JUMADAL ULA 8 1430 A.H.
MONDAY MAY, 4 2009
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Paying attention to the personalities of our leaders (I)
By Ozodi Thomas Osuji
ozodiosuji@gmail.com
Nigerians generally do not understand that just because someone looks normal that he may have personality disorders! Generally, the average Nigerian (as is the case with most people) can tell who is crazy (the clinical name is psychosis).
We all can tell when we are relating to schizophrenics and Bipolar Affectively Disordered persons (the two main psychoses…you could also add Delusion Disorder). Why?
In addition to their hallucinations and bizarre delusions, psychotics generally do not make sense. In clinical language, we say that there is no logical association in their talking.
Normal persons talk in logical association; that is, one point leads to another point; there is no scattering of points that confuses the listener. Psychotics do not make sense.
For example, you could be at Lagos talking to a schizophrenic and he would be talking as if he is in his village! You would immediately know that he is not computing well and walk away from him.
If manic, you could be talking to an ordinary chap and he would talk like he is the richest man in the world and believe in what he says, and you would be shocked that a poor chap believes himself a Bill Gates, and walk away.
This is not the situation with personality disordered persons. A personality disordered person is normal in every way imaginable except for a few quirks.
Let us consider narcissistic personality disorder. Generally, this person was bright in school, he probably had A grades. He is generally successful in most things kids do; he probably did well at sports etc. He is probably good looking (as his culture defines that to be).
Because he is good at most things he gets most people to admire him. His parents admire him, his peers admire him etc. By the time he is a teenager he has already developed the feeling that he is better than other persons, that he is special.
He then feels that because he is special that other people should pay attention to him and admire him. He tends to feel superior to other persons (though he is smart enough to realize that folk do not like it if you feel superior to them so he hides it).
Because he feels superior to other persons he sometimes feels justified in using other persons to get what he wants and discarding them when they are no longer useful to him, as if they have no intrinsic value. He would say something like this to himself: "ordinary people are unintelligent riff-raff, so why bother about them.
In effect, he exploits people, uses them to get what he wants out of life and discards them like they are scrap iron; people are only good to the extent that they enable me to get what I want out of life".
He does not care that much for other people’s welfare but wants other people to care for him. He feels that he deserves to be the center of every person’s attention but does not feel that other people ought to be given attention by him. In the work world he generally rises to the top; perhaps, he becomes the head of state, the chief of the army, the chief executive officer of this corporation etc.
So what is wrong with this picture? A lot. He does not care for other people. Those close to him know that he uses them and does not care for them. His wife feels used by him, and feels that he sees her as a parlor trophy, another toy that makes him feel successful and with which he gets attention from society but does not really pay attention to her issues (though he may shower her with material things); she feels totally unloved and therefore unconnected to him and lonely.
The point is that this person appears normal in the public’s eyes but that he has a personality issue that makes him not do for people what they really want done. As long as he gratifies his desire for fame and prestige that is all he cares for. Now, does it take a rocket scientist to understand that many Nigerian leaders are narcissistic and could care less for the welfare of Nigerians?
Who is a good leader? A good leader is a person who places other people’s interests high and works for people’s good. A leader is not a person who says: I am a very important person, so sing my praises.
Nigeria’s so-called leaders want us to sing their praises but do nothing for us, for the polity. Now, do you understand why personality matters?
The various personality disorders are schizoid, schizotypal, paranoid (these are the most serious ones, cluster A) antisocial, narcissistic, histrionic, borderline (cluster B, these use other people but do not give of themselves to other persons) and the least disturbed ones, Cluster C or so-called neurosis: obsessive compulsive, avoidant, dependent and passive aggressive personality disorders.
Briefly, the paranoid personality fears being demeaned, he is suspicious and does not trust any one; the schizoid personality does not care for social approval; the schizotypal personality is eccentric, odd and believes in what most people do not believe in; the histrionic personality is the drama queen who wants to be the center of attention but does not give attention to other persons; the borderline personality does not know who he is, and is confused in many areas of his life, sometimes he harms himself to make others feel guilty and pay attention to his needs; the obsessive-compulsive personality thinks a lot, as if some inner pressure makes him think and he cannot stop thinking and sometimes acts compulsively, he seeks perfection; the dependent personality feels that other persons ought to rescue him; the passive aggressive personality is passive and other persons often push him around and he feels angry and goes into aggressive mode and destroys things.
You can Google these personality disorders for detailed descriptions; in this paper, I am not interested in describing them in detail or providing their causal factors; I am not here interested in etiological speculations, I am just mentioning them).
The relevant point is that folks with personality disorders look like you and I (and, for all I know, you could be one!) but do things that affect us negatively.
Consider a person with anti social personality disorder. He does not care for other people, not one bit. He has a sense of entitlement. He believes that the world owes him a decent living and if he does not get it he takes it any way he could, takes bribes etc, and has no guilt feeling or feeling or remorse for his antisocial behavior.
Now, does it take a rocket scientist to understand that many of our leaders have antisocial personality disorder? Does this matter? If it does, why do you expect economic development in the polity if persons with character disorders rule us? Our human experience tells us that it is socially dedicated persons that uplift their society, not thieves.
Whether you pay attention to these matters or not the rest of the world does! The CIA and other intelligence agencies hire clinical psychologists with the specific job of writing psychological profiles of notable leaders.
Your Head of State, Alhaji Umaru Musa Yar’adua, has been written on by many psychologists for their countries decision makers. They know about his strengths and weaknesses, his personality type etc. From such knowledge, they know how to relate to him, and if need be, how to exploit him, and are doing so!
Yar’adua talks about making Nigeria an economic super power (as shown by his so-called 20-20 plan). Good. How is he going about achieving his glib objective? If he cannot give the country 24 hours of uninterrupted electricity, how on earth is he going to make Nigeria an economic power? It takes a lot of electrical usage to run factories, you know.
What kind of idiot talks about making a country industrialized without giving it the necessary infrastructure for becoming industrialized? An unrealistic, dependent personality disordered person, may be.
Yar’adua needs to become a real adult; he needs to take his life into his hands and empower Nigerians to do for us what we need to get done; he should not expect the German doctors that he runs to whenever he has a cold to heal all Nigerians! (Or, is he special?).
