Two factional sentiments have stood since, with no clear sign of cancelling themselves out. Many have thoughts that leadership is a natural procurement from birth – that some people are born with rare sets of leadership abilities. The other dissenting sentimentalists deem that everyone can lead – that leaders are forged in the furnace of their determination, groomed by their competence and made responsible by their passion. As one opined to reality and the conditionality of platonic leadership suggestions, I strongly believe that leadership is not for everybody, because of our mental and substantial inequalities. While I also believe that anyone can be groomed in the art of leadership, the true test of leadership competence is not rated on the quality of tutelage, but on the innate capacity of the one who has been taught to act upon the values of the acquired knowledge.
How do you then identify those who are naturally called to lead?
When you come across a person who is widely followed and esteemed, even when he does not occupy a lawful office to stake his advantage, but because they believe in him. If he is more than a narrow and vain upstart of the moment, then he is a natural leader who exists for his fate and pursuits for his willful exertion. And on the devoutness of those who follow him, the force that pulls them to attraction is strongly felt on the subject’s character, sense of responsibility and trust in his ability.
In politics today, passion to learn to lead is not enough, no matter how openly displayed. Measly appetite to lead people is not an elementary indication that one would flourish as a politician. The desire of anyone who must be regarded as a virtuous politician must be to first take up a cause. The question of “why” must be most reflective over the question of “when”. The one who truly make the mind of the people overwhelmed with the clearest intention to make their lives better, should always be trusted with the duty of guiding them to a place unspoiled. Unless with a good sense of proportion, when a person is most timed to lead is not a very gripping claim, because people throughout time have not remained the same. They have evolved, continually so, to crave after the architypes of developments in their times. And when people are prescribed to lead at certain times, do they have all that is required to fulfil the time-changing cravings of the people? A person who has convincingly summoned his inner reason, would not be enslaved by the demands of time, but renewed by the sustained understanding of what the people need, at specific times. When a leader has found himself a cause, the reality of the evolving demands of his people make him attentive to their predicaments and tranquil to their adorations.
Now, considering the firmly disciplined sense of humanity in Ben Igbakpa, a quality that differentiates him from the mere obsessive persons, affected by the enthusiasms of partisan dabbles, the forte of his character is to first consider why he is billing to run for office, rather than when he should run. This has meant that since he began his political calling, he is not found synchronously bidding for political positions at every turn of political tenures. His desires are always to pursue the aspects of leadership that mean gains of the people, with the multilateral combination of reasonable passion, with practical sense of responsibility to the cause on a balanced measure of “why” and “when”.
Consequently, the one who is naturally fitted with the abilities to lead must shadow the meanest enemy known to man, which is arrogance, because this can rid him of the trust and confidence of the people. And all too often, we have witnessed many people in the helm of leadership fall to the antics of their arrogance. Though arrogance is very prevalent trait of leaders because of power, which is as an obvious means of controlling and manipulating people.
On a closer examination of Ben Igbakpa, his instinctive manner of relations with people are not judged on class and privileges. He has been unrepentant in his inclusion in the assembly of everyone, no matter how highly or lowly placed. Igbakpa has always ensured that his experience with power does not cause him to sin against his fateful quest of making the lives of his direct reports and larger constituents better. For him, power is an objective tool for transformation, rather than a prejudicial mechanism for segregation and manipulation.
When a politician knows [why] he is really running for office, he checks the first box of leadership mandate to objectively stand in front of his people, to lead them from a thinly veiled position of obscurity, to a hugely coloured podium of bliss. When you know why, a sense of responsibility follows. When a politician becomes arrogant and inevitably loses ground on the confidence of his people, he supposed to have first lost his sense of objective reasoning, then irresponsibility follows. In spite of Igbakpa’s experience in active politics, he has continued to sustain the duty of objectivity and responsibility to his people away from the glitzy and dazzling displays of affluence and authority associated with many politicians.
Although, or rather just because, influence is the obvious aim and struggling for influence is one of the powerful potencies of politics at all levels, there is no more detrimental alteration of the goals of politics than the disinterested person, who cares only for himself, with power. Hon. Igbakpa can never be described as a measure of his deeds and behaviours, as a creation of an inferior and casually unconcerned discipline towards what creates meaningful engagement for his people.
Igbakpa’s fate is resigned on serving a cause that is not vague to the capacity of his innermost strong point. When Igbakpa eventually emerges as the member, national assembly, representing Ethiope Federal Constituency, he is sure to not just perform a national and constituency function, but many full of humanitarian, social, ethical, and cultural ideals. He will be constantly sustained by a strong belief in all that constitutes progress for his people, the state, and the nation at large.
- Lewis Ebode
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