The African Centre for Leadership, Strategy and Development (Centre LSD) has urged Africans to concertedly work together to fix the leadership challenged, widely seen as the bane of development in the continent.
The Executive Director of the centre, Mr. Monday Osasah, made the call on Saturday in Abuja at the 15th annual lecture/graduation ceremony of leadership students of the centre in partnership with Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS).
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According to him, the idea of starting the leadership school was borne out of the realization that leadership is a major problem especially in Africa.
“Many scholars and commentators are in agreement that leadership failure is one of the major factors responsible for the underdevelopment of Africa. However, it has been proven that leaders can be trained,” Osasah said.
He said the leadership school started in 2009 under the auspices of the Ejiro & Otive Igbuzor Foundation, but was transferred and became a flagship programme of the Centre LSD, on the establishment of the Centre in 2010.
He said, “The centre carries out its programmes through research, capacity building, advocacy and campaigns built on the principles of catalytic partnership and rights-based approach. Disability, youth and women rights issues are mainstreamed in our programming. The Centre is guided by the values transparency and accountability; integrity; feminism; diversity; dignity of the human person and Pan-Africanism.
“The school runs for a period of one year. The Centre also runs two other leadership programmes, Leadership Institute and Executive Leadership Course. At the end of this graduation ceremony of 33 students, the Centre LSD Leadership School would have graduated 1,357 students; while the 17th set will be taking their matriculation oath but it will be taken virtually,” he said.
He also said that the 15th set like every other set of the school carried out community developed services (CDS), has 10 CDS groups, with the objective being to demonstrate selflessness and to connect theory with practice.
Chairperson of the event and Regional Program Officer -Gender, Racial and Ethnic Justice,
Ford Foundation Office of West Africa, Ms. Olufunke Baruwa, said that all over the world, it is increasingly being realize that the most critical resource mankind have is human resource.
According to her, at least the COVID-19 pandemic ravaging the world has further proved that humanity is at the intersection of mortal risk and transformative opportunity with cerebral leadership determining who (individual, families, communities and nations) survives or disintegrates
“We are now in an existential leadership crisis as a nation. We are in dire need of credible and cerebral leadership and we are at a critical juncture in our nation where we must decide our fate. Nigeria is at a crossroad; in fact, we are at many crossroads as we face a ravaging pandemic, insecurity, leadership and identity crisis among many other challenges.
“We have and we must continue to question our ideologies and beliefs about Nigeria, ourselves and those who chosen deliberately or otherwise to lead us. That in itself is not a bad thing as we must interrogate our arguments and challenge the narratives we believe because their decisions and indecision affect us all in one way or the other.
“However, we must first admit that we have a leadership crisis and we can no longer sit on the sidelines or shy away from this daunting reality that continues to stare us in the face. This leadership vacuum is partly responsible for where we are as a nation today including our actions or inactions as citizens. For many of us, we have no other nation but Nigeria so we must do all we can to make it work,” Baruwa said.
She also charged the graduants to translate these learnings into critical knowledge inputs for nation building, strategy, innovation, movement building, idea generation, and problem solving among others.
Delivering the keynote of the annual lecture, themed, “Leadership and Youth Development in Nigeria”, the Director of Programs, Yiaga Africa, Ms. Cynthia Mbamalu, said that the topic was important with our current realities in Nigeria where Nigerian youth are seeking for any sign of hope as they struggle to assert their confidence in the opportunity for a better life.
According to her, October 2021 will mark one year after the momentous #EndSARS protest which not only rocked major cities in Nigeria but was a symbolic reawakening of young Nigerian to the power in their number if they organise and demand for change.
“The #EndSARS may not have achieved all it sought to achieve, but for the first time as a Nigerian millennial, I felt deep sense of patriotism, the spirit of solidarity and a rebirth of hope. “Beyond my personal feelings which other young Nigerians may share was the fact that whether we acknowledge it or note, the protest started a revolution against the culture of generational silence amidst a failing system. The #5For5 demands made the Judicial Panels of Inquiry possible and today 29 states did set up their panels and have given victim of politic brutality a sense of justice.
“It may not be as comprehensive and efficient as we desired but the fact that we have citizens who will receive some compensation for violations experienced in the hands of officers of the law, is a step to building a system of justice.
“But today is not about the #EndSARS protest, but rather about the situation that contributed to the reason for the #EndSARS protest; Leadership…the presence or absence of leadership,” Mbamalu said.
She therefore called for concerted efforts to make the youth productive in the interest of national development and future of the country.
Senior Programs Officer, Centre LSD, Mr. Amodu Lawal, said that apart from the graduation ceremony of the 15th set of students, the 16th set were on with their courses, while the matriculation ceremony of the 17th set was also held virtually.
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