Visionary leadership and Sino-Nigeriarelations

This piece is a continuation of last week’s article titled “Sino-African relations: A win-win solution?”Over the years, the emergence of visionary leaders has made China to become a global power with permanent membership of the UN Security Council.While her currency the Renminbi was recently anointed by the IMF as one of the world’s reserve currency.

It is visionary leadership that has elevated it to greatness in the global arena. In the case of Nigeria, it is still work in progress. Nigeria is still battling with greedy leaders, corruption, oil theft, pipeline vandalism, as well as other societal ills.

International relations is a matter of cost and benefit, not faith. International relations is sustainable and beneficial to nations involved when they are almost at par in terms of development as well as share same values. There is no doubt that China is a technologically advanced nation with an economic model strengthened by visionary leadership. With visionary leadership, a nation can attain greatness.
Although Nigeria and China have a lot in common in terms of natural resources and population, I would expect Nigeria and China to: (a) Play prominent roles in the politics and security of their respective regions because of their population and resource endowment (b) Nurture close bilateral relationships, while fostering collaboration in multilateral diplomacy on a general range of issues of international concern such as terrorism, human trafficking, climate change, environmental degradation, etc. (c) Improve balance of trade in areas such as agriculture, petroleum products, solid minerals and capital goods. (d) Ensure strong commitment from Chinato stop the flow of fake pharmaceutical and electrical/electronic products to Nigeria.This is because of growing concern about fake products from China. (e) Transfer technical and managerial skills to Nigerian workers by Chinese companies operating in Nigeria. This is one of the benefits of bilateral relationships between states. This will engender economic development in Nigeria.
All the above can only be achieved with visionary leadership in Nigeria.Unfortunately, Nigeria’s leadership crisis is legendary. This is because for many years leadership problem in Nigeria is endemic at all levels of government be it local, state and federal. Unless Nigerians make concerted efforts at producing visionaryleaders, Sino-Nigeria relations cannot be a win-win solution.
Where Nigeria have performed awfully for years, China has excelled. For instance, China has invested consistently on education of her citizenry. The investment in quality education has yielded positive results for China such that she provides hundreds of thousands of engineering graduates that are pro- industry and IT compliant. Recently, I had a discussion with a foreign IT expert who told me that an American computer firm (name withheld) recruits massively young, talented and enterprising engineers from China annually for jobs in its offices abroad. This is not the same with Nigeria.
What did China do to be great? Since the time of China’s former Premier Mao Zedong, China has been blessed with visionary Leaders. With visionary leaders, Chinese successive governments follow through programs started by Zedong’s regime.

One of Chinese success story is the successful launching of a manned space flight on 16 October 2003. This was the result of vision, consistency, focus and careful planning. For Nigeria to be great, Nigerian governments must be consistent in seeing projects and programs through to a logical conclusion. This is imperative. Nigerian leaders should desist from abandoning projects.

The practice by Nigeria of discarding laudable projects by succeeding governments have turned the country into a graveyard of uncompleted and abandoned projects. This is because projects inherited by governments from their predecessors are starved of funds to kill their chances of succeeding. The take-away here is that Nigerian governments must be consistent in seeing projects to a logical conclusion.

It has been reported that the government and people of China are noted for discipline that promotes hard work and dignity in labor. China’s leadership is prudent and sacrificial with little or no room for flamboyance and corruption. China’s leadership took an approach in its economic reforms in which job creation went pari-passu with restructuring. This is because China “thought it was more important, not only politically but also economically to maintain social stability which could be undermined by high unemployment.”

The greatness of a country is not a function of pious declarations and reforms that plot dubious graphs of success as reflected in the privatization of PHCN. While some declarations lack credibility in concrete terms, most of those referred to as leaders in Nigeria are impervious to reforms.

International relations is not only about receiving grants, it is about mutual benefits between nations involved. Thus, Nigerian leaders must imbibe positive leadership attributes to enable Nigeria benefit from her relationship with China.
The creativity of the Chinese people as well as their regional experience should inspire Nigerians as a people to face economic challenges with courage. Today, China is one of the leading economies in the world because her leaders have shown dexterity, creativity and astuteness as leadership qualities from the time of Mao Zedong. Chinese leaders have led, the people have followed.Interestingly, Nigeria’s President Buhari and Xi Jinping of China have zero- tolerance stance on corruption. Praise God!

It is hoped that economic relations with China in the future would be built on a foundation of equity and mutual respect. We should have a relationship between the two countries devoid of the master–servant relationship in the Twenty-First Century.Thus, Nigerian governments must be disciplined with the will to promote hard work, and ensure that all the building blocks of corruption are dismantled.

 MA Johnson