By Oluwole Solanke PhD, FCIB
When a nation applauds mediocrity in power, it quietly signs its own death warrant. A responsible society must learn to hold its leaders to account, or pay the price of its own silence.
In every society, leadership plays a defining role in shaping the direction of a people and the destiny of a nation. Leaders influence policies, values, culture, and the collective aspirations of the citizenry. It is through their vision, or the absence of it, that societies either rise to greatness or sink into mediocrity. Yet a troubling and deeply corrosive phenomenon persists across many nations: the reflexive celebration of leaders who have clearly, demonstrably, and sometimes catastrophically failed in their responsibilities.
When a society begins to glorify failure in leadership, it quietly plants the seeds of its own stagnation and decline. It rewards the wrong behaviours, emboldens future incompetents, and signals to the next generation that results are optional and accountability is a luxury. A responsible society, one that is truly serious about its own future, must therefore learn to distinguish between genuine achievement and mere popularity, between real leadership and hollow symbolism, between earned honour and manufactured legacy.
The Culture of Unmerited Praise
In many places, leaders who leave behind little or no meaningful legacy are still celebrated with elaborate ceremonies, fawning tributes, and exaggerated titles. Streets are named after them, public institutions bear their portraits, awards are bestowed upon them, and history is sometimes quietly rewritten to flatter their image. Their failures are euphemised as ‘challenges beyond their control.’ Their corruption is excused as ‘the product of a difficult system.’ Their incompetence is dressed in the language of ‘doing his best under the circumstances.’
Yet the fundamental question must be asked — and asked loudly: What did they truly accomplish? Were roads built and maintained? Were schools resourced and reformed? Were hospitals equipped and accessible to the poor? Did the economy grow, and did ordinary citizens feel that growth in their daily lives? Did security improve, or did lawlessness deepen? Were institutions strengthened, or were they hollowed out for personal convenience?
These are not unreasonable demands. They are the very minimum that citizens are entitled to expect from those entrusted with power. A society that ignores these questions, and instead rushes to construct bronze statues and deliver glowing eulogies, inadvertently sends a dangerous message to every aspiring leader: performance is optional, accountability is negotiable, and survival in office is an achievement in itself.
“The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character — that is the goal of true education.” — Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
The same principle applies to governance. True leadership is not measured by longevity in office or by the grandeur of one’s inauguration. It is measured by what is left behind, the institutions built, the lives transformed, the problems solved, and the foundation laid for those who come after. Dr. King’s words remind us that competence without character is dangerous, and character without results is insufficient. A society that cannot apply this standard to its leaders lacks the very critical thinking that separates progress from perpetual decline.
Why Societies Celebrate Failure
The reasons why societies celebrate failed leaders are complex but not mysterious. First, there is the seduction of familiarity. Long-serving leaders, however ineffective, become woven into the fabric of a nation’s identity. Their faces on currency, their names on highways, their voices on archival broadcasts, all of this manufactures a false intimacy. Citizens confuse exposure with achievement. The more they have seen a face, the harder it becomes to critically evaluate what that face represents.
Second, there is the phenomenon of tribalism and ethnic loyalty. In many societies, particularly those still navigating the difficult terrain of post-colonial identity, leadership assessment is distorted by ethnic solidarity. A leader’s failures are minimised if he or she is ‘one of our own.’ His corruption becomes ‘redistribution to our community.’ Her incompetence is explained away as ‘the system working against us.’ This brand of loyalty, while emotionally understandable, is intellectually corrosive and nationally destructive.
Third, there is the role of propaganda. Authoritarian and semi-authoritarian governments have long understood that the control of narrative is the control of reality. When state media, compromised intellectuals, and purchased journalists collectively celebrate a failed leader’s mediocre milestones as extraordinary achievements, a critical mass of citizens, particularly those with limited access to alternative information, may genuinely believe the manufactured story.
“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” — Abraham Lincoln
Lincoln’s observation cuts to the heart of the matter. Power does not create character, it reveals it. And when citizens celebrate leaders regardless of how power is used or misused, they abandon the one mechanism that power most fears: honest, unflinching judgment. A society that does not hold power to account does not truly hold power at all.
The Cost of Celebrating Failure
The consequences of celebrating failed leadership are neither abstract nor distant. They are felt in the potholed roads that break the axles of ambulances. They are counted in the school buildings that collapse on children. They are measured in the hospitals that lack basic drugs while the leaders who promised reform are feted at award ceremonies. Every time a failed leader is celebrated, the standards of acceptable governance are lowered, and the next leader takes that lowered bar as his starting point.
Perhaps most damaging of all is the effect on the young. When children grow up watching corrupt and incompetent officials celebrated as heroes, when they see failure rewarded with praise, titles, and retirement packages, they internalise a profoundly corrupting lesson: that it is not what you do, but who you know; not what you build, but how long you survive. This corrodes the very aspiration that a nation needs most from its youth.
“The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.” — Plato
