Nigeria As I See It: Reflections on the Challenge of Leadership Kindle Edition

In 1985, Chinua Achebe in his book "The Problem With Nigeria" said that the problem of Nigeria is leadership failure.Why do we elect people that will fail?Why do we allow mediocre candidates to run our affairs?Election after election, elections are manipulated to produce mediocre holders of office. Any wonder then that things do not work in the nation. Mediocre leaders may have good intentions, but good intentions alone cannot translate to good performance.A leader must be:Goal-orientedHave innate ability to visualize the futureAssemble resources needed to achieve desired goals, andMotivate the people to join him or her in the journey to the futureThis country has produced world-class personnel in almost every field of endeavor. Many Nigerians are doing quite well holding leadership position in large corporations and multinational organizations; paradoxically, when such people return to Nigeria, something in the political environment stifles their initiative and abilities.There was a time when systems, processes, and institutions of governance in Nigeria worked fairly well. Since independence, we have seen a steady decline in the integrity of those institutions. The values they represented have been eroded to the point of weakness and failing state structures.Chinua Achebe saw this precipitous decline and said "the problem is one of failed leadership".Looking back these seventy years, it has been a steady downgrade. Read more