, 
etc., there must have been some level of sophisticated and highly 
devoted leadership capable of harnessing the human and natural 
resources to request of the environment to make available that level of 
development that we (most serious scholars) now acclaim as 
authentically African.

One way or the other, this highly sophisticated leadership yielded to 
the invasion of the continent by negative forces. While we may 
speculate about the proximate and remote causes for the enslavement, 
colonization and subsequent cultural and scientific asphyxiation of the 
great Africa of our ?Diasporic? nostalgia, the fact remains that 
current leadership has no avenue for continuity or connection with its 
historical antecedents. One can safely contend that African traditional 
leadership that gave birth to the civilizations which tamed the Nile, 
created the Great Desert Art, developed Great Zimbabwe, performed 
surgical feats, studied the outer extremities of space, etc., died with 
the colonization and enslavement of Africa, creating a leadership 
vacuum which all forms of charlatans now fill by default, while there 
has not developed any cadre of leadership of merit in the miscegenation 
called society in the New World African Diaspora.

Why is this so? In many African societies, for example, the first crop 
of youth sent to ?the white man?s schools?, when Western education came 
to hinterland Africa, were not the cream of the breed. Why? There was a 
high level of suspicion of the white man?s ways ? his education that is 
confined to some space and time span, his justice system that often 
compensates the criminal rather that the aggrieved (presumption of 
innocence of the accused till proven guilty without safety valve for 
the aggrieved in any primary sense and the possibility of plea 
bargaining are examples of the white mans strange judicial system) and 
which facilitates sophistry, by contrast with truth and fairness, his 
disrespect for the traditions and cultures of the indigenous societies 
emanating from ignorance of life, society, nature, the environment and 
the super-sensible realm, and his belief that the Supreme Being can and 
must be worshipped on only one day of the week and in an enclosed space 
outside of which all shenanigans are possible, among others. This 
sending of the second or third best of the breed to the white man?s 
school cannot be without justification. For one, leadership in Africa 
was not something you just happen by. It was not without long periods 
of tutelage. For years and years leaders identified are schooled in the 
traditions of the people, the culture that they must uphold, the 
religions and moral ethos that are implicated by social existence and 
affirmations of life inextricably weaved into existence. Because of 
this African traditional societies took great care to nurture 
leadership. Even where leaders were determined by heredity and lineage, 
care is taken to ensure that the final product that inherits the mantel 
at the transition of the incumbent is well prepared for the challenge 
of leadership and commitment to society and the proper representation 
of the ancestors.

This must not be interpreted to suggest that there were no misfits or 
that all was always perfect, but the important point being made is that 
effort is clearly made to identify and develop leadership in all 
civilized societies. To take care of the errors that may be humanly 
unavoidable in leadership identification process clear checks and 
balances are carefully developed to ensure that leadership was imbued 
with humanity. Second, most traditional African parents could not see 
how life could be meaningfully influenced by the less than six hours of 
work that takes place in the white man?s educational space, over five 
days of the week, compared with the life long nature of education and 
leadership training that takes place under the traditional system of 
education in the African society. Third, since the children sent to the 
white man?s schools were never expected to amount to much anyway, it 
was not regarded as a disaster that the products turned out to be 
servants to the white man and menaces to the indigenous cultures and 
institutions. Finally, the products of Western education were expected 
to be persons able to speak with forked tongues, thereby capable of the 
chicaneries associated with curious oddities that white ways of life 
constituted to indigenous Africa (Ajayi and Espie eds. 1965: 162).

Some of the products of the system were even more dangerous to the 
African societies and the cultures and civilizations of African peoples 
than the alien white folks that they replaced and whose ignorance can 
be pardoned. A reading of the first crop of African theologian scholars 
would clearly make this point, as their denial of African religious 
experience and understanding of the Supreme Being were more indicting 
than that of their Western counterparts. I have discussed this at 
length in another forum, but we may merely mention here the works of 
Mbiti, Idowu and Awolalu as examples to make the point.

The long and short of the story is that in polygamous families those 
who initially went to the white man?s school were, first, the children 
of wives that were not very liked by the husbands; second, children who 
were regarded as lazy and who showed a proclivity toward indolence; 
third, children who showed evidence of being cantankerous, 
disrespectful, disobedient and dishonest. These were children whose 
fathers could care less how their lives turned out, hence it did not 
matter what the white man did to/with them. The nefarious activities of 
the products of these educational experiences, and how they exerted 
their pound of flesh from the society that ?dissed? (Jamaican for 
?disrespect?) them, is told in many of the novels by Cyprian Ekwensi, 
Chinua Achebe, Ola Rotimi, Wole Soyinka and others.

That some of these very products then turned around to demand 
independence for their societies is not difficult to understand as they 
easily recognized that for as long as the white man remained the 
overlords in the African colonial countries they, the clones and 
surrogates, must continue to play second fiddle. This recognition, out 
of self-interest among others, therefore, indicated that they strive 
for and attain independence for their countries. It is not by accident 
that most of these nationalist fighters were law, medical and commerce 
graduates, etc., not engineers, agriculturalists, etc. Being in the 
parasitic professions, they were able to comprehend their limitations 
and had a will to power that was not equalled by a culturally matched 
will to leadership and an understanding of the nature and process of 
leadership (Ajayi and Espie, 1965: 161).

Thus, when independence was granted, the questions that were never 
asked during the struggle for independence still did not arise: 
independence for what? What society would we want to have in fifty 
years time? What legacies would we wish to leave behind when we join 
our ancestors? Who shall continue the process and carry on the work of 
shepherding the society to green pastures in the full glare of the 
glutinous enemy at the gate? Where would our different societies stand 
in the community of societies in future generations yet unborn? For one 
thing a group without a proper leadership ?home training? could not be 
expected to be anything but upstarts mimicking the gesticulations of 
their admired and hated overlords, hence one sees, for example, some of 
these rulers trying to out-do their colonial foster parents in three, 
four, five piece suits in the hot tropical climate, without noticing 
any incongruity in the suffering they endure just to be the ?roast 
bread fruits? that they are (these are people who, according to 
Jamaicans, are black persons by skin pigmentation, but who are whites 
in the mental dispositions, practical predilections and cultural 
affinities exhibited in their appearances, gesticulations and 
genuflections, intellectual preferences and even non-preferences).

Because of a lack of understanding of the concept of leadership, 
coupled with poor preparation for leadership, it soon became clear that 
for these African and Caribbean rulers (what Soyinka referred to as the 
?wasted generation?, which I prefer to call the ?wasting generation?), 
what was more important is attainment and retention of power, as a 
means of oppressing their hapless compatriots. Power became the end in 
itself primarily, and secondarily a means of accessing state funds for 
personal selfish use.

The Nigerian example does not cease to fascinate me. Here, at 
independence, was a spectacular enthronement of a government of 
ignoramus. For one, the British falsified the demography of the country 
to favour the most ill-prepared segment of the country and followed 
this by rigging the election so that we had a Prime Minister who had 
neither a basic schooling in either traditional home training that is 
necessary for leadership, nor even a proper mastery of the educational 
system of the colonial master. Since then Nigeria has not had any 
modicum of leadership that is comparable to what Old Oyo, Kanem Bornu, 
or Benin Empires had. Second, the rulers that Nigeria has had could 
hardly define the word ?leader? if seriously pressed, and in some cases 
could not spell the word ?leader? by themselves. Third, they (political 
administrators) neither have an awareness of the Black Person?s history 
in the world nor of the contemporary situation of the Black Person 
globally and on the African continent. Fourth, most African heads of 
state (Nigeria in particular) have suffered from a sit tight syndrome 
as a matter of necessity ? given the travesty of justice perpetuated by 
them they usually are frightened by their own shadows. Finally, having 
not received what is anywhere near the best of education that their 
society could afford ? traditional and Western - they have been out of 
their depths in the fortuitous positions of power they have found 
themselves.

Apart from their alienation from their indigenous communities, there 
were other problems with the inheritors of leadership at independence. 
They were, in many cases, a) unable to understand the concept of public 
life and public property, as they were not disposed to use public 
property, especially public funds, with diligence and propriety, for 
only official business but were busy wasting funds and engaging in all 
kinds of fraudulence; b) unable to separate their private income from 
public funds, seeing opportunities to serve as opportunities to 
embezzle public funds with impunity; c) unable to recognize a 
difference between the tactics and stratagems that gained their 
societies independence and strategies for developing new states from 
colonies, hence the same tactics of sabotage, subterfuge and antagonism 
used to fight for independence, from the foreign overlords are they 
were called, are now employed against the new enemy, that is, 
indigenous critics of their uncouth and scandalous behaviour in office; 
d) unable to see that leadership is a call to service , hence, 
operating with the same mentality of alienation and separatism of the 
?educated elite?, so that having attained public positions means being 
even more special and alien, and e) unable to understand that their 
countries are part of a big world in which it is survival of the 
fittest. Consequently, they were not prepared for the task of nation-
building.

We often wonder why contemporary Africa, Caribbean and their Diaspora 
polities are decadent, cerebrally diminutive, innately corrupt, 
corruptive, corrupting and morally bankrupt and spiritually retrograde 
and culturally retrogressive. We easily forget the historical 
antecedents of contemporary African and Caribbean political elites, 
clowning around in leadership garbs. Dialectically, ?leadership? is a 
function of historical transitions over time and space. One cannot talk 
of ?leadership? in cultural, educational and historical vacuum. Nor can 
one get any clear vision on the notion of ?leadership? culture and 
education without examining the underpinnings and presuppositions of 
the social metaphysic and the epistemic attitudes and attributes 
prevalent in the societies under examination.

While sociologists, psychologists and their ilk can describe as much 
as they like the variations in the themes of ?leadership? essential for 
the existence and survival of the technologically engineered industrial 
society, mostly in instrumental and utilitarian terminologies, such 
enunciations must be of minimal value, in the context of our discourse, 
if not predicated on the larger issue of societal ?leadership? itself. 
Consider for example the paucity of content that will derive from a 
study in the leadership of Coca Cola or IBM or General Motors outside 
of the philosophical foundations of Capitalism. Imagine how puerile a 
debate of the management structure of the large multinationals will 
turn out to be if the underpinning presuppositions relating to the 
bottom line were negated and privated. In essence, history is very 
illuminating in understanding the parlous state of leadership in Afro-
Caribbean polity.

The Caribbean example is not any better. In the cases of Jamaica, 
Guyana, Haiti and Dominica Republic, it could be said that there was a 
singular opportunity on the part of the political directorate to get it 
right at independence. But what did we find? Here are countries that 
could be the Caribbean examples of positive all-round greatness in the 
region, with so much potential in terms of land space, population size, 
natural resources, and proximity to the hemispheric giant that has 
always been favourably disposed toward the islands as a matter not only 
of self-interest but also of strategic economic market.

Let us look at Nigeria and Jamaica as examples of African and 
Caribbean countries attaining independence about the same time. While 
the Nigerian disaster can be understandable and even excused as a 
deliberate product of the British perfected divide and rule system ? 
vide the fact that Britain is a classic example of divide and rule 
country in the world with Irish, Welsh, Scottish matters never resolved 
? and that the British does not balk from committing fraud as part of 
official government policy by falsifying the demography of Nigeria and 
rigging the Nigerian Independence Elections to install a stooge 
government that we have mentioned, Jamaica, on the other hand, cannot 
be easily get away with a luxury that has proved so pernicious and 
debilitating. In fact, in the Jamaican situation, by comparison with 
Nigeria with over three hundred (300) distinct language, ethnic and 
culturally identifiable peoples, the shared heritage of slavery common 
to over 80 percent of the population would have indicated a necessity 
for bonding and a charting of a common fortune and future. Rather 
members of the same extended family, who had the fortune of making the 
Island the paradise in the sun that it has the capacity and probable 
destiny of being, have contrived to create political partisan 
identities of otherness that have remained irreconcilable, with 
attendant cruel antagonisms, worse than between the Igbo and the Hausa-
Fulani during the civil war in Nigeria or between the Arab and the Jew 
in present day Palestine. While in Nigeria, because of short-
sightedness and idiocy of the political class, we have differentiations 
on grounds of ethnic identities and state of origin, in Jamaica what 
obtains is which party card one carries, which entitles one to 
advantages and disadvantages. The clannish system is tribally polarized 
and erupts into warfare periodically ? more frequent as the resources 
for pillaging becomes more scarce and limited.

I have also found that, unlike in Jamaica where ethnic differences are 
non-existent, but was created by the fiat of members of the same 
extended family to carve for themselves fiefdoms, in some other 
Caribbean countries the existence of any semblance of ethnic 
differences is good enough excuse for polarization of society through 
the same myopic mechanism of leadership insecurity enunciated by the 
egocentric William Lynch syndrome of divide and rule ? better construed 
as divide and conquer. (I am mindful of the literature on 
Rastafarianism and the Maroons of Akompong as distinct ethic groups 
within the Jamaican body politik, but my view is that compared to 
Nigeria, that is stretching the meaning of ethnic a little too thin, 
hence, I ignore such dilutions of discourse aimed at obfuscating 
serious issues.) Thus, the political elite finds it easy to fan the 
embers of discord by playing on primordial fears of the other ? the 
unknown and the alien. Those from Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana will 
not find it difficult to identify with the issues raised here. Clearly 
the political directorates in these countries are not remise to hide 
their ineptitude under the cloak of enemies at the gate, and today the 
enemies are, first, the ?leaders? themselves, second, the lack of 
education they have and which they continue to deny to their people, 
and third, the global village with all the contestations and 
polarizations deriving from the struggle for economic control.

What I am suggesting here is that the situation at independence in 
Nigeria and most African countries parallels that of most Caribbean 
societies, regardless of the differences in the historical trajectories 
that preceded the independence. In clear terms the elites (the 
political class, that is) never raised the questions that had the most 
relevance: political independence for what? What they sought first was 
the political kingdom, believing that once attained, every other thing 
shall be added unto their societies with little, if any, effort at all 
on their part.

At independence in Nigeria, the political elites were a pack of 
visionless, simple- minded people who thought that the world would wait 
for them. This visionlessness was the most important factor that, to my 
analysis here, led to the civil war, and even with that (that is, the 
conclusion of an unwarranted war) no lessons were learnt. It must be 
said that the military has been the scourge of most countries where 
they came to power. The situation of the Nigerian military is even 
worse than in most other countries in the world, as members of the 
armed forces at independence were not of high educational training in 
the Western sense and the were not highly morally endowed in the matter 
of personal development and home training as decent children never went 
to the army. When Nigeria found oil in commercial quantities the 
nitwits in power were of the opinion that ?money was not Nigeria?s 
problem but how to spend it?. We had a megalomaniac political class 
that neither understood African heritage, yet embarked on FESTAC 77. 
This was a period when the Nigeria currency was stronger than the US 
Dollar or the British Pound Sterling, and we went all over the world 
shopping for every conceivable gadget. In fact, we coined another 
phrase that ?if the West will not sell technology to Nigeria, we will 
steal it?. Shortly thereafter we found, in Nigeria, that having oil 
(the so-called black gold) is no recipe for success, as we bred a set 
of power mongers who counted their importance in terms of billions of 
dollars they have stashed away in Swiss and Cayman personal loot 
accounts. In many instances loans are taken on behalf of their 
countries and divided among themselves into their foreign accounts, 
then turning round to ask the foreign governments to forgive or 
reschedule the loans for their countries, when their stolen personal 
?wealth? could pay these loans debts plus interests many times over.

In any case, by the time I was in high school the only people who went 
into the army were school dropouts, touts and other never-do-wells in 
society. Decent people do not send their children to the army and 
children with ambition would hardly see fulfillment in an army 
established as ?kill an? go?. It was the new white man?s school for 
depriving the youth of their sensibility and freedom of self-expression 
as you ?obey the last command? or ?obey before complain?! It is not by 
accident that the most educated of the Nigerian military rulers has 
been the one who voluntarily relinquished power only to attain it 
twenty years later. And the worst that could happen to any country if 
for the military to take over power.

In the Caribbean, most people from the region are by far more familiar 
with the political class history first hand than I am (and surely 
Puerto Ricans will be better in this regard than I could attain at this 
stage of my research), but the manifestations of the malady remains the 
same, hence the need for to venture into this analysis. Being mostly 
lawyers, the political class or elite group in the Caribbean are adept 
in the intellectual game of obfuscation of issues ? saying so much 
while saying nothing. All they have mastered is probably the flip side 
of their ?master?s voice? (remember the age of the gramophone!). The 
consequence remains a region that is externally financed and directed 
rather than inward looking in the generation of motivation, sustenance 
and destination. In fact, the political class has little respect for 
the intellect of their indigenous people, and are scornful of 
themselves, knowing fully well that as parasites on the resources of 
their respective countries, they often collude to determine the 
negation of the interest of their societies ? especially when they are 
aware of the political omnicide that continued antagonism would spell 
for all concerned.

I wish to conclude this segment of the analysis with another 
contention. I argue from the forgoing that African and Caribbean 
polities are still pervaded by the disruptive, divisive and pernicious 
?ours-theirs? dichotomies inveigled in tribal politics and adversarial 
legal frameworks which the rulers inherited from their erstwhile slave 
masters and colonial mentors and have not made any effort, in fact have 
not seen reason to make any effort, to transcend these negative and 
destructive legacies. (It may be surmised that maybe the type of 
education they received from Ox-Bridge and LSE (add in recent times 
Harvard) is not one that can make them appreciate their destiny in 
history or the destiny of their peoples toward dependency and 
nothingness, hence their inability to introspect and cogitate the 
dilemma of their peoples in the global environment where the peoples of 
colour must contest to attain to the rights that even pets in Euro-
America take for granted). Ingrained in any variety of this kind of 
legacy is the mentality, first, that government property is no one?s 
property, hence, no compunction to care for it in any serious way; 
second, a predisposition to tax evasion as no sense of community has 
been developed and no accountability has been insisted upon to ensure 
judicious use and disposal of government funds; third, destructive 
attitude to public property in the form of arson, theft, neglect, as 
replacement mechanisms are loaded with contractual kick-back mechanisms 
for personal monetary gain, etc.; and finally, the perception that 
public funds are largesse or ?God?s blessing?, to be disposed of for 
self and acquaintances while the opportunity lasts with impunity. 
Parenthetically, one could add for comic relief that fact that many 
helpers in Jamaica do not see as stealing the employers property, as 
the helpers believe such ?taking? cannot constitute contractual 
infraction to persons who can afford to employ others in their home 
when they are not government or companies!

The consequence that this breeds is that the same techniques that were 
employed to get rid of the colonial masters and salve masters are now 
used by the mentally and culturally ?alien? rulers in the African and 
Caribbean polities. The poor and the masses are the new enemies that 
must be brought to heel, they are the targets of all type of deceit, 
they are blamed for being lazy, for being difficult to lead, while 
those who profit from the corrupt and unjust systems the new rulers 
have created are the least willing to acknowledge the existence of 
injustice and the beneficiaries of corruption are hardly willing to 
admit the iniquity of their unmerited advantages. Thus, like leadership 
in African polities, the Caribbean leaders find scapegoats everywhere 
and are never guilty of any wrong. In consequence there is so much 
?Anansism?, or ?ginnalship? or ?bandolooism? (Jamaican words) ? a 
system of rulership by deceit, kleptomania, corruption, and all manner 
of abuse of public office and privileges of public trust with arrant 
impunity and distrust. What this has done in the Jamaican situation is 
entrench a psyche of callousness, viciousness and cynicism. Thus the 
poor and the disadvantaged are easily provoked, and irritability 
without proper educational temperament to master stress leads to 
invidious violence and reckless homicidal tendencies.

While still on this historico-philosophical analysis of leadership one 
may mention in passing the two leaders Nigeria never had. The first was 
Obafemi Awolowo, while the second was Moshood Abiola. The first was a 
product of the colonial legacy who left a great record of management 
and development in the old Western Region for the emulation of other 
regions in Nigeria in the 1950s. The second was elected by popular 
ballot in an election conducted by a military dictatorship and 
Nigerians, to their dismay and chagrin, had the election annulled by 
the same military. These gentlemen were not only schooled in the 
traditions of their people, they excelled in Western education also and 
combined these educational experiences with very humble family 
backgrounds where memories of early deprivation instilled in them the 
understanding that leadership is a privilege to serve and to improve 
the lives of the people. They were industrialists and educationists who 
know what makes for success in developing and running businesses, not 
armchair analysts and critics like most others. They were not afraid to 
work with their hands to put into practice what they conceived in their 
minds, hence they were in the forefront of the effort to create wealth 
rather than simply manipulate or tax and spend what others have 
created.

What is indicated from the above is the fact that it takes an 
intellectual leap of faith for the oppressed to correctly diagnose the 
origin of their oppression. This is why in Afro-Caribbean polities the 
aggression and anger of the larger segments of the populations are 
wrongly targeted. This is because the rulers have contrived to keep the 
populations under a ?veil of ignorance? (to borrow a Rawlsian 
terminology), both educationally and psychologically. While persons who 
steal a goat would be jailed for three years, other more ?privileged? 
persons who steal hundreds of millions of public money or who cause the 
collapse of state institutions are given state honours at elaborate 
functions. Thus it requires the persevering intellectual exercise of 
the will to accurately prescribe corrective measures to African, 
Caribbean and Diaspora rulership maladies. This is not only happening 
in parts of Nigeria where misguided politicians hold people to ransom 
under so-called Sharia law, cutting off fingers of thieves and ordering 
the stoning of fornicators will they themselves are stealing billions 
of dollars from public coffers without having to account to anyone. In 
essence, the situation is most degrading for both the political 
oppressors and the oppressed, as the way all these atrocities reflect 
on the intellectual integrity of the coloured person is negative. 
Consider public officials negotiating the cancellation of national debt 
with the Paris Club whose executive members have less than a million 
dollars each in their accounts with beggars who each have billions of 
dollars their countries owe in their private accounts.

Having justified why we consider ?leadership? to be a conceptual 
problem worthy of philosophical analysis and establishing why thinkers 
from societies which suffer most for a paucity of leadership have an 
obligations to address the issues, we now move on to the next levels of 
discourse ? indicating the criteria that would need to be met to have 
an adequate philosophy of leadership. Or, formulated another way, 
theorizing leadership in a non-purely empirical or descriptive manner, 
as social scientists are wont to do.

Leadership
It would have become clear that I have been very cautious thus far not 
to have described the political elites and rulers in Africa, Caribbean 
and Diaspora polities as leaders. This has been by design, because, on 
my Richter scale of leadership, I have not been able to identify any 
single Afro-Caribbean ruler of the 20th Century that could pass as 
leader. This is because one way or the other they have failed to meet 
the requirements of the Psalmist. The shepherd analogy comes in handy 
again here and we may enumerate some of the crucial requirements of the 
shepherd that have aided other contemporary peoples of the world and 
past epochs of Africans to become great. The shepherd is a leader who 
does not put self-interest above sheep interest, does not rest until 
the sheep is provided for ? not just for the immediate needs, but 
ensuring the needs of the future are guaranteed also ? consequently the 
shepherd envision the unknown tomorrow and plans for it. The shepherd 
is the protector of the sheep and exemplified the virtues of 
righteousness requisite of followership. In this regard, the shepherd 
as leader leads by example and does not have to ask for respect before 
getting it.

Parenthetically, one need not get unnecessarily carried away; hence, I 
must here temper the analysis with realism. The Tanzania experiment I 
find worth commending. The Nwalimu, Julius Nyerere, we are told, 
retired from public office without any mansion of his own. The weakness 
of his period has been described as exogenous and a consequence of the 
conspiracy of vested interest coupled with over-zealousness. This does 
not detract from the viability of the leadership offered by Nyerere. 
And at the pain of being dubbed a totalitarian, one could mention Fidel 
Castro and Khadafi here for good measure.)

What is ?leadership?? I tried checking Webster?s Third New 
International Dictionary (Mass: Merriam Webster Inc. 1981) to see if 
there would be a definition that may be a starting point, but only 
found ?leader? defined as someone who leads, and ?leadership? as the 
office or quality or capacity to lead. These circular definitions fail 
to help. Robbins defines leadership thus:

. . . leadership (is) the ability to influence a group toward the 
achievement of goals. The source of this influence may be formal, such 
as that provided by the possession of managerial rank in an 
organization (413).
Clearly this is a utilitarian, profit and loss definition of 
?leadership?, but we still can glean aspects of the ideas we have 
highlighted earlier from it. In human society writ large contrasted 
with the simple business environment, the leader needs more than just a 
capacity to make people achieve goals. From the biblical shepherd 
example, it is clear that a leader needs to be a visionary. Clearly the 
purely utilitarian perspective is weak, as it does not take cognisance 
of collective purpose and the requirement of the evolutionary dynamics 
of social and cultural needs of the led which must inform leadership 
focus.

While we will come to this, let us consider what Robbins? review of 
literature reveals. He examines trait theories ? charisma, enthusiasm, 
courage are necessary attributes of leaders. This is true, especially 
when group goals have been clearly defined, even though there are times 
those of lesser ilk may think that leaders with these traits are fools 
? as they seem to have no sense of danger to self, no understanding of 
basic requirements of self-survival and welfare in the undue dangers 
they search for and bring to themselves and those close to them. Other 
attributes were found in behavioural theories espousing toughness, 
intensity and autocracy, while contingency theory (and its variant, 
situational theory), indicates variations contingent on the context and 
group or society that is to be led. Clearly, as usual, social 
scientists have failed to provide clues that could be followed in the 
solution of societal problems. The failure is not unexpected because 
the effort at stereotyping humanity is doomed ab initio.

What do we learn from this that can be of philosophical moment? In the 
first place, when we wonder why the countries of the Pacific rim ? at 
the head of which you find a Japan that was badly battered in the 
Second World War ? were able to rise from oblivion within a spate of 
four decades to dominate the world technologically and financially, or 
why USA has been able to blend hetero-ethnicities into a vibrant polity 
? even with the usual unresolved issues of racism, racial profiling, 
and implications of the last Presidential Elections in the state of 
Florida, among others, are still festering; why Russians are a proud 
people, in spite of the collapse of the Soviet Union, etc., many 
scholars would easily indicate in concession (concurring with the views 
here proffered) that it was not the colour of the skin, nor the 
intellectual superiority of the population, nor the climatic generosity 
of the environment that made the difference. Many will easily indicate 
and concede that the difference is ?leadership?!

What the psychologists and social psychologists were searching for 
would not be found in any textbook, as the moral component and force of 
leadership are not written in bold letters in society?s statutes for 
efficacy, even there are those high sounding codes of ethics for 
ministers and officials of government. Hence, any discussion of the 
concept of leadership that stops only at the manifest components must 
be short-sighted.

There is an allure among academics of what is called current or recent 
literature. In this regard, it is believed that reading or using 
literature that is older than five years in publication is evidence of 
lack of currency, as if recent research has a prerogative of insight 
and erudition. Why I am inclined to think this is a fallacy is a 
rereading of Pitirim A. Sorokin?s (1948) The Reconstruction of Humanity 
(Boston: The Beacon Press). A superficial reading may suggest that he 
is canvassing the view that if one were to look at human societies from 
a reconstructive perspective one would believe the author was against 
clear-cut leadership development or enculturation process because they 
seem at times to fail to deliver on the expectations of humaneness and 
protections of rights by contrast with others, especially 
totalitarianism which at times may be benevolent at times. But clearly 
what Sorokin laments if fact that the faults of democracies are easier 
to recognize and in the public domain as a consequence of its systemic 
openness. While there is no time to dwell at length on his discussion 
here, it should interest readers to look carefully at his criticism of 
democracy and the possibility of tyranny of the majority, nay, tyranny 
of the minority in contemporary democracies as the percentage of the 
population that determines the government more often that not is less 
than fifty percent of the entire population.

Before we go on to sketch the criteria that ?leadership? by contrast 
with mere exercise of power would entail, we need to briefly discuss 
what a philosophy of leadership will look like. On the logical side, we 
would like to see a critical interrogation of the meaning, content, 
manifestations and consequences of ?leadership?. The social scientists 
have fastened on only one side of this logical equation. They have been 
more concerned with the descriptive, inductive and de facto aspect of 
the concept to the utter neglect of the analytical, deductive and 
conceptual aspects. This has vitiated a proper understanding of the 
concept and problematic of leadership. As a consequence, even when 
Burns craved for a synthesis of the various conceptual aspects of 
leadership, this would not be forth-coming because only the empirical 
aspect was being addressed. In other words, we look logically at 
leadership from inductive and deductive angles, but we are also mindful 
of other possibilities in interpretation of leadership, such as 
intuitive and reductive logical expositions.

Coming on the heels of our logical prescription must be the 
epistemological requirement. Here it may simply be indicated that many 
factors are called for here. These include the cognitive, intuitive, 
emotive and dynamic, introspective components. In this regard, we may 
indicate that there are two sides to this: a) the epistemological base 
of leadership and b) the epistemological base of followership.

Let us dilate a bit on the first. Leadership must originate from the 
vantage position of ?knowledge?. We can see that all the great thinkers 
are agreed on this, from Plato, to Jesus, to Awolowo (the last one here 
calls it the regime of mental magnitude). In a sense, the reason why 
Plato prescribed the philosopher king as the person fit to rule is 
because such a person would have attained a level of understanding of 
the universe, people and him/herself to be fair to all and just in the 
dispensation of justice. In another sense, we may simply encapsulate 
this epistemological requirement by indicating that the leader must be 
wise, not simply knowledgeable. This is because there is danger in mere 
requisition of knowledge, as many persons are specialists in various 
areas by regrettably poor in most others and unfit for leadership. So 
competence in some profession or acquisition of skills or ?techne? or 
expertise is no indication of capacity to lead. Hence, the better we 
conceive of leadership holistically as requiring wisdom. The leader 
would have attained this through proper upbringing, attendance at the 
school of life, knowledge of history and culture of her/his society, an 
awareness of international relations and forces of history, familiarity 
with the psychology and pathology of suffering or being downtrodden in 
an inclement international environment, capable of an analysis of the 
sociology of poverty, the metaphysic, economics and politics of 
dependency and the historical interaction of races and ethnicities in 
the global village. More than these, the leaders would have to acquire 
a great perseverance in the mastery of the knowledge of self. For the 
blind cannot lead the blind without both of them being endangered.

We are not making an unreasonable demand of leadership here. What is 
being suggested is that the leader should be intellectually rounded and 
epistemologically astute. When we look at Booker T. Washington (?The 
Atlanta Address?. 1895), we find that he exhibited so much mastery of 
the attributes we have put forward here, but his generation was unable 
to understand the tactical nature of his leadership philosophy. Hence, 
they often thought he was a sell-out when he preached industry, 
frugality and education. They thought that he meant in his lamentation 
of the poverty of his contemporary African American?s poverty, 
ignorance, immorality, that he was talking of an innate and hereditary 
attributes. But being aware of the forces arrayed against his black 
contemporaries who were just emerging from slavery, he knew that the 
challenges were not for the fickle and there would be no accolades won 
without serious effort, and that while a white person will get 
recognition with excellence, it would require a super excellence effort 
and accomplishment for the black person to attain the same recognition.

This is what brings us to the second prong of our epistemological 
requirement. Knowledge is critical in the followership also. For is the 
blind were to be leading the sighted into a ditch, the sighted would 
cry foul and resist the perdition that await them. This is the reason 
some philosophers advocate that the citizen must have a right to civil 
disobedience or even violent revolt against oppression and tyranny.

Now, it is important to understand how the coalescence of unhappy 
circumstance can conspire to facilitate the greatness of a people. One 
may use the analogy of the Jews in this regard. Washington was aware 
that the successful person of colour was an endangered specie, hence he 
preached lying low and creative use of little latitudes gained from 
oppression through constructive and diligent effort. This requires, 
therefore, that blacks whether in Africa, the Caribbean or the Diaspora 
should not forget her history in the last five centuries, how she got 
to where she is and strive to endure that her leadership be not 
ensnared into complacency which could either perpetuate for ever her 
and her descendants eternal dependency on other peoples of the world as 
consumers of the trash coming from other races. One must never forget 
the wisdom in the Yoruba proverb that, bi owo eni ko i te eku ida, a 
kii beere iru iku to pa baba eni, that is, if you have not attained the 
power necessary to confront the opponent you do not ask why or how 
he/she killed your father. For, doing that is asking to be killed 
yourself, and the only way you can have the strength and resources to 
do that is by acquiring knowledge and resources to stand on your own, 
before demanding freedom. Thus, giving period during which he lived, 
his leadership, based on matured epistemology of reality has been 
vindicated. The prematurity of the activism of the abolitionists 
abolitionists and militants was clear in limitation of the achievements 
of racial justice before the right time in the second half of the last 
century.

In Blacks in America since 1865 edited by Robert C. Twombly (1971), we 
find a reinforcement of the epistemological requirement. From the 
perspective of Washington, one great service leaders must undertake is 
to search for and continually obtain information. This means that 
leaders must read, they must listen, and they must think. To speak 
without the exercise of these epistemological foundations as basic 
backgrounds is to condemn themselves and their society to ignominy and 
serious social and political dangers. It is no wonder that Eusi Kwayana 
emphasizes this epistemological factor when asserting that,

To understand the collective psyche of a people, we have to learn to 
listen not only to speech, but to non-speech and to a whole complex of 
responses? We have also to have periods when we fade and allow 
ourselves to absorb universal wisdom, listening with eyes, ears, skin, 
and the secret tuition we all have to some extent, known as in-tuition? 
When leaders throw aside reason, it seems that non-reason takes over, 
with or without their help. (Internet source provided in reference 
section).
Even if we are not too sure about the source of the universal wisdom, 
we would agree that a lot of intuition and consciousness is necessary 
for successful leadership, and the fact that a lot of the negativities 
in Caribbean polities are consequences of ignorance and insensitivity 
to the destinies of these societies by selfish and self-seeking rulers 
suffering from intellectual myopia and moral bankruptcy.

Let us take the third leg of our requirements, the metaphysic of 
leadership. Here we confront the most difficult aspect of theorizing or 
philosophizing about leadership. But that should not deter effort. 
Starting with the ontology of leadership, two questions will have to be 
asked: Is there ?leadership?, and if there is leadership, ?How do we 
recognize it?? On the first, there can be no denying the existence of 
leadership, but what we find in that identifying it, because of the so 
many families of attributes that constitute leadership has been a 
problem. This is where the social scientists have tried and failed 
because, unifying all leadership qualities makes if difficult to 
understand, and thinking that by listing these and teaching it success 
in some field will translate into success in other fields makes a 
mockery of the who philosophy of leadership.

This is what leads us to the suggestion that given the diversity of 
the families of attributes which make up leadership, the ontology of 
leadership will have to deal with relativities of time, space, context, 
cultures, groups, goals, etc. These are critical to the attribution of 
leadership, and in human affairs we do find that perception is a 
critical component.

Clearly it may have been expected that by talking of the metaphysic of 
leadership I intended some eternalistic, supernaturalistic or even 
metaphysical understanding of leadership. While one would have wished 
there was a failsafe method of divining leadership, this expectation on 
the part of those who have harboured them have proven of little value. 
This is where we find the problems with various forms of theocracies in 
human history, and this is where the expectations of people who look 
for divine intervention in the solution of human and social problems 
have been disappointed time and time in history. Human beings have 
always had to be proactive, knowing where they want to go before they 
can start getting anywhere near there. In many instances those who turn 
out to be instrumental in the achievement of progress and development 
in various historical epochs in human history have been regarded as 
divine intervention, dubious as this seems logically, we may permit 
persons with proclivities toward religions exuberance to feel 
comfortable in this zone. For the purpose of this dialogue however, it 
is clear that in history leadership has never been Manna from heaven, 
it has been human, and full of sacrifices and opportunities for 
satisfaction of group and personal goals.

Taking the axiological turn, we now must emphasize the normative 
nature and the norm generating nature of leadership in any society. It 
is clear that leadership should constitute the embodiment of the very 
hopes, aspirations, identity, dreams and realities of a society. Baring 
this, it is clear that there will ensue a drift in society that will be 
disastrous. It is important in this regard that should be clear 
standards and channels for the enforcement of these standards on both 
the leaders and the led, especially on the leaders. This is because, 
when leadership disregards the least of the norms, ethos and statutes 
of a society with impunity, the signals sent reverberates through the 
entire fabric of the society, having consequences not easily redressed.

While certain modes of behaviour will be tolerable for citizens, such 
allowance cannot be made for leaders, because giving small room for 
indiscipline and disobedience of the laws would lead to further and 
further infractions of the statutes. Societies with great civilizations 
have endeavoured to ensure that leadership transcends the regimen of 
the ordinary folk. While ordinary folk can operate at the level of 
normal reaction, leaders require more. Now, normal reaction implicates 
a complex matrix that is predicated on group behaviour and/or 
consciousness that has as its elements a) intellect, b) memory and c) 
association, all of which implicate a complex neural system 
differentiated on socio-cultural predications of rationality. In 
personal affairs, this complex plays out in relation to perceived 
latitude of behaviour, while in social settings, the latitudes are even 
more complex! Consequently, humans not only manifest a plethora of 
relationships but they seek out sources that help them to discriminate 
these relationships.

On the other hand, emergency reactions breed a stimulus response 
different from the normal situation. Some factors do not impinge on 
decision making mechanisms here, as the tendency is to involuntarily 
launch into a fire-brigade mode ? that of crisis management. This 
indicates the abbreviation of the social milieu of certain actions, as 
normal reaction is supplanted by the abnormal. But then this does not 
mean the total negation of the social, unless the situation becomes so 
privating that the only reality is the preservation of the ergo, the 
self.

Clearly in many of our Africa, Caribbean and Diaspora polities, 
especially the Nigerian example, the exigencies of life and the 
existential situation has not only become so privating, it has created 
a siege consciousness with the attendant situation of a Hobbesian state 
of nature, characterized by bellum omnium contra omnes ? a war of all 
against all, and especially of the leadership against the led, with 
enthronement of mutual suspicion and antagonism as the order of the 
day. The Jamaican experience is only a little different, hence the high 
of level of cynicism about leadership and corporate social existence.

So we see that in leadership matters, when we are concerned about 
norms, values, rules and regulations in public life, the leadership 
orientation and development must combine intellectual with a high level 
of sophisticated discipline that enables leadership to transcend normal 
reaction level, as conditions of leadership imposes on the leader this 
as part of everyday experience. Leadership places on those who assume 
it social obligations a high level of sensitivity requirement.

Imagine for a moment a situation in which leadership exhibits a 
generalized survival, self-preservation, ego-protection and 
individualistic orientation. At such a level everything must conduce to 
self-preservation and entrenchment. Imagine a situation where political 
leadership is construed as an instrument of determining who gets what, 
where and when. Where politics is a game for determining between 
?tribes whose members are perpetually at war with each other? and where 
the winner takes all and the loser ceases to exist literally. Imagine 
for a second a politics that is divisive, rather than uniting, where 
those who play by the rules get shafted and where leadership does not 
believe that the laws must shackle them from committing destructive 
blunders at the expense of the citizens. Imagine a situation where 
leaders are above the law, and where they can set their agents to kill 
and maim opposition with arrogant impunity. These will definitely lead 
to anarchy and mayhem.

Thus, when we are examining the ethical foundations of leadership we 
find that leaders are required to allow their consciousness to shift 
gear into the supernormal mode of cognition, behaviour and relationship 
with the people under acute stress situations. They must not just be 
normal persons or even ab/sub-normal that we mentioned above, society 
expects them to put society interest above self-interest. It is at this 
stage that the true test of leadership can be determined. This third 
stage is where the leader becomes only an instrument for the 
realization of society?s consciousness, where the leadership becomes 
the tool for the propagation of organic existence of the society. This 
is where leadership education, orientation and preparation kicks in 
automatically in advanced or civilized societies. Some may call this 
the spiritual level of leadership, but it is simply the level where 
that popular saying becomes significant ? I am, because we are. 

For our purpose, it will be useful to indicate the following 
attributes as important and critical in the analysis of the concept and 
moral content of leadership:

a) Vision And Some Level Of Idealism
A leader must have a vision of a better society. This vision must be 
informed by the realities of the historical antecedents of one?s 
society, contemporary realities of the world in which the society 
exists, and the potentialities and possibilities that the endowments of 
nature and human resources can transform for posterity. We have 
mentioned the importance of education in leadership development, but we 
must reiterate that factor of historical education, which will create 
in the leaders an awareness of how other peoples have related to 
his/her peoples and the consequences of such interaction. In which case 
the leader would be better prepared to use such knowledge for the 
advancement of the interest of his/her own peoples.

Why it is important for a leader to have a vision and a dream of a 
better society arises from the need to plan for future generations and 
ensure that the plans are realistic. It is necessary that leaders be 
able to lead from the front and be good examples for followers if there 
is to be effectiveness in leadership. In this wise, it is important 
that leaders be well educated in the traditions of their society as 
well as the associated histories of societies that have impacted on the 
traditions and that will continue to so impact as we mentioned just 
now.

b) Honesty
Honesty is a requisite of true leadership. Honesty necessitates 
transparency and fairness. The infectiousness of honesty cannot be 
underestimated as the character of the leader shapes the demeanour of 
the followership in many instances. Nigeria, under the Muritala 
Muhammad regime (albeit a military dictatorship) at the initial stages 
of the administration was a study in this requirement and part of the 
reasons for the short-lived span of this regime was the wavering of the 
leadership from the path of honesty and trust in the people.

Clearly, it may be asked why not follow Nicolo Machiaveli?s prince who 
need not be good but needs only appear to be good. The immediate retort 
to this is the Marley view that ?you can fool the people some time, but 
you cannot fool the people all the time?.

In fact, the degree of cynicism that pervades the Afro-Caribbean 
consciousness is a consequence of the Anasism of the leadership. In 
consequence, it is clear that if we cannot trust the leader, how can we 
follow the words emanating from leadership?

Elsewhere I had analysed the apathy and the tendencies toward 
anarchism of large segments of the populations of Africa and Caribbean 
polities as by products of an elite labouring under the lethargic jet 
lag of colonialism and slavery. On this occasion it is merely worth 
noting that African and Caribbean polities have not accepted their own 
part of the blame. They still look for scapegoats for their failures. 
They are quick to point fingers at slavery and colonialism, while 
forgetting that for every finger pointed the remaining four on the hand 
indicates self-reference. Honesty requires that leadership accept blame 
for missed opportunities, wasted resources, excesses in governmental 
exploitation for self and connected parties. The first step is 
repentance ? that is, willingness to confront the populace with the 
truth. An acknowledgement of error, rather than the mystification of 
power and the harassment of the poor into submission, is the first step 
in atoning for the pernicious effects of dishonest leadership that has 
pauperised the societies of Africa and the Caribbean.

We may say that the first decades of post-independence in many Africa 
and Caribbean polities were periods of euphoria and hence we had not 
settled down to serious business, but what explains the drift in the 
subsequent years? Can we say we have no means of divining what fate 
attends our failures in the community of nations? Or would we suggest 
that we never had the opportunities that the Asian Tigers had (even 
with the temporary collapse of their financial sectors in the mid- to 
late-90s, which still left these societies better than those without 
similar financial crises)? We must honestly confront our mirror images 
and ask the questions the leadership must face.

c) Ability to Listen Patiently and Attentively to Others (Diverse 
Views), and to be Educated
It is important for leadership not to arrogate to itself omniscience. 
In Yoruba society, it is said, that, ?the young is wise, and the old is 
wise, is the pillar on which the ancient town of Ile-Ife was built.? In 
my essay, ?Olodumare ? God in Yoruba belief and the problem of evil? 
(See African Studies Quarterly, an electronic journal by University of 
Florida, Gainesville, 1998), I had discussed the importance of the 
weakness of Western theistic theology, theocracy and divine rulership 
espoused in Judaeo-Christian tradition which arrogates to the Supreme 
Being infallibility, even in the face of counterfactuals as in the 
Genesis. In Yoruba theology it is not regarded as strange for 
Olodumare, the Supreme Being, to consult His diviners to ensure that 
things move properly in the affairs of the universe. This would serve 
as a humbling lesson to humans that they cannot and should claim what 
they have not, indicating that they need to encourage consultation and 
respect for the wishes of the people.

What we see here is the need, therefore, for dialogue between leaders 
and followers, because it is in such feedback mechanism that right can 
be right and wrong righted. The consequence is loyalty and willingness 
to endure difficulties together as one, rather than having leadership 
preaching belt-tightening while their own rank is bulging at the 
waistline and a swelling parasitic membership procuring larger and 
larger cloth and shoe sizes, cars and homes and other expensive luxury 
consumption, even including buying homes in Europe and having fat 
accounts in various offshore banks. How would one square a situation 
where at the negotiation table for the rescheduling of loans that the 
representative of the poor begging country wears the most expensive 
designer outfit of all at the meeting?

Part of the appeal of President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria when he 
campaigned for Presidency was the fact that he was the only military 
ruler in Nigeria to have ceded power voluntarily. Also he tried then to 
live what he preached in form of ?austerity measures? whereby the most 
expensive car was the Peugeot which all middle class Nigerians used in 
the late 1970s and ?green revolution? in the form of farming which 
helped many civil servants survive the harshness of the austerity 
measures and which profession he turned to after retiring from the 
army. His campaign for eschewing exhibitionist consumption patterns 
resonated with the people as the balance of trade and payment situation 
of the country reflected a need for austerity and his government was 
willing to make the sacrifices they were calling on the people to make 
? not empty calls.

d) Dedication to the Cause of the Society and Transparency
Even situated as the Caribbean countries are, there is no escaping the 
fate of weaklings and failures as the fragility of Caribbean economies 
are daily emphasized by threats from international conglomerates such 
as Chiquita. While Darwinism may be discredited as explanations of the 
evolution of the species, we must honestly confront that as a truth in 
Global economics. The strong simply gobbles up the weak and the weak 
simply loses identity ? even for distant Islands, this must not be 
forgotten.

Consequently, it is immediately urgent to understand that leadership 
needs transparent dedication to the cause of society. This is why in 
civilized societies one cannot indicate that there are no distinctions 
between private and public lives of leaders. The ?official secrets act? 
in many third world countries are outdated, counterproductive and 
antithetical to the interest of the people whose interest is being 
protected.

In Lieu of A Conclusion
As I said earlier, this piece is a part of a bigger project on the 
philosophical analysis of Africa, Caribbean and Diaspora polities. What 
is presented here is but the preface. But it is hoped that many able 
minds would join the debate and provide fertility ingredients for the 
discourse in the minds of the fringe academia that Africa, Caribbean 
and Diaspora intellectuals constitute. I will not be able to end the 
introduction to a concept that I believe has been neglected by those 
who need the discussion most without bringing in the words of Garvey. 
He said,

There comes a time in the life of everyone, as well as of races when 
we settle down to look ahead and see what is before us. The Negro, 
making up his mind to look ahead, has before him a very dark and gloomy 
future, brought about by his own neglect at a time when the opportunity 
presented itself for him to engage himself in the undertakings of world 
re-organization (115).
While the re-organization that Garvey intended was at the United 
Nations level in the aftermath of World War II, our interest is even 
more modest now. Our interest is in the re-organization of our polities 
in line with the demands of fairness, justice, equity, love, 
dedication, and values that we can be proud to be remembered for by 
posterity.

Our situation in the various African, Caribbean and Diaspora 
constituencies call for drastic measures. In the multi-ethnic, multi-
linguistic and multi-cultural societies like Nigeria, for us to 
continue as if we are really doing well is no more than grand self-
deception. In the Jamaican situation, the dispossessed and the economic 
and social outcasts are outside of the system and constitute a big 
challenge to leadership. This creates a false pluralism not different 
from what obtains in multi-ethnic or multi-cultural societies. While it 
is true that those who benefit from a system, either because they 
belong to the ruling majority (minority) or partisans in power, always 
find it difficult to understand the resentment of the minority for the 
domination they suffer, just as the powerful has always found it 
incomprehensible why the weak is suspicious of their good intentions of 
domination. We must bear in mind that the incentives for embracing non-
accountable rulership is overpowering in young democracies. These 
incentives make it difficult for our polities to get rid of the disease 
of electoral malpractices.

No group in a pluralistic society voluntarily accepts the leadership 
by another group. It is clear that for acceptance to occur there has to 
be transparency in the allocation of power and in the allocation of 
resources. Unless a means is found for judicious power sharing, there 
will always be rancour. This is where the matter of mettle of 
leadership comes in, to transform the contentious issues to areas for 
consensus and unification of destinies.

It is clear that democracy as bequeathed to the various African, 
Caribbean and Diaspora polities have not been very successful. There 
are two interpretations of democracy that we may bear in mind here. 
First, we understand democracy (not ?dem-all-crazy?, as Fela Anikulapo 
Kuti said) as meaning that all who are affected by a decision should 
have a chance to participate in making that decision, either directly 
or through their representatives, or two, simply allowing the will of 
the majority to prevail. While in a homogenous society the latter may 
recommend itself, in a multi-ethnic society it would seem that the 
first would be more likely to be just to the interest of all concerned, 
while at the same time allaying the fears of domination that some 
segments of the society may have.

Our understanding of leadership would indicate that we endorse, as the 
fountainhead, as historical responsibility and as a temporary stopping 
place for this discussion, the views expressed by Garvey. We would be 
able to defend this in philosophical and sociological (and indeed 
historical) terms, as the soundness of the reasoning originating it 
would be borne out by the good consequences or results of such 
commitment. He said:

Yet the thing that lives in history, the thing that goes to the credit 
of man, is not how much wealth he has piled up for himself; is not how 
comfortable he has lived, but how good he has done for the rest of 
humanity. The present world generally worship power, influence and 
wealth. It is very easy to find sycophants who will fawn before such, 
and who will pay unreasonable compliments; but those who encourage and 
help the poor are few, and when they do engage themselves in such 
labour there is nothing else transient for them but condemnation (118).
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*I want to thank the Centre for Caribbean Studies, Hunter College, 
City University of New York, New York, USA, for the generous Caribbean 
Exchange Scholarship, in May ? June, 2002, which made further research 
on this project possible. I also want to thank the scholars at the 
Centre for their encouraging, constructive and critical comments at the 
presentation of the draft paper at Caribbean Exchange Scholar Seminar, 
June 4, 2002. I thank the participants at the Caribbean Culture 2 
Conference, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, Barbados, 
2001, for critical comments on an earlier effort at reflecting on the 
issues raised in this essay. And I also thank the Department of 
Theology and Religious Studies, University of Botswana, Gaborone, 
Botswana for giving me the benefit of their facilities as a Visiting 
Scholar on Sabbatical Leave, to further develop these ideas in the 
academic session 2002-2003 and for the comments of colleagues in the 
Department on the final draft. I hope this final product meets some of 
their criticisms and further develops the issues we explored together. 
Any errors that may remain in the essay are entirely mine.

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