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.
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