When an institution fails publicly and spectacularly, the country tends to ask one set of questions. Who is responsible? Who must resign? Who must be prosecuted? Who must pay back what? These are necessary questions, and I will not pretend they are not. But they are not the most useful questions.
There is one question that, in my experience, leads more reliably to understanding than any other. It is the question I want to make a habit of asking, and I want to recommend to every Nigerian who cares about how this country actually performs.
Where was the board?
Every major institutional failure of the last twenty years, anywhere in the world, has a board behind it. The board was usually present in name, listed in the annual report, recorded in the minutes, paid its sitting allowances, and conspicuously absent in the only sense that matters. It was not governing. It was not steering. It was not asking the questions that, had they been asked in time, would have prevented the failure.
This is not a Nigerian observation. It is a global pattern. And the global pattern is so consistent that we can use it as a diagnostic instrument for our own institutions, here, now, before the failure has happened.
