By Ibrahim Habu Suleiman

The stage is set for yet another African Governors Excellence Award ceremony coming up this August 19, in the French capital, Paris. From all indications five governors from Nigeria have been selected for the award.
The recipients of the award include, the Borno State Governor, Professor Babagana Umara Zulum, a regular feature among a series of these excellence awards in the last few years; Hon. Sheriff Oborevwori of Delta state; Sen. Uba Sani of Kaduna state; Hope Uzodimma of Imo State and lastly but not the least, Engr. Abdullahi Sule of Nasarawa State.
Similarly, other Governors from Egypt in North Africa and Kenya in East Africa have equally been selected for the excellence award.
Apparently, initiators of this African Governors’ award of excellence have a passion to revolutionize African leadership in the global community. Indeed, there appears to be a general consensus among experts on democratic governance emphacising the primary role of good leadership as the pivotal element. However, the monotony of the awards tends to make nonsense of the whole exercise.
The African Leadership Magazine, based in the United Kingdom, UK, (along with ALG ie African Leadership Group), for the past fifteen years has been, according to the group, neck-deep in trying to chart a durable course towards finding solutions to the challenges facing African leadership for sustainable growth and development.
The excellence award falls in line with the mission of the magazine “to promote innovation, entrepreneurship and development in Africa”. According to the maga sexzine its focus has always been geared towards showcasing the best of the continent to the global community, while equally searching for solutions to challenges faced by the continent. And leadership appears to be the Achilles heel in the quest for meaningful progressive growth and development.
This year’s African Governors’ Excellence Award is one category of the awards in a series of several others. Ironically the award ceremony this year by African Leadership Magazine/Group is slated for the city of Paris, capital of one of Africa’s most notorious colonial and neo-colonial masters, France.
While the Governor’s Excellence award targets leadership qualities and good governance, other varieties focus on excellence in “peace building, education and sustainable development”. The Millennium Excellence Foundation, MEF, is another group which last year conferred Governor Umo Bassey Eno (Pastor) of Akwa Ibom State with the Lifetime Africa Achievement Prize, LAAP, in public service and governance. Other top Africans conferred with the award include, President John Dramani Mahama of Ghana, Sao Tome and Principe President Carlos Vila Nova, Pedro Santos of Angola and Koffi Djondo of Togo. This ceremony was held in Kumasi, Ghana.
Nigeria’s previous recipients of the Millennium Excellence Foundation, MEF, include, former President Goodluck Jonathan; Africa’s richest man, Alhaji Aliko Dangote; entrepreneur and former minister Tony Elumelu; and Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka. MEF founder Ambassador Nana Prempeh of Ghana has succeeded in organising the ceremonies mainly in Africa, even though the initiator of the award is a reputable diplomat. This is commendable as the recipients are mainly Africans and the entire exercise has to do with Africa. This also gives credit to the organisers who have succeeded in giving the award valid international identity and above all – independence.
It is also instructive to note that although Africa is replete with intelligent and visionary individuals who have been pouring forth brilliant ideas, the continent still lags behind in terms of socio-economic growth and development. In fact, the absence of visionary leadership coupled with endemic corruption have become the bane of any meaningful progressive economic growth in the continent. It is not enough to have people at the helm of affairs as “leaders” who lack some modicum of honesty and integrity and expect any meaningful progress and prosperity. Unfortunately, the continent today is saturated with this calibre of leaders whose basic desire is to wield immense power for personal aggrandizement.
Hence, the proliferation of groups like the African Leadership Group, the Millennium Excellence Foundation and a host of others has continued to soar unabated. In the same vein, African Heritage Magazine honoured the Kano State Governor, Abba Kabir Yusuf (Abba gida-gida) with the African Good Governance Award in Marrakesh, Morocco. He was conferred with the award alongside other top Africans, including Dr. Okonjo-Iweala, DG World Trade Centre, WTC, from Nigerian and Rt. Hon. Rebecca Alitwada Kadaga, Deputy Prime Minister, Uganda. Earlier, the Kano State Governor was named Governor of the Year (Education) by Nigeria’s Leadership Newspapers and Governor of the Year (Good Governance) by Nigeria’s Vanguard Newspapers.
Indeed, many other groups, particularly the media organisations have made it a point of duty to honour top level persons for excellence in various fields. The list of media outfits that decorate governors and other distinguished personalities is unending. The Blueprint, and to a lesser degree, Daily Trust Newspapers are also in the business. Blueprint, for instance, confers the Yobe State Governor with the excellence award a second time this year; the first time was in the year 2022. So far, almost all the governors in Nigeria have been honoured with one award or the other. It’s easy to decipher a lot of chuwa-chuwa and magu-magu in this exercise.
Needless to say, the shear monotony of the awards, especially those by media organisations has been a major cause of concern to many discerning Nigerians. It is hard to imagine how the media outfits would carry out their main function of making these governors truly accountable and responsible to their constituents. Instead of highlighting issues that relate to service to their constituents, awards of excellence are indiscriminately conferred to these governors. In fact, the primary function of the media is to make sure these governors are truly accountable and delivering dividends of democracy fairly and justly. But this is hardly visible in most states across the country today where the masses of the population have been struggling with hyper-inflation, hunger, destitution and insecurity as well as massive youth unemployment.
In fact, most of these governors being honoured have huge skeletons in their cupboards. At any rate, this is not to say that there is absolutely no governor that has performed credibly during his tenure. But the rate of corruption in the system makes it rather foolhardy to continue with such indiscriminate awards to almost all Nigerian governors. In fact, you cannot rule out magu-magu, chuku-chuku and wuru-wuru in this award selections inasfar as most media organisations must inevitably seek for sponsors among these top level award recipients.
Hence, the media outfits involved in these awards saga have consciously or otherwise strayed away from the main objectives of the mass media to uphold the government to be transparent, responsible and accountable to the yearnings and aspirations of the people. This is in line with chapter 2 section 22 of the Nigerian Constitution. It appears that there is a tendency to hoodwink gullible, unsuspecting citizens that the governor(s) have been performing excellently and are worthy of emulation. In effect most of these recipients should rather be made to sit upright and focus more on their responsibilities to the people, instead of running from pillar to post to collect awards.