North Korean top negotiator in detention over failed Hanoi Summit with the US.
North Korean administration has many practices/ills objectionable to the rest of the world. Accountability by government officials and appointees is certainly not one of them. They probably have it in excess. On this side, Nigeria has many failed projects and those responsible for the failures are not even reprimanded let alone punished for their failures.
They go home and sleep and wait for another opportunity to mess up another assignment. Many Nigerians believe that a project team leader has not committed a crime as long as he has not stolen project money even though his project has turned out to be a colossal failure due to negligence, incompetence or such other avoidable causes. I feel otherwise.
If people know that they will pay a high price for avoidable failures, they will take seriously any assignment entrusted upon them. They will think twice before lobbying for appointments they have no capacity to handle. They will reject appointments thrown at them if they know they lack capacity to adequately execute the functions of that office.
Same should go for those who give sentiment driven advice, less than professionally driven advice to government. Inaction by those responsible should also be punishable. Those who give government appointments as ‘settlement gifts to my people’, without engaging acceptable methods of ascertaining capacity should equally be made to pay a good price for their action.
For every failed government project, ill-advised government policy, all Nigerians (including those yet to be born) pay the price. If accountability is seriously addressed, in this way and others, performance of government projects will improve drastically and most of our problems will disappear.
