A leadership consultant, Adetokunbo Obayan, has identified reasons why Nigeria has continued to experience certain problems repeatedly, adding that leadership is one of the country’s major problems.
Speaking on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily programme, Mr Obayan stated that “leadership is one of the biggest challenges that we have in the Nigerian environment”.
The analyst blamed both public office holders and the masses for their inability to have the correct perspective about what leadership is and who a leader is. “There is a mixture between the position and the action.
According to him, Nigerians think leadership is position. “There is a gap in people’s perspective and understanding of who a leader is and what leadership is about”.
This, he said, cuts across both the public and private sectors.
He said the reason families and friends of office holders conduct thanksgiving services is because they think ‘their brother has arrived’ and so they send a delegation from the village to the governor for appointing their brother.
“The biggest challenge we have in our environment is our inability to see distant future.”
A research shows that “among the people in the world, the West Africans have the lowest long term orientation in the world” because we don’t think of the future.
This is why some parents will pay so their children will pass exams.
Citing nelson Mandela is an ideal leader, he said the reason information about his health always makes headlines is because he took a risk to affect his nation.
This risk, he added, is a sacrifice driven by a long term vision.
Mr Obayan also identified culture and environment as factors that affect the perspective of leadership.
“We celebrate arrival more than we celebrate where we are going”.
In solving this problem, we must realise that “it is time for us to recognise that the reason we are where we are as a nation is not accidental. It is because the holders and occupiers of many of our platforms of leadership have relatively failed.
They failed to understand what leadership is and they have failed to deliver leadership”.
- We have not spent time to define what leadership is as a nation
- We haven’t even spent time to explore what leadership implies
He added that the country operates at a mundane level of leadership.