…Ohuabuwa insists country must get right leadership in next year’s polls
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has said Nigeria was still battling with leadership deficiency, as it goes into the general elections next year.
Obasanjo, who noted that the void in leadership needed to be filled to enable the country succeed in its yearnings for economic growth and development, said the country could not be said to have succeeded in leadership when about 15 million children were still out of school.
The former President spoke while inaugurating Guardian of the Nation International, GOTNI, Leadership Centre managed by a popular social commentator, Mr. Linus Okorie, in Jabi, Abuja, yesterday.
He said: “I have just said it. I am highly impressed. I congratulate Linus Okorie on this splendid work he has been quietly doing without singing and shouting about it. And he’s filling a void in leadership training in this country, a very important void.
“I have said when you talk about the problem of an African country and particularly of Nigeria, they will say it is leadership, leadership deficit and leadership deficiency, and both can be taken care of in this GOTNI Leadership Centre.
“Leadership can be taught; leadership can be acquired. Anything that can be taught can be learnt. So, if leadership can be taught, it can be learnt. So people must be ready to teach and learn leadership.
“When people come to me and say you are doing well, I say no, that is not what I want because I am in a place to do well. Don’t come and tell me I am doing well. I want you to tell me what I need to do and to do it better. That is what I want to hear and not for you to come and tell me I doing well.
“The truth is that there is nobody that is born without some amount of innate leadership capacity and it is development that is needed. By the time we come to GOTNI Leadership Centre, a bit of it is late.
We should not forget that a lot starts from home, a lot in the school, a lot in the church and the mosque; a lot within the community itself. If we fail in all those areas, you won’t even get them to come here. This is one aspect of our life.
Ohuabuwa insists country must get right leadership in next year’s polls
Also speaking to journalists, Chairman of GOTNI Board and Presidential aspirant of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Mazi Sam Ohuabuwa, corroborated Obasanjo’s position on the leadership deficit in the country.
He said: “We have agreed that as a country, we haven’t done well in leadership. Our leadership stock is very thin. We have not had consistent, enlightened, visionary, competent, courageous leadership integrity that should take our country from the Third World situation, stagnated, poverty-ridden nation to a nation that is globally competitive, a first world nation like Singapore, South Korea, Japan, Germany. Why can’t we be like them?”
On the PDP’s decision to throw the contest for the party’s presidential ticket open, Ohuabuwa said the party’s decision was supreme, even though he would have loved the ticket to be micro-zoned to the South East.
In his remarks, the director of GOTNI, Okorie, expressed optimism that Nigeria would get it right with political leadership in the nearest future.
VANGUARD
