My big brother Femi Adebajo raised a pertinent question on corruption and incompetence, which is a lesser evil.
It is a tricky question in the sense that in most African countries, you have 85% of leadership exhibiting both in huge proportions.
And from a development point of view, that has been the major reason the African continent is damn poor. You can’t have such twin evil in a single leadership and expect growth.
It is like being ogbenye burukwa amusu ( being dirt poor and also a witch).
In contrast, most of the great development leaps witnessed across Asia in the last 50 years were engineered by very corrupt but astutely competent leadership.
The term benevolent dictatorship aptly described this combo of corruption with vision, the right mindset and skills-set to uplift a society.
From South Korea to Taiwan, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, and even Vietnam. And if you think that the top dogs of the Chinese Communist Party that worked to transform China from Deng Xiaoping to Xi Jinping are corrupt free, you must be dreaming.
Similarly, what is today termed the Chilean Economic Miracle was the brainchild of a corrupt dictator, General Pinochet. He it was who assembled a group of economists known as the Chicago Boys (because they studied at the Department of Economics at University of Chicago under renowned Milton Friedman) to draw up the economic roadmap that made Chile the first poor country in the western hemisphere to break from poverty in the last 100 years.
That was achieved under a corrupt dictatorship. Today, Chile is a sprawling democracy and member of the OECD.
And as I postulated, with economic freedom always comes socio-political freedom because poverty and freedom dont mix. You cant be poor and free. That’s why democracy cant work in extreme poverty. But that is for another day.
Transparency International says that former Indonesian president, Suharto is the most corrupt leader in modern history, having embezzled an alleged $15-$35 billion during his rule.
Yet in Indonesia, he is still eulogised as the architect of the country’s industrialization, modernisation, economic growth, education leap and high standard of living. He broke the chains of poverty. At one time he owned almost 35% of the banks, industries and other companies in the country. The democracy being enjoyed in Indonesia today was because of the economic freedom he brought.
Imagine if Abacha was competent even with his corruption.
Incompetent leadership is worst than corrupt leadership in that it is glaring that incompetence itself is a strand of corruption as you need a certain dose of corruption to cover up incompetence for a long time. Thats how many climb through the ranks with fake results.
Moreso, incompetence can only be nourished within a corrupt system where standards are abysmally low.
Given the choice between a brazenly incompetent leadership that is unaware of what is expected of it. And a corrupt one that knows what needs to be done to get things going. I would go for a corrupt leadership.
Incompetence thrives in corruption whether overt or covert.
But the greatest danger incompetence pose to any leadership is that it takes a certain level of competence to know you are incompetent. And even a higher level of competence to know what to do about your incompetence.(Copied)
