Writers 
IF I WERE GOVERNOR: EPISODE II
The Masses as Their Own Worst Leaders
I am under no illusion that this piece will change policy overnight. But history teaches us this: every idea committed to record outlives the moment it was written.
Across our state and nation, we hear the same refrain from political leaders, civil society, and the media: a call for economic growth and social development that will make life meaningful for the masses. Yet, successive administrations come and go, and we remain either stagnant or in decline.
Perhaps the question we must courageously ask is this: Is it possible that we, the people, do not yet fully understand what we want?
Let me bring it home to #Kogi State.
35 years since creation, and we are still trapped in the same cycle of governance and developmental challenges. Why do we keep demanding the same things, even when previous governments have perhaps delivered at least 70% of them?
In my view, the problem is not solely one of leadership. It is deeper. It lies in our collective understanding of what we want, and in the absence of a coherent system to deliver it that could and must last beyond decades while maintaining the status quo.
I have long advocated for #structural change. Unfortunately, that conversation is neither loud enough nor welcome enough.
Let me explain with a simple analogy.
Consider a phone. The motherboard functions because the battery supplies power. The battery works because it receives charge from electricity through a charger. On that motherboard, capacitors, diodes, and ICs regulate and direct energy so the system functions efficiently and durably. Other systems like human system and others work so.
Human societies work the same way. A society is a system. Every part must connect, regulate, and reinforce the other.
So I ask: Do we have a working system in Kogi State, even in Nigeria as a country?
What we have is what I call a “conventional system” a cycle that repeats every four to eight years:
1. Receive allocations
2. Pay salaries
3. Patch roads that will not survive the tenure
4. Renovate schools that produce graduates with no pathway into the state economy
5. Recruit more people into a system with no productive output
6. Maintain convoys of over 100 vehicles, draining resources with little return
For 35 years, successive governments have danced around this same “conventional template.”
I was born into these same complaints 25 years ago, and I hear them unchanged today.
The hard truth is this: We, the masses, may not fully grasp what good governance should look like. Our judgment is still calibrated to this conventional model. And so long as that remains, our state and nation will continue to drift.
The real question, then, is: How do we design and build a working system?
...That will be the subject of Episode III, which will be dropped very soon InshaAllah.
J.A. Adams
Political & Social Analyst
Media Practitioner
Teacher
Author of “Cost Of Greediness”
