The Dangote plc advertised for truck drivers and got 3,000 applicants with first degrees, 700 applicants with second degrees and six applicants with Ph.D degrees.

That is not a Nigeria that can long survive especially if that is juxtaposed with the excessive looting of the national wealth by both the political and the economic elite.

One manifestation of the failure of leadership that I need to touch upon is the trivialization of public offices. It manifests itself in several ways.

The first is the qualification of those running for public offices. People who have never been Councilors or Assembly men want to run for the post of Governor, or Senator or even President.

People without any track record in public or business life think nothing of running for Governor or President.

Second manifestation is the adoption of the zoning or rotation formula which dispenses of experience and emphasizes the turn-by-turn syndrome irrespective of experience or qualification.

All of these would not matter if not for the fact that anointed candidates are usually rigged into office. If we have free and fair elections, where parties can be penalized for fielding incompetent people, then it would not matter whether candidates are imposed or not. But when incompetent candidates are imposed, and elections are rigged to ensure that those candidates get into office, it is the entire nation that pays the price.

While in little Sierra Leone, debates are held between Presidential candidates, in Nigeria, the Nigerian people have been treated with disdain by sitting Presidents or candidates preferred by authorities who refuse to turn up for debates, but prefer to indulge in monologues where the wisdom of their ideas cannot be subjected to withering cross-examination.

It is my hope that the recent examples in Edo and Ondo states where the candidates including the sitting Governors turn up for television and radio debates will be the wave of the future.

If care is not taken the history of Nigeria would be a history of the best Presidents, best Governors, and best Senators, and best judges that Nigeria never had. All it takes is for one nonentity or incompetent to be rigged into office and he or she would ensure that no one better in capability succeeds him in office.