Is Common good, good for Everyone?
In 1965 my father who was also Michael Ukwuma gained admission into the University of Nigeria Nsukka. It was the proudest moment of his life. He had dreams of completing his studies in Business Administration by 1970. What young Michael did not know was that he would not be graduating from the University in 1970. His reality in 1970 would be that he would be leaving the ranks of the Biafran Army as a Captain and would be nursing the hopes of returning to the University if he survived the killing spree by the Nigerian Army in their newly conquered territory. School years were not all he lost. While my father and his three brothers were fighting, their only sister, my only paternal aunty, was lost in the war. No one knows what became of her to date. They never spoke about it. There are no pictures of her. I don’t even know her name. This is part of our stories and lives. But we are not alone as many Nigerians have similar stories. Yet, there are no memorials and the history of the Nigeria-Biafra War is not taught in schools because the government felt that it was for the common good that we forget that the war ever happened. Till date there is not an official account of the events before during and after the war. All the accounts available belong to non-Nigerians and a few personal memoirs from some notable Nigerians. This situation has caused more problems as tribal conflicts arising from lopsided accounts of the war.
Leaders at different levels, be it in public offices, the private sector and even nonprofits, often act based on the principle of the common good. The assumption is usually that the common good benefits everyone. It is supposed to make everyone happy and enjoy a fulfilled life. On the one hand, this may seem very applaudable, but on the other hand, does everyone concerned benefit equally from the common good? Maybe the better question is, is everyone concerned even a beneficiary of the common good? If you find these questions either thought-provoking or at least perplexing, then walk with me, while we explore why there may be no such thing as the common good.
To make leadership easy, it became important to meet the needs of as many people as possible. Or if we are being honest, leaders often find a way to keep enough people happy to stay in office. No one loves an uprising, when they are the target. So that makes a bit of sense if you tried being in the leader’s shoes for a moment. It is a bit of a fix because the promise of leadership is to cater to the needs of everyone in the community, despite knowing that that is a task most people will fail at. People are insatiable and their needs remain dynamic and cannot often be solved. Technically, every solution will give rise to new problems. Therefore, in some sense, leadership is a rat race. It is important that we establish this background before delving into the intricacies of the common good and why it is such a daunting task for any government in the world to accomplish. In this piece, we will explore what the common good is based on the perspectives of the leader and those of the people. Then we shall explore some common mistakes leaders make in trying to work for the people. Finally, we shall conclude with proffering some likely solutions.
So What is ‘Common Good’?
The “common good” refers to those facilities—whether material, cultural or institutional—that the members of a community provide to all members in order to fulfill a relational obligation they all have to care for certain interests that they have in common.
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
It usually is an agenda that benefits everyone. That is as idealistic as it gets. The thought that leadership decisions can indeed benefit everyone and somehow either solve their problems or make them happy is admirable. The best way to describe the common good is from an individualistic perspective. That seems odd, doesn’t it? But I believe that the human mindset centers on what it needs. Therefore common good must, first of all, benefit ‘me’, that is, the individual who makes the decisions. In my Nigerian context, this is consistent with the behaviours of the typical Nigerian politician. A glaring instance was the selfish demand of Nigeria’s current President Muhamadu Buhari as he was about to sign into law, a very remarkable bill; the Not-Too-Young-To-Run Bill into law. This law reduced the minimum age at which Nigerians may seek elective offices. Persons who were 25 years old may now seek to be elected into States and Federal Houses and 35 years for President. In his official speech, the President, who was still serving a first term in office, asked the youth to postpone campaigning for office until he completes a second term in office by 2023. My point really is that ‘common good’ is often soiled by personal interests, party interests and other sub-interests that may not reflect what all the people concerned truly need. Common Good is an ideal. If it works society benefits but that rarely ever happens because of perspectives.
A Leader’s Perspective on ‘Common Good’
For most leaders, the common good like beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder. What a leader sees determines what he considers as common and good. For instance, in a very diverse (or maybe we call it what it truly is, a tribalist) country like Nigeria, leaders may see things from their tribal context. In a video that is available on YouTube the Premiere of Northern Nigeria, Sir Ahmadu Bello explains the concept of the Northernization Policy. This was a fantastic policy to give a comparative advantage to the North to ensure parity in development between the Northern and Southern Regions of Nigeria. Nothing bad about that except when you consider that he would rather hire a foreigner rather than hire a Nigerian who is not a Northerner begins to question the place of the common good of Nigerians in the policy. Such mindsets that put religion and tribe over national values are questionable.
Do leaders approach the common good from a biased angle or are they able to form their perspectives to understand the national context at every given time and on every given issue? After writing the above line, I realized that this may be far fetched for many Nigerian leaders. Leaders within and out of the political spaces often prioritize personal aggrandizement as the primary goal of their positions. Little wonder, they look to leadership as children on a queue, in a playground who must take turns to ride a prize swing. It is not uncommon to hear them scream “it’s my turn” or as we have learnt to say in Nigeria “Emi lokan”! When a leader wakes up in the morning, does he see the people he rules or does he see the subset from which he emerged? It is easy to say one or the other, but in their practice of governance, what do we see?
People’s Perspective on ‘Common Good’
In the minds of the people, leaders exist to care for them. They believe that the government should know and cater for their needs including the simplest ones. It has been known for Nigerians to blame the president for everything and here are a few examples:
- Ram sellers blame Buhari for poor sales
- Bishop blames Buhari for insecurity and crisis
- Reno Omokri blames Buhari for making Nnamdi Kanu a celebrity and making him powerful
- Nigerians blame Buhari for the relocation of Big Brother Nigeria Shoot to South Africa
- Nigerians blame Buhari for Twitter’s choice of Ghana as Africa HQ
- Nigerians blame Buhari for Nigeria’s loss at the AFCON
The list is endless and Buhari has said severally that it is unfair to blame him for everything that’s bad. The way I see it is, they are right. The people are right. Leaders promise all sorts of things, anything but heaven itself. The people bring in leaders to be problem solvers. So if the solutions proposed by the government of the day do not solve my problems, I can claim that the common good has not been achieved.
Back to my Biafran story. If the Biafran people wanted to get a free state so that their people can be safe from attacks by their neighbors; the common good for them would mean safety either in ‘a Nigeria’ where no one is afraid of the Igbo person’s aspirations or a free independent Biafra. The Aburi Accord would have given them safety within Nigeria. But when the Nigerian government led by Yakubu Gowon chose to jettison the Accord the rest is history.
Common Mistakes Leaders Make in working for ‘Common Good’
It is not uncommon that many leaders have self-serving intentions as they walk the corridors of power. They always claim that the people called them to lead. Forgive my skepticism when I think that they deliberately act out a beautifully made con script to make us believe that we chose them. Most times, they choose themselves. That, I think, is the first common mistake. Leadership should be organic. If the people don’t want you, don’t impose! In the long run, such leaders don’t see beyond their noses and will always fail to meet the expectations of the people.
The second common mistake I see is the assumption that representative governance is good enough. It isn’t and will never be. Here’s why. There are a hundred and nine individuals in Nigeria’s senate making laws for two hundred million people. Forgive the bad math but on average, each senator represents about one million eight hundred thousand people. Most times, only the loudest voices will be heard, at best, the top ten per cent of the people. The rest have no representation. Remember where we started. Common good has individualized implications. Hence, the government is merely catering to the needs of the top ten per cent and as you probably guessed; their needs are not the same as the bottom fifty per cent of Nigerians. This position is not peculiar to the Nigerian people alone. A 2021 study on a measure of political integrity in the European Union also reported that political leaders in most European countries did not take citizen’s views into account when making decisions that affected them. The authors reported that less than 50 per cent of all their respondents in all the countries in Europe believed that their views were considered in decision making except in Finland.
Thirdly, a lot of times, the leaders like to gloss over complex problems rather than address them. I will use a couple of controversial groups; the LGBTQ community in Nigeria and the IPOB. Ideally, the common good should not be a reward or a handout to sections of the society that have more agreeable dispositions. The tokenistic approach that governments take to segregate the people based on ideas which may stem from lifestyle preferences and other personal interests cannot be considered ‘common good’.
The Nigerian government’s strategy for dealing with the above-mentioned communities was to proscribe them rather than listen or attempt to give them a seat on the table. Same approach that made the Biafran war to happen. Wishing what leaders perceive as a problem away is not a solution. Truth is that Nigerians who identify as Indigenous People of Biafra or members of the LGBTQ Community are still Nigerians even if we choose to ignore them. For groups such as these, whatever the government did without meeting their demands to some extent would never be considered good enough.
Finally and for the sake of keeping this piece simple, a fourth common mistake is imagining that leaders deserve admiration and appreciation for being leaders. Common good is not a reward the people enjoy for being appreciative. It is easy to single out bad governance because it is often surrounded by praise singing, unwarranted pomp and pageantry. Many developing countries have this situation whereby their leaders are dressed in gold but the people starve in the streets.
Conclusion: Getting Common Good Right
For starters, no one knows it all. Not even the greatest leader ever. Therefore, the leader must talk to the people. Listen to them. Discover what they truly want and need. That means leaving the presidential palace and driving into the hinterlands and talking to the poorest people. You might have imagined that I will have so much to say in this section, you might be wrong. I will stop here. Any good leader should listen to the people directly, not just the advisers or those around them. Great leaders must be willing to also listen to those who would not talk to them. Identifying the different voices in the room and providing the right interventions is a good start towards success and providing the common good the people need.
