The Dunning Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people with low competence particularly in the intellectual, leadership or social domain, tend to overestimate their own abilities relative to objective criteria or to the performance of their predecessors.
The effect, named after psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger, suggests that the very lack of transparency and leadership skill or knowledge that causes people to perform poorly also prevents them from accurately recognizing their own incompetence, especially in the management of public resources (a deficiency in metacognitive ability—the ability to assess one’s own thinking).
This leads to an inflated and overhyped self-assessment.
Governor Alex Otti may have surreptitiously sold a dummy to the good people of Abia during the 2023 polls, but the worrisome fact is that he is still desperately leaning hard on sentiments, cheap blackmail and misgovernance while he chases accolades.
Governor Otti’s
incompetence as a leader is evidenced in his dramatic overestimation of his leadership skill and his failure to recognize and acknowledge the
genuine leadership skill in others, especially those to whom it is incumbent upon, to lawfully perform oversight duties.
Interestingly the Dunning-Kruger effect can have consequences in various areas, leading to poor decision-making, misplaced confidence, and hindering genuine and sustainable growth in leadership delivery and infrastructure.
The planned grand “reception” in honour of Alex Otti by a group that call themselves, “Old Bende Progressive Union”, slated to be held in Aba, in recognition of his “visionary leadership” integrity, bla bla bla; is indeed the most gruesome display of the “Stockholm Syndrome” by a group that can’t even identify any known impact of the governor in Old Bende, despite the unprecedented huge increase in FAAC allocations to the State, the increase in IGR, the syndicated Loans and others.
Like I said earlier, the governor’s deliberate disregard for fiscal accountability, transparency and due diligence, compares only to his rabid quest for accolades and misrepresentation.
Chikodi Eze
