Governor Abubakar Bello of Niger state has attributed the failures recorded in governance since the coming of democracy in 1999 to incompetent leaders who took over leadership of the country from military.
The Governor spoke just as former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, blamed the nation’s educational system for the failure being recorded in leadership in the country, saying the system was not designed to produce leaders.
Both men spoke at a youth summit organized by a member of the House of Representatives and Chairman Board of Trustees of Lead Generation Initiative (LGI), Shina Peller in Abuja.
The Niger governor said the that when the military decided to hand over power to civilians, a lot of competent people never believed in the process and therefore stood back, and watched while the system was manipulated by incompetent people.
He said “for them (those who took power from the military), occupying political offices, was business and they accumulated a lot of wealth.”
The Governor asked educated Youth in the country, not to be ashamed of aspiring for leadership position in the country saying “the position of a councillor or ward leader is fundamental and also very important for the development of the country.”
He said the involvement of the youths in politics, especially at the grassroots level will enable them take leadership positions and effect the change they desire instead of just complaining on the sidelines.
On his part, former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara said the slow pace of development in the country is attributable to the appointment of loyal followers into positions of authority rather than those who are competent, adding that there was lack of good leadership training as a result of the country’s system of education which he said was structured to produce workers and not leaders.
“Before when a person is appointed into leadership position, what readily comes to mind is, “is he loyal rather than is the person capable of doing the work? This is triumph of loyalty over competence and the loyalty we talk about in Nigeria is actually sycophancy. If we want to have competent leaders we must restructure to bring in innovations and leadership training,” he said.
