Losing the Self While Trying to Save it
The Nigerian political leadership had been unstable and underdeveloped since independence in 1960. This is evident in the history of coups and counter coups that were results of a seemly failed leadership at the formative years of self-governance. Achebe (1983) boldly pointed out that leadership is the problem with Nigeria. In addition, many scholars blame this political instability and underdevelopment on corruption and misappropriation of public funds, thus, pointing to persistent cases of corruption at the top. Others opined that the political actors seem to have been psychologically withdrawn from the political system, and therefore felt less need to fight for the collective interest of all Nigerians. We contend that at the root of these leadership crises, instability and underdevelopment is a self that has given up its autonomy, thus, playing the role of “agent” to the system of corruption as implied in the agency theory of obedience and the groupthink model. These theories suggest that the beauties of constructive thinking and creative self are lost in course of “deindividuation” of political attitude and behaviour. The present study seeks to explore the psychological incapacitation of both political leadership and followership by exposing the decay of self from “autonomic” to “agentic” state. This, hopefully, will expose the areas of possible behaviour modification in National politics. We therefore conclude that a rebirth of functional Nigeria will involve recourse to the practice of politics as a matter of public concern, self-discipline and thoughtful input.