Maku tasks Centre on leadership values
16 May 2011
Nigerian Observer
Abuja: Mr Labaran Maku, Minister of Information and Communications, has urged the African Centre for Leadership, Strategy and Development to strive towards imparting core leadership values in the citizenry for institutional development. Maku, who gave the challenge at the second Annual Leadership Lecture and Graduation of the center and Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung said such values were important to move the nation forward. "I think this is a challenge to this and other centres that are determined to train our leaders to emphasise on right policy changes and institutional development,'' he said.
He said the most critical need of the nation was recruitment of individuals for leadership and good governance. According to him, the recruitment of good leaders with the necessary core values who will match their utterances with action, was vital for the building of good institutions.
"We suffer leadership devaluation; our governance index has been devalued from the family to the community to corporate organisations, schools and government. Our values have been inverted upside down; the difference between a society that would move forward and a stagnant society is the value of the leaders and the people collectively exercised. There is a great difference between a perfect election and good governance. You can have good election, good processes but what happens after election is what we must also emphasise,'' he said.
He tasked leadership centres nationwide to train people who would truly stand for the core values at the centre of development.
Earlier, Dr Otive Igbuzor, Executive Director of the Centre, said the idea of setting up the organisation was borne out of the commitment to transform Africa. He said the organisation had been working and engaging in strategies for the transformation of the country, especially Niger Delta region and ensuring the realisation of the country's vision. "Our work on appropriate development approaches revolves around three key issues namely governance, environment and sustainable development,'' he said.
Dr Sam Amadi, Chairman, National Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), in a lecture entitled "Developing Transformative Leaders for Nigeria", said no matter how Nigerians conceived leadership, it must be anchored on morality. Amadi said leadership could be learnt and that it was inherent, noting that ransformative leadership was guided by moral values. "We can develop or get transformative leaders by catching them young,'' he noted.
Hajiya Amina az-Zubair, Senior Special Assistant to the President on Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), said the gap between the leadership and followership posed a very big problem. The Presidential aide said other challenges against good leadership included long tenure and refusal to hand over power.
Keywords: public sector, governance, service delivery, Nigeria
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