By Adan Makina
Does good leadership call for meddling in the affairs of others, dismembering, killing, displacing, and looting of the personal properties of the innocent? I don’t think so. Then, what is leadership in the real sense? Peter G. Northouse (Ph.D., University of Denver)[i] who is professor of communication in the School of Communication at Western Michigan University best describes the meaning of leadership. Here is how he describes it: “Leadership is a process whereby an individual influences a group of individuals to achieve a common goal”. Again, he tells us that “leadership involves influence; leadership occurs in groups; leadership includes attention to goals”.[ii]
Poor leaders don’t do things right and are hardly adored by their subjects. Good leaders do things perfectly and are loved by their subordinates. I prefer not to mention the dead men of the Horn of Africa who left behind bad legacies. Instead, let’s carefully divulge into the leadership traits of the living. It doesn’t matter if a leader is crippled, mono-eyed, ugly or short. Tell me, what is wrong with the leaders of the Horn of Africa? Why have they turned the Horn of Africa into a bleeding mess? Eritrea and Djibouti remain at war over a piece of land; Ethiopia and Eritrea have been at loggerheads over border issues; Somalia feels it is in a bloody mess because Ethiopia is meddling in its national sovereignty; millions of the Horn of African peoples are either internally displaced, refugees, or hungry. Somalia and Eritrea have strong military ties while Turkey has the biggest overseas military presence in Somalia. Egypt, a country that is ruled by President Sisi, a man who is a military general, has a bone to pick with Ethiopia over the Nile River. The construction of a hydroelectric power plant along the Nile River by Ethiopia is the major cause of the furor between Egypt and Ethiopia.
The problem we have, my dear reader, is poor leadership–leadership styles embodied by leaders who appear shrouded in visible sheepskin. These are stomach-crats who only value their stomachs, what to eat lavishly, gold to save in safe banks in Paris, London, Rome, and New York etc., and uncountable money to squander on a daily basis. Other insurmountable misappropriations of the state economy could include amassing Lapis lazuli mined in Afghanistan and polished in India, remaining airborne most of the time, traveling in sophisticated passenger planes that are worth millions of dollars, always remaining adorned in garments made from the most expensive silk embroidery, displaying lineups of the most expensive bulletproof cars, and holidaying in the most expensive yachts in far distant seas and oceans.
To keep aloof from the horrors of magicians and magic and the evil-eyes of the poverty-stricken citizen, the totalitarian styled president or prime minister has to make deliberate changes to every vacationing site. If food poisoning was experienced in a previous site, the approaching venue would have to be different in context.
Vacationing within one regional environment is cause for suspicion as it does not augur well with the leader and his family. Having approximately 40 moon-like virgins that are interchangeable in every vacation would fit the leader. If possible, they would be buried with him as was the case of Genghis Khan who died in Xi Xia Prefecture of China but was buried in Töv and Khentii Provinces in North Eastern Mongolia after almost ten harrowing days of travel. The site and the graveyard of the man who started the Mongols acclamations of the biggest landmass in the world appears unknown to this day. In the final days of the Mongols, it had accumulated a landmass that was over 23 million square kilometers and that is equal to 9 million square miles. Among those who departed with him were 2,000 bystanders who were deliberately killed by his 1,000 well-armed warriors, his 40 “moonlike” virgins who would keep him company for the next world, and his 40 well bred horses.
Authoritarian or dictatorial leaders are men and women who don’t care for anyone except for themselves, for their family members, for their close friends and close relatives. Some of their poor leadership styles and traits include the autocratic style that is confounded by ineffective conflict resolution skills, conflict avoidance and the absence of trust, being entombed in the philosophy of resistance to change and indecisiveness, lacking direction resulting from authoritarianism, and extreme mismanagement and unwillingness to assign tasks. Any employee outside of the clan employment system must “tow the line” or end up imprisoned or fired without any form or type of benefit.
With “my way or the highway” being the norm for the authoritarian or autocratic leader, the outcast employee is subjected to the most harrowing experience in life. On paying visit to the bellyful leader, the retinue of malnourished or embellished ordinary citizens obligatorily get subjected to unnecessary and abusive behaviors from those keeping watch of the dwelling of the Shangri-la cum hell that is usually known as State House or Presidential Palace. Upon meeting with the Boss of the Nation, the first action would be to bow or prostrate followed by kissing the shoes of the man or woman in-charge of the nation. Such belligerently and forcefully enforced actions eventually capture the minds of the abandoned citizen and the ultimate result would be unanticipated coup d’etat. What will follow next would be hard to swallow.
Ethiopia entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Somalia’s unrecognized Somaliland region over the leasing of the Port of Zeila on January 1, 2024. With the sudden departure of former President Muse Bihi Abdi from the political arena after being defeated by Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi (Irro) in the recently concluded presidential election in Somaliland, we’ll have to wait and see how the newly-elected president appears different from the former. Ethiopia’s search for a naval and commercial port started after Eritrea seceded in 1993. The four countries have natural resources that have not been tapped; yet poverty is biting hard to an extent all these countries are dependent on foreign handouts. The four nations and their people have deep historical traces in the major religious scriptures where some belong to identical or differing anthropological classifications such as Semitic, Cushitic, Hamitic, or Hamito-Cushitic.
Anyone who has not seen the beauty of Ethiopia and the nature of desperation on the faces of its people needs to do a little research or buy a ticket so as to see the mighty Nile River that has been a source of inspiration for the pharaohs of Egypt and past Abyssinian empires. Also, trek through the Ethiopian highlands and thereafter canoe on Lake Tana then reflect the hunger on the faces of those who inhabit this blessed region of antiquity. Go see the beauty of Eritrea with its lush green vegetation; swim in the Red Sea and then tell me the colony of fish species you have seen. Endeavor to conquer Somali territory when there is peace so you can take a voyage along the longest coastline in Africa. Take a closer look at the marine species off the coasts of Somalia. You will obviously see the much-loved lobsters, mackerel, shrimps, tuna, and the dugong that now belong to illegal shipping trawlers. With trawlers that process all every kind and type of fish, illegal fishermen from as far as Asia have every reason to celebrate. They have found unmonitored, unguarded, and abandoned coastlines filled with unique fish species. Djibouti’s semi-desert should not deceive your eyes. It could be small but contains a wealth of resources.
In the 1st century–960 AD, Eritrea was part of the Kingdom of Aksum or Axum. In the year 630 AD Islam was introduced to the coastal areas and in 1517, the Ottoman Turks conquered most of Eritrea. The opening of the Suez Canal in 1896 made the Red Sea accessible with merchant and naval ships going further south the Indian Ocean. In 1882 Eritrea was captured by the Forces of Bennito Mussolini who was obsessed with modern European colonialization of Africa. However, what followed next was the defeat of Italy by Ethio-Eritrean forces in 1896 at the Battle of Adwa that finally restored the territories of Eritrea and Ethiopia.
Confounding historical exegesis related to Ethiopia’s past abound. It is a country of historical beauty and without an iota of doubt, one would be thrown into shock regarding the successive leaders’ failures to make it a haven of peace and prosperity. With the eastern and southern regions filled with towering mountains and historical artifacts that stretch back to as far as before Christianity and up to the era of antiquity, the only eye-catching historical monument is the Church of Lalibela that was constructed during the reign of Gebre Meskel Lalibela (1881-1221) AD.[iii] The localized historical narration how King Gebre Meskel Lalibela encountered Jesus Christ while on a tour of Jerusalem appears to be unending daily conversation. It was at that moment when Jesus Christ instructed him to build a memorable replica of the Church of Jerusalem.
The belief that the construction of the Church of Lalibela is placed between the 7th century and the 14th century appears to be acceptable to some researchers and archeologists.[iv] The saying “second Jerusalem” may sound inappropriate because Lalibela town did not appear or display a semblance of Jerusalem. In modern times, the Rock-hewn churches of Aksum that have been chipped from strong natural mountains appear to have been disowned. It was in 1978 when it was recognized by UNESCO as a heritage site.[v] A look at the historical profiles of past Ethiopian empires and their leaders and the aftermath of the overthrow of the last Emperor Haile Selassie stranded the necessary renovations of historical churches and monuments.
Read more: Distorted Leadership Styles in the Horn of Africa
Adan Makina
WardheerNews
Email:[email protected]
Reference:
[i] Northouse, P.G. (2013). Leadership: Theory and Practice. Western Michigan University. SAGE Publications, Inc.
[ii] Northouse, P.G. (2013). Leadership: Theory and Practice. Western Michigan University. SAGE Publications, Inc.
[iii] Taddesse, Tamrat (1977). “Ethiopia, the Red Sea and the Horn”. The Cambridge History of Africa: Volume 3 (PDF). pp. 98–182. doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521209816.004. ISBN 978-1-139-05457-7.
[iv] Fauvelle-Aymar, François-Xavier; Bruxelles, Laurent; Mensan, Romain; Bosc-Tiessé, Claire; Derat, Marie-Laure; Fritsch, Emmanuel (1 December 2010). “Rock-cut stratigraphy: sequencing the Lalibela churches”. Antiquity. 84 (326): 1135–1150. doi:10.1017/S0003598X00067132. ISSN 0003-598X. S2CID 130648151
[v] “Rock-Hewn Churches, Lalibela”. UNESCO World Heritage Centre.
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