The leading University Campus Grown Fraternities (UCGF) have had a long run of durability in their existence. Like many glorified dictatorships, autocracies and predatory cults, their enduring survival is a function of the longevity of the founder or historical leader. There is no retirement- some are late and some are present.
The “cult of personality” of the historical leader prevents the development of consistent and well-enforced institutions, laws or rules within the UCGF. His changing moods, whims and preferences rule the UCGF as he pleases. The challenges to his inconsistencies are few and attract punitive sanctions. The outcome is that the UCGF is always in a state of permanent uncertainty; every member has to wait for the latest deceptions, half-truths, excuses, threats, punishments, exclusions or instructions of the leader to know what will happen next. Keeping members guessing is one of the most ancient tricks of cult leaders. The problem resulting is that the cult leader never lives forever. He will eventually become too ill or senile to lead, or he will pass away someday. That is when the succession battles and disintegration begin; he never thought any successor a good enough replacement. The scramble for power on his departure can be desperate and violent – many will eat and drink poison.
Formal education is one of the most overrated things in human development people on the African continent can gain, maybe elsewhere too. Education in the formal sense is an “institutional thing,” i.e. the stuff of institutions. It is not just the stuff of classrooms and ivory towers. Institutions rely on education and education has to be meet institutional and societal requirements through governance for it to serve any useful purpose in society. The symbiosis of institutions and education is both valuable and undeniable. In a nation where institutions are unenforceable, we must expect the education curriculum to be inadequate in many senses. Education is not just the acquisition skills but also the awareness of the requirements of civil participation in a just or improving society.
When the realm governed by the Bad Brother is hollowed out from the inside by the purposeful preponderance of evil, excesses and abuses to the point everything that held it together is so polluted and its rules irreparably unenforceable, a power vacuum is created. That is the art of negotiating oneself out of power by sloth. Folly. The high and mighty in society that once gave credibility and legitimacy to the realm turn their honourable backs and conveniently depart gradually if they were not expelled earlier. The least among men devoid of rectitude, creativity and intelligence then come into ascendance and potentially power by way of hunter-gather style ambition. The realm then gets hollowed out further till the skin breaks from the inside to the surface. Only the memories remain and the smell.
The diary titled The Leadership of a Bad Brother (http://wp.me/p1bOKH-Db) is herein given its second rendering. It is the case the bad leadership, especially of the professional kind, is an increasing occurrence as well as having gained broad unwitting acceptance in society and therefore nothing is done about. However, bad leadership mostly is unexpected and obscured thrives. We shall continue to examine the nature and incidence of bad leadership as it affects the lives of people individually and collectively, whether formally or informally, legally or illegally, secretly or openly.
