Index to Nigerian Newspapers

President Ibrahim Babangida's criteria for the Nigerian leader he would like to emerge post President Muhammadu Buhari should stimulate national debate on the leadership question. He suggested that the next president should be conversant with the country, communicate, and have somebody he knows in every part of the country. His prescription reminds me of the question I once asked the former president in the course of an interview with Newswatch magazine: "Who is IBB?" IBB replied that he was an ordinary Nigerian trying to do extra-ordinary things for his country. I find it curious that Babangida omitted something dear to him, his abiding love for ideas, which drive and build nations and societies. Babangida is pushing for the leadership debate as an intellectual exercise in the hope that the nation will take its flawed leadership recruitment process seriously. He believes that nature abhors a vacuum and that the people must constantly chew on fresh ideas in a genuine search for the ideals of human progress. Godfatherism is an infectious disease in our political system, and ideal leadership is not prescriptive because each one of us has in his head our own ideas.

The visit by PDP leaders led by their new national chairman, Dr Iyorchia Ayu, to President Olusegun Obasanjo last week suggests that they wanted him to be part of their party and play a critical role in helping to wake up the party and its leaders to the looming challenges of either returning to power in 2023 or remaining in the Siberia of political irrelevance in the foreseeable future. However, if they went to woo the former president back into their party, they were unfair to him and let the sun set prematurely on Africa's largest political party. The PDP leaders were wrong to try and own Obasanjo, but they should not have asked him to do what will taint him with the dark spots of partisan politics. He has seen it all and done it and must not be dragged back into his former party. His participation in any form in party politics will put unsightly spots on his credentials and prevent him from being the non-partisan guardian of the nation's conscience.