The essence of what leaders exist to accomplish is solve problems. With as many difficulties as our constituencies, senatorial districts, and state face, it’s noteworthy to note that the most enticing discussions among gladiators and onlookers aren’t about how to solve these and other problems that keep piling up. It’s all about how the governing elite distributes power.
However, the difficulties start piling up so quickly that we end up using shortcuts to momentarily relieve tension points so we can move on to the next one. We fail to solve the core of each problem we face in the process, and we remain trapped in a never-ending circle that makes it difficult to find any solution.
And the reality of our politics and leadership recruitment process, finds us dealing with people that complicate matters with their preference for self-promotion in place of team efforts at problem solving. The competition to grab and maintain political bases and the craving to have personal signatures on every gesture from government, are taking the front burner, militating against the building of systems and processes and further distracting us from solving existing problems by creating new ones.
Instead of building systems to solve problems, our leaders have preferred to approach our problems with linear vision, wanting everything to be seen to be done by them or not done at all, only seeing the problem that lies directly in front of them and blocking the possibilities that lie within the problem. As such, they never see the totality of what the problem represents; that it can actually serve as an enabler to improve existing best practices, protocols and standard operating procedures for continuous improvement and opportunities previously unseen in our communities and constituencies.
For example, instead of stuffing a few notes into envelopes and distributing on camera to constituents as bursary, why not commit such funds into starting properly managed education trust funds open to public donations and scrutiny as well as oversight government to resuscitate our scholarship/student grants boards?
Instead of waiting for phone calls from desperate sick constituents asking for medical bills, why not kick-start a subsidized health insurance scheme for vulnerable members of our communities? A pilot scheme can begin with even a hundred subscribers mostly women of child bearing age and expand the net from there.
Instead of giving handouts to people to pay rents, can we begin to consider alternative and affordable mass housing options and models for our communities?
Can we begin to build functional innovation and entrepreneurship clubs and centers in our constituencies and ensure they function by challenging them to produce implementable targets?
These are actually things that require discipline to do and they tarry before maturation and politicians generally believe that such things don’t help them win the next election. Yet in the long run, it is the mushrooming of these structures that will solve society’s problems on a sustainable basis.
The only person I know who ever commanded his followers to cast their burdens on him was Jesus. But he was not voted into power. The people we vote cannot solve our problems by themselves. They solve them through systems and structures. That’s why they haven’t been able to solve our problems as it were. They are to midwife the building of structures systems and processes that will perpetually solve our problems.
When I say structures, I am not referring to skyscrapers. I mean the very simple steps like just the first phone call to an insurance company of your choice now, to enquire what will be the first step to getting 200 people from your constituency on their health insurance policy instead of waiting to send them hospital bills when they become ill.
Yours sincerely,
Citizen Agba Jalingo.