By Moses Oludele Idowu
“Live your life as exclamation rather than an explanation.”
-; Isaac Newton ( 1643 – 1727)
The most important aspect of a leader is not what he knows or how he thinks, even though these are very important too. Much more than thought and knowledge the most important part of a leader is his heart. Of what sort is he? Of what stuff is his heart made of?
The core of leadership, – a leadership that succeeds – revolves around love, emphaty, affection, passion and intensity not just grammar, elocution, oration and brilliance.
History vividly tells us that all things being equal a leader with a heart will move the world better than the one with just brain. Happy and blessed when a people is blessed with a leader with both brain and heart.
Conversely, you may take this for a fair rule that a nation or land ruled by men without heart and feelings is cursed. That land is under divine displeasure, you may be sure.
As Moses heard the divine verdict on Israel to be banished from Divine Presence for ever because of the idolatry of the Golden Calf, something in him triggered. A heart of compassion for his people. God gave him an offer to make of him and of his seed a great nation and wipe out Israel as a nation.
What a bargain!
Moses did not want that. He did not want the nation of his founding fathers destroyed for the sake of his own.
He told God instead to remove his name from the Holy Records if He would not forgive this people, this adulterous generation.
He had a heart for His people the very reason he eventually paid a fatal price by not entering the Land – the Land which more than any mortal he so laboured for.
Heart is what distinguishes a leader from a ruler. A leader has heart, a ruler has none.
Paul wished he would be banished if possible from the Eternal City if only that would assuage and pave the way for his people, his race the Nation of Israel.
Have you ever thought of that? Have you ever considered that?
Someone wishes to be sent to Hell if possible if only that his own people and nation may be reconciled to God. That is a leader. That is why he was notable among the apostles.
I just made a discovery recently reading a Jewish Rabbi. The Hebrew language has no word for “leadership”. There is an Hebrew word for king, mother, captain etc., but none for leader or leadership. Jews believe that the Hebrew is the language of God and the language Adam and Eve spoke. So if a word does not exist in the Hebrew Language then you should question that thing and the popular beliefs around it.
Perhaps the reason it does not exist is because “leadership” is not what you learn, it is who you are. If you are a leader your heart and the state of your heart will reveal it and the people following you.
David would not allow a lion to take even one sheep from his father’s fold. He would not suffer a bear to feast and have a lunch on his father’s herd. For the sake of even a sheep he put his life in danger to rescue it. What would it cost him to tell the father that a lion took one of the sheep? The father would at least understand and even give praise to the God of Israel that his son was not hurt. But not for David. He had a heart for compassion even for sheep.
Years later as he watched thousands of Israel dying due to plague because of his own disobedience for numbering Israel he protested to God. “Let your Hands be upon me and upon my Father’s house, leave Israel alone. I am the one who sinned.”
That is a heart. That is a man whose very heart burned and yearned seeing the sufferings of his people.
That is a leader. A man who would risk his life for sheep what would you expect he would do for the least among the thousands of Israel?
That is what we need today: leaders with a heart. Not devils who has memorised leadership concepts and Platonic ideals. Men and women with a shepherd heart, not he-goats who have been to Harvard and Oxford. Harvard won’t give you such a heart.
Education is very good. Learning is excellent. I do not disparage learning because I am a man of learning. That I have written more than 40 books that have gone through several reprints and numberless articles and papers in magazines, newspapers and even learned journals, is a proof I am not averse to education. I cherish it.
But make no mistake. Education won’t give you certain things. Learning or scholarship alone won’t bring certain things in place.
Possibly the best educated ruler among Africa nations was Robert Mugabe who holds several degrees and PhDs. Yet he was possibly one of the the worst in the entire continent
Have you witnessed the number of professors presently that are facing corruption charges in EFCC courts across the country after a stint in public office? And I heard reliably recently that if the President who is the Visitor of universities had been able to check or go through the Visitation Reports on his table and act on them many more professors would be in jail or on trial. That is how bad it is.
No education is not enough. Or would you say a professor is not educated?
The jihadist named El-Rufai who recently boasted of installing a Muslim- Muslim ticket and silencing Christians in Kaduna, I am referring to the archetypal waster who presided over a state of blood with many loss of lives because he was interested in control and domination not governance, was at Harvard.
If you are a devil or have the heart of a Devil Harvard can’t make you a saint. Education does not make a man necessarily good, it can even make a devil a more ruthless and clever devil.
A leader must work on his heart first before his head. Heart is more important than brain or head. Give me a man with a large heart instead of one with big brain, if I cannot have the two. I will run with him.
Knowledge can be acquired, it can be taught. But a goat cannot be made to a sheep. A serpent will always be a serpent.
When politicians come to you, when prophets and pastors come before you don’t just listen to the mouth or the oratory, look at the heart. Watch his steps, actions, how he treats people, his subordinates, … Look for clues that reveals his heart. Notice how he speaks… From the heart or from the head?
Oratory gave Germany an Adolf Hitler, and what was the result? Hierarchy gave Russia a Josef Stalin instead of a more rounded Leon Trotsky and millions perished as a consequence.
Leadership is more about the heart than about the brain. That is why you have to “work more on yourself than on your job,” as business philosopher Jim Rohn rightly said.
As the American soldiers were about to depart to the battlefields of Europe during the World War II, President Einsenhower gave them a passionate farewell address. A president with a heart and once a general of the army himself. He knew that battles are serious things, that many of those he was addressing won’t return or see America again. At a point in his address he was touched, with emotions. It was the soldiers who were comforting him not to worry about them because they signed for it and it is the price they must pay for liberty to reign on the Earth.
Around the same time something was happening on the European front. Josef Stalin too was sending Russian soldiers to the battlefield to face the same monster of Nazism. But here there was a difference. No emotions,no concerns, no emphaty, no feelings…No words of kindness. Just like a technician throwing a spanner or bolts or nuts in his garage.
Winston Churchill was touring Britain after the war and seeing homes of people burnt down and houses completely bombed out in the blitzkrieg and the owners of the houses standing outside he wept publicly. A prime minister of a whole nation, a cultured and civilized nation.
What made the difference? A heart. Leadership with a heart. Yet Churchill did not even have a university degree but he is regarded as one of British greatest rulers.
On a glass of wine with Winston Churchill, Josef Stalin told him that the collectivization of agriculture in Russia took 10 million lives. That he had to waste that much of his population for the policy to scale through. He said it without betraying any emotion or feelings.
How about that?
What makes the difference between one and the other? The heart. The heart of some people will permit them to do anything – steal, loot, burn a whole village down like Odi or Zaki Beam.
Even while he visited Jesse where an explosion had just occurred almost wiping out an entire village Abdulsalami Abubakar, the head of state was shown smiling or laughing in the camera.
Even as the nation was in mourning over the death by gunshots of ABU students in 1985, Babangidda was shown beaming with smiles and sharing banters and laughter with Segun Okeowo as he set up a probe panel on the crisis.
The only time I remember that Buhari put on military uniform was when he was told that cows are being rustled and he went to mobilise soldiers to fight the rustlers. That is where his heart was. Not on farmers that are being killed but on cows.
Those who are old enough to witness the days of the Second Republic in the 1980’s would remember one Umaru Dikko, a minister in Shehu Shagari cabinet who said Nigerians are not hungry because he could not see anyone eating from the dustbin yet.
Boy, we have been abused in this nation for a long time. I don’t know the crime Nigerians committed against God.
The students of Ladoke Akintola University came to protest after several months of closure at Governor’s Office Ibadan and when his majesty, the governor, Isiaka Ajimobi would answer them he asked, ” Is this the first time that university would be shut” ( Se won sese nti unifasiti ni?)
So when few years later too he came down with COVID-19 the students too could answer him, ” Is this the first time someone will die of covid?”
The people who come to leadership in this nation, most of them have no heart.
What I see on the landscape astounds me.
Animal greed. The kind of greed that we do not even see in the animal kingdom
Even animals don’t steal what they don’t need. What would you do with these stolen billions that are not useful for you and members of your family while souls around you of your own kinsmen die in abject poverty and squalor?
Those who say Nigeria is a zoo do not have a point but they do point out something. I am afraid Nigeria is degenerating beyond that.
In a zoo you have beasts who are under human government and regulations, who are therefore not allowed to hurt each other. The lion cannot leave his cage to hurt the antelope; the serpent is not allowed to leave its glass ceiling to spread poison. Because there is a human government and imposed order.
That is not what we now have in Nigeria.
In a nation where for 8 years Fulani herdsmen terrorists and bandits wreaked havocs on their fellow citizens without a whimper of protest from government except to defend them; in a nation where a public official stole N90 billions and billions of dollars stolen in crude thefts without the navy seeing it for years, where ritual murderers operate in hotels and yahoo boys and yahoo- plus merchants are on the loose to operate; in a nation where a governor is taking pension while at the same time serving as senator or minister of government, where senators are better paid than the occupants of White House and Downing Street… In a nation where a militant and warlord publicly accused the military of smuggling and incompetence from the seat of power not a private balcony, you no longer have a zoo, you have a jungle. And in a jungle only one rule obtains: eat or be eaten.
Why?
Because our leadership have no heart, little brain and big bellies.
I was given to understand by a very top executive who has moved in the circles of politicians and governors that virtually every night in most of our government houses parties are being held. So there is a wine cellar which is always active and a library that is rarely opened. They spend more time with wine than with books. That is why their bellies are bigger than their brains
If Nigeria is a jungle or zoo, – that even Nigerians could fathom such a thing about their nation- is because our leaders are more like Josef Stalin than Winston Churchill. Cold, insipid, lifeless, heartless…
Good morning, Nigerians.
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© Moses Oludele Idowu
June 23, 2023
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