I don’t do sequels so I won’t consider this piece a sequel to last week’s “The Leader and His People”.

After last week’s piece I have received positive reactions from readers. The reactions set me thinking about the other side of the leadership failure in Nigeria, to wit, the failure of the ordinary people to make demands on leadership.

In Nigeria we have a messiah complex in almost everything. We expect someone to come from the moon and fix the power problem.

We expect that one day the government will wake up and pick the gauntlet against all corrupt politicians even as we continue to celebrate the gangster and watch askance as the anticorruption hero is scorched to death. In short, as the most religious people in the world, we have achieved high marks in wishful thinking.

Every day, by disengaging from active participation in governance the people reinforce the specter of thoughtless leadership; yet they keep mourning about the failure of leadership as if strong men grow from malnourished teenagers.

There are many ways we the people work hard to enthrone mediocrity in public leadership. Let’s take the examples of the foremost institutions of honor and integrity in any decent society: the government and the university. Check out the system of reward the government promotes.

The nation just handed out national honours to some of its accomplished citizens. Look at that list again. There are a few who in every clime and season should be honored for honorable service to fatherland. But many should be sentenced to dishonorable oblivion. But they made the list.

The most distressing is honoring people who missed their way in government, remembered for nothing. I am sorry, but what’s the point of giving a national honour to Mrs. Patricia Ette, the former Speaker of the House of Representative? Is it for just showing up as Speaker?

Is it for crashing from power in the gale of financial scandal? Mrs. Ette may not be guilty as charged. But what excellence did she bring to leadership in Nigeria? Of course, Mrs. Ette rode to honour ensconced with other have-been, whose only claim to honour is that they were fortunate to have been there.

Many years ago I wrote against the award of the second highest national honour to Senator Ayim Pius Ayim, who was then Senator President. I reasoned that Senator Ayim had not really achieved much to merit such high honour.

I did not know that Nigerian law grants high national honours not based on accomplishment but just on attainment. It does not matter how you lead, once you become a Senate President you have earned a GCON.

We don’t distinguish between public office holders who excelled and those who disgraced their office. Holding a public office is the ultimate achievement and excellence. It is little surprise the fight to get to political is as murderous as it is banal.

The last national honour list shows how magnanimous the government is. Those who failed for one reason or the other to be honoured by previous governments got their day. We have always been a charitable country, always willing to forgive the bad guy and set free those who ought to cool their heels in confinement. We share the loot without discrimination.

Those who work hard and those who don’t get the same rewards. But this magnanimity hurts. It obscures the distinction between what is excellent and what is pedestrian. If everyone who becomes a Senate President ends up with the same kind of honour whether he was a time-server or a transformer why care about transformative leadership?

Through our honour system we put a stamp on mediocrity in leadership. They are many ways we create the leadership we desire.

Think about the thoughtlessness that goes into appointment into key policy and administrative offices, including ministerial positions.

When we want to fill high policy offices we don’t set out with a clear job description. We throw the bones to the bones.

We asked the buddy next door to go down the street and pick anyone who gets his attention. We don’t distinguish between positions that call for specialized expertise and those for influence peddling. Everything is for the boys. And then we express shock that the job is never done. How is that?

We are getting the leadership we desire, or rather, the leadership we inspire. Let’s take the university.

The university is the highest place for the formation of those values that define great leadership, the values of competence, character and care.

When the university rolls out its honour’s list we expect to see those who have endeavored to promote these values. Innovation and creativity in solving social problems should represent the basic consideration for receiving honorary doctoral degrees.

But Nigerian universities have turned the logic upside down. Devoid of creativity in fundraising and capital campaign they have battered away academic honours to men and women of power and the purse just to sustain miserable scholarship.

I can’t understand why every year the honour’s lists of Nigerian leading universities contain virtually only the names of Governors and bank CEOs.

Why don’t we see accomplished academics, public intellectuals, artists and talented craft men and women as honorees? Why have the universities that are supposed to promote creativity and innovation not honored a leading sculptor, painter or football star?

Why must it be only the Governor and the bank executive that get honored? A particular governor from oil rich Niger Delta state has collected a dozen doctoral degrees from as many universities since 2007. He surely doesn’t merit them on account of whatever he has accomplished in his state.

We the people need to come round to see how what we do or fail to do guarantee the sort of leadership ravaging Nigeria. Leadership is a shared responsibility resting on shared values.

If we don’t respect the man or woman who has done good for his country simple because he or she lacks the sacrilegious audacity to scramble for every honour in the land, if every group insists on honoring the man of dishonor because he has captured public resources then we will continue on this march to failure.

The failure of leadership in Nigeria turns out to be the failure of citizenship.

We have not been good citizens. We have not protected virtue in public service.

We have not praised the virtuous that at great personal hurt have protected the public good. We have not despised the vicious who have betrayed the public.

We have made the bad and the good to look like they are the same. Now, there is little incentive for excellence in leadership.

Dr. Sam Amadi, Abuja, Nigeria