By Douglass Anele
People are generally uncomfortable whenever the words “dictator” and “dictatorship” are mentioned.

The major reason for this justifiable uneasiness is the spectre of the horrors perpetrated by Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, Idi Amin, Mobutu Sese Seko, Sani Abacha etc. These and other dictators in history are despicable and no serious society should celebrate their deplorable legacies.

But who would condemn transformational figures such as Singapore’s Lee Kwan Yew and Jerry Rawlings of Ghana although they were dictatorial? Everybody who knew exactly the sorry state of economic and social life in Singapore before Yew came to power marvels at the kind of positive transformations he brought about in his country.

Today, Singapore is one of the best organized and most disciplined and modern cosmopolitan societies in the world, with a thriving economy and world-class infrastructure and educational institutions. Nearer home, consider the case of Ghana.

In the 1970s and 80s, the country was a cesspit of high octane corruption, ineptitude, economic decay, crippling poverty and social anomie. Rawlings, motivated by a strong sense of historic mission to put his country on the road to sustainable national development, took bold and courageous measures which dealt decisively with corruption in the highest places.

He also inaugurated a political reform agenda which dealt a serious blow to the ogre of bread-and-butter politics that had plagued Ghanaian ruling civilian and military elite since the time of Kwame Nkrumah. Now, since Rawlings relinquished power, Ghana is making gradual but steady progress politically, economically, socially and is earning more respect at the international scene.

We are not claiming that all the actions taken by Yew and Rawlings are flawless or that after their transformatory exploits all Singaporeans and Ghanaians respectively have been “living happily ever after.” Both countries are still grappling with the usual problems of nation-building, including the perennial issues of poverty and equitable distribution of wealth among the citizens.

The point we are making is that these transformational dictators emerged at a time their countries were comatose in the black hole of arrested development and needed drastic measures to be revived. Just as there is no delivery without the spilling of blood or gain without some pain, decadent countries once in a while require clear- headed benevolent individuals with dictatorial tendencies to set things right.

Nigeria is ripe for the intervention of such a patriot, especially from among the political class, since the military has shamelessly and repeatedly proved itself incapable of producing such a person for the positive transformation of Nigeria. It is wrong to assume that the benevolent dictator we are talking about must come from a serving military officer.

No: what we mean is that Nigeria urgently needs a person with the courage to maximise the use of political power, step really hard on the corruption-infested toes of sacred cows and implement hard decisions that will propel all-round national development.

Our benevolent dictator must have three fundamental attributes. First, he (for now, I don’t see how a female dictator can emerge in Nigeria) must be intellectually sound and charismatic: we are not talking about mere “book knowledge” here, but about the possession of certain mental habits, including the desire to know more and more. He must exude a magnetic personality such that people would be drawn to him.

Second, he must be spiritually cultivated and have a healthy disdain for material possessions. The root causes of corruption by Nigerian rulers are hollow religiosity and idolatry of wealth, which is why the present system is impotent to fight it to a standstill.

Finally, he must have compassion for the poor and less privileged in the society. That is why we are insisting on benevolence as an essential quality of the kind of dictator Nigeria needs right now.

While we acknowledge that the transformational figure we have in mind must deal very harshly with corruption at the topmost echelons of political and economic strata of the society, he must also be compassionate enough to seek to alleviate the sufferings of the poor.

There is no doubt that the most powerful causes of armed robbery, kidnapping and other social problems in Nigeria today are poverty and unemployment, both of which are mostly by-products of corruption.

Unlike Stalin, Hitler, Musolini, Babangida, Abacha etc. whose dictatorships definitely aggravated the sufferings and hardships of the poor, a benevolent dictator must necessarily work for the interest of those Frantz Fanon described as “the wretched of the earth.”

The way I see it, the core justification of our proposal is positive social transformation which must have identifiable benefits for the suffering masses. A dictatorship is not necessarily bad in a decadent society, as many pseudo-democrats tend to believe, especially if it is under the control of individuals motivated by altruism.

It is only if the dictator allows his ego and lust for power override the “common good” that all the abuses and ugliness usually associated with Hitler and others come to the fore.

If a spiritually enlightened benevolent dictator remains focused and resolute towards achieving the goal of positive social transformation and avoids the temptation to see himself as a demo-god or heaven-sent messiah, then even those with entrenched distaste for dictatorship will think twice about it when they see concrete results, as is the case in Singapore and Ghana.
TO BE CONCLUDED.