The point consists in the boldness it requires to inject oneself constantly in the public sphere as a simultaneous act of rebellion and patriotism. Failure at the polls has not in any way dented Professor Utomi’s nationalist ardor. And that is where my interest as a reformer lies. I see a critical similarity between my failed desire to achieve my professional ambition of institutional transformation of the civil service through reform as an expert-insider and Utomi’s incessant denial by our Lilliput’s political elites of critical policy space to translate vision to legacy. Both attempts were attempts to serve in the face of the obvious failure of leadership itself. And such bids arise out of the conviction that something critical can and should be done to rescue the dysfunctional situation in the civil service and in the nation respectively. Reform is a serious business. And only the courageous knowledge worker with expert’s blend of what it takes to balance what it requires as ‘doing the right thing’ and ‘doing it right’ in a manner of speaking, can dare its complexities. Since the logical destination of a reformer is to achieve an office which would constitute what I have called a reform space that permits significant reform imperatives and authority, it stands to reason that a public intellectual like Utomi would eventually desire the office of the president of Nigeria.
What should concern us is the vision and ideals that defines Utomi’s understanding of leadership. The answer is simple; he is fascinated, at a fundamental level, with the relationship between human dignity, democratic ideals and managerial enterprise, and how these three could facilitate an institutional capacity that can grow development. This explains his long tenure at the Lagos Business School, and eventually the founding of the Centre for Values in Leadership (CVL) whose objective, as the website declares, is “the elevation of the dignity of the human person, beginning from Nigeria. The sense of a great duty and a big burden to improve the quality of life of young people, in our society, by building good values in them, led to the setting up of a Centre for Values in leadership.”
What I see in the idea of the CVL is a very clever combination of vision and a methodology. The vision to be a centre for leadership development is straightforward and fundamental enough. But there is something more behind it, if my deduction is correct. I read the CVL as a reform space that enables Pat Utomi to ground the culture of value leadership in a crop of youths with the underlying intention of building a leadership culture that is strong enough to undermine what Richard Joseph famously called the prebendal political behavior of the present crop of Nigerian political elite. Since independence in 1960, there has been a gradual but steady dissociation of the ruling elite from the social contract that binds the government to the governed in democratic relations of duties and responsibilities. But with the debilitating intervention of greed and political corruption, the Nigerian state has become a conglomerate of prebends rather than a dynamics of democratic welfare that empowers the citizens. And since a gloomy statistics of youth unemployment constitutes one of the consequences of the short-circuited social contract, what better way to reignite the youthful energies and reinvent the idea of leadership than through a catch-them-young framework of programmes and innovation that reward leadership skills and competences?
Professor Utomi ought to know because he is a rare intellectual who has consistently remained outside of the dynamics of anomie and corruption that has entrapped the Nigerian elite. Alongside others, Pat Utomi walks a lonely, enervating but patriotic path that seems to require more frustrating energies than what is required to steal some billions from the Nigerian treasury. He belongs to the corps of a few critical intellectuals committed to what I have called “empathetic scholarship” who remain committed to the Nigerian project, no matter what. Patrick Utomi has been celebrated a few times. When he writes, we all pause to listen and ponder his consistent reflections on the Nigerian condition, even though we may not always agree with him. He is one of the bright stars in the firmament of the Nigerian public life. But all these would not really matter if we refuse to take cognizance of his specific brand of patriotism and activism which choose to not only critique the Nigerian condition but to also programmatically build access points from which we can begin to address what is wrong with Nigeria. Professor Utomi chose leadership and values as an entry point into what is wrong with us. And this is significant because it is with the youth, whom the CVL targets, that we can commence a generational reinvention of Nigeria as a nation with budding potentials.