The Bill Clinton vision
SIR: Reading the just published book titled My Life by Former American President Bill Clinton gives a thought on how successful leaders have been able to add value to the existence of their people. Bill Clinton said "When the Sanyo company told me it was planning to close its televisions plant, I flew to Osaka, Japan to see Satoshi Luie, the president of Sanyo, a vast company with more than 100,000 employees worldwide, I told Mr. Luie that we couldn't handle the loss of Sanyo's job in eastern Arkansas. I asked him if he would keep the plant open if Wal-Mart would sell Sanyo's televisions. After we agreed, I flew back to Arkansas and asked Wal-Mart to help. In September 2003, Wal Mart had bought more than 20 million of those television sets". The quality of a good leader is seen in the energy he channelled towards uplifting his people in all sphere of lives.
In Nigeria, rather than keep jobs, our leaders put in place measures aimed at cutting jobs; Savannah Bank was closed down by Federal Government of Nigeria and till today no reasonable reason was adduced for its closure despite the bank having thousands of Nigerians on its pay roll and the array of unsuspecting depositors. Now the Ministry of Finance and other ministries are talking of cutting jobs due to lack of the so-called paper certificates irrespective of the years of experience such public servants concerned must have gained from their work. The current Managing Director of Bank of the North started with Union Bank as a non-professional, today the man is leading the team saddled with the responsibility of repositioning the Bank and this appointment was not opposed by the Central Bank. One now wonders the actual mission and vision of our leaders. Are they really out to bring succour to the lives of ordinary Nigerians going by all sorts of anti-people policies The N25 billion Soludo solution to the near dead economy is already impacting negatively as depositors don't know what will happen next.
Olumuyiwa Onabanjo,
Lagos
