MACRON, LEADERSHIP RENAISSANCE AND NIGERIANYOUTH (2)

Aspiring for public service requires careful preparation, argues Emmanuel Ojeifo

Mentoring: Macron entered politics under the Socialist Party in 2006 and distinguished himself with his charismatic and astute personality. He soon caught the attention of Francois Hollande who took him as his protégé and groomed him for political greatness. He rose rapidly in his political career and was appointed as deputy secretary-general of the Élysée, a senior role in President François Hollande’s first government in 2012. In 2007, he served as deputy rapporteur for the bi-partisan commission to improve French economic growth headed by Jacques Attali. In 2014, at the age of 36, he was appointed French Minister of Finance and the Economy, where he pushed through business-friendly reforms. In August 2015, Macron resigned his membership of the Socialist Party and declared himself an Independent. In August 2016 he resigned his cabinet position to run for the presidency, under the banner of a centrist political movement he founded in April 2016, En Marche!

Macron’s romantic relationship with Brigitte Trogneux, his 64-year-old former teacher at La Providence High School and 24 years his senior, is the most talked about aspects of his private life, but there lies the hidden secret of his success. Macron and Trogneux first met when he was a 15-year-old student in her class, and she was 39. He fell in love with her in the drama class. Macron’s parents initially attempted to separate the couple by sending him away to Paris to finish his high school, as they felt his youth made the relationship inappropriate, but he reconnected with Trogneux after he turned 17, and they married in 2007. Throughout the years of their relationship, Trogneux coached and mentored Macron behind the scenes. When Macron was the Minister of Economy and Finance, he was captured onscreen rehearsing a speech. His wife was overhead telling him to be audible. When they both moved to Paris, Trogneux worked briefly as a teacher and eventually quit her job to focus on her husband’s career. She helped him network and is constantly beside him. She has been called “his closest political advisor.”

Macron’s best man Henry Hermand (1924–2016) also played a major mentoring role in his life. Although Hermand died in 2016 and did not live to see Macron’s presidency, he was the businessman who loaned Macron Euro 550,000 for the purchase of his first apartment in Paris when he was Inspector of Finances. Hermand also let Macron use some of his offices on the Avenue des Champs Élysées in Paris for his political movement En Marche! Mentoring here is about cultivating friendships with people who can help us achieve our goals in life. It is a process of discernment and sifting that keeps us glued to the right people and disconnected from people with whom we have nothing in common.

Today’s Nigerian youth have ample lessons to learn from Macron. He was carefully and deliberately prepared through the crucible of learning, mentoring and public service. The leadership recruitment system prepared for him and he prepared himself for the leadership system. That is a system solidly built on succession planning and leadership grooming. In his book, The Accidental Public Servant (2011), Mallam Nasir el-Rufai argued that many public officeholders in Nigeria simply stumble upon leadership positions by accident, without any deliberate preparation. This is the reason why our national system is bogged down by inept, mediocre and visionless leadership. Our society needs to educate and equip young people for public service through sufficient mental, intellectual, psychological and ethical preparation. We also need to build a new generation of young people who value the culture of reading and who take active part in intelligent conversation on issues of leadership, politics, governance and public service. This is how young people can reflect ideas and inspired thinking of a new generation who are positive about their country and confident in their ability to shape its future.

Raising the next generation leaders calls us to tap into the resource base, ingenuity and creative pool of today’s youth. This is predicated on the understanding that aspiring for public service requires years of careful preparation, focused learning and loyal tutelage under more experienced mentors and accomplished leaders. In a December 2016 article, Eddie Iroh stated that leadership is not about age, but about ability. “Nigerians,” he argues, “frequently make the argument that the panacea for Nigeria’s ills is to sweep all old leaders into the Atlantic and replace them with the so called youths. But this is an argument that has no merit, principally because it lacks the merit of both historical and contemporary contexts. The issue is not young or old leadership. The issue is, first and foremost, ability. You either have it or you do not. Youth will not confer ability on you because it is not a physical but a mental and intellectual thing.”

This means that Nigerian youth can only take the destiny of the country in their hands if they demonstrate leadership abilities and show sufficient preparedness. On the strength of the prevailing mentality of today’s youth, we have a long way to go as a nation in preparing our young people for the prospects and challenges of good leadership. I was awestruck recently when I found out that a huge chunk of the leadership development programmes for American youth at the Aspen Leadership Institute in Colorado is deliberately designed to meet the need of young people between the ages of 14 and 21. The financial investment in these programmes is astronomical. That is a society that recognises that its future lies in the hands of the young, and that ‘catching them young’ means grooming them from an early age for the leadership opportunities of today and tomorrow. Nigerian youth who believe that they can be successful in life without hard work, discipline, focus and sacrifice, are only living in a fool’s paradise. Macron has proved the time-honoured maxim that ‘Nothing good comes easy!’ Ojeifo is a Catholic priest of the Archdiocese of Abuja