How to Fix Nigeria by Lanre Olagunju

It’s well known all over the world that one of the major challenges in Nigeria is leadership. This challenge is solely responsible for the set back in the nation.

The issue of poor leadership has been over flogged, but we have become too comfortable with the judgment that our leaders are incompetent. If we agree that those in power or those leading us are humans and not roberts, then it is safe to conclude that the major problem we have in Nigeria is man-made.

Since people lead people, we would keep having leadership problems until there is a paradigm shift in the attitude and behaviour of Nigerians. A simple illustration would help clarify this challenge.

Leadership is the ability to influence others to achieve a common goal; the ability to have a vision and work towards achieving it. Leadership is showing the way by giving direction. Leadership is all about being committed to the needs of others and placing the needs of others before yours.

A major difference between developed countries and developing ones like ours is that some of our belief systems are wrong.

For instance, the belief that leadership means dictatorship, amassing wealth at the expense of others and inflicting pains and discomfort on others. These have lived with us for too long, so much so that they are now accepted principles. If we can fix some of our wrong beliefs and genuinely work on ourselves as youth we can fix our nation.

Enough of the blame game! Many of us are not aware that due to anger, sheer naivety or laxity on our part we are already repeating the mistakes of the older generation. The set back we are presently facing as youth is a product of the errors of past and present leadership. If we follow suit the next generation will be doomed and posterity would never forgive us. The tomorrow we spoke about yesterday is here let us wake up to our responsibilities as leaders of today.

it’s shocking that a good number of youths who are suppose to assuage the country of her present malady are becoming unreliable and insensitive by giving themselves to juvenile delinquencies like cybercrime, prostitution, robbery and the host of other anti -social activity let us wake up to the reality that we have what it takes to make Nigeria the most desirable country to live in, lets decide that we will fix ourselves first and those who we have some influence over. That would be the starting point.

Decide to influence those in your little circle, and then we can re-awaken hope and come to the actualization of our re-branding mantra: great people, great nation.