Leadership institute needed to reform political class in Nigeria – Kwara Speaker

With Mumini Abdulkareem

The Speaker of the Kwara State House of Assembly, Hon Yakubu Danladi-Salihu has described the Nations Leadership Institute (NLI) as an avenue for young and aspiring leaders who needs to be equipped with leadership ethics and values needed to develop the country.
The Speaker who made this known while unveiling the NLI in Ilorin, the State capital, said the spirit of tolerance, selflessness and resilience required to take Nigeria to its potential is missing in some leaders.
He expressed hope that the institute would be instrumental to berthing a saner society, where conscious, responsible and responsive leadership and citizenship thrive.
He said “Despite the overwhelming richness of the African continent, we have continued to struggle to realize our potential. Africa continues to battle with underdevelopment, insecurity, economic inequality, bad governance, corruption, drought and famine.
“In all of these, it is safe to conclude that we are blessed with everything right as a continent but leadership and patriotism, thereby making an institution like the NLI, a child of necessity at this critical point of our national and continental existence.”
He added that if we don’t want our current failures to describe our future, it is pertinent that we represent the change we want in thoughts, words and actions and reiterated his conviction that if culture of value, patriotism and congruence of goal for a greater Nigeria and Africa is entrenched in the citizenry, our narratives will change for good.
He therefore expressed his gladness in unveiling the NLI, hoping it would be instrumental to berthing a saner society, where conscious, responsible and responsive leadership and citizenship thrive.
Earlier in his remark the founder of the institute, Bar Iyiola Akogun Oyedepo said the institute being introduced to serve as a veritable tool to arrest the ugly trend of moral, economic and socio political decline by seeking to train individuals that must lead an organisation or nation to success.
Oyedepo who is a former member of the state House of Assembly and a chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC) said the institute will offer trainings in political party management, legislative studies, tourism and hospitality management and leadership values.
According to him, “We need a body of thoughts and actions that will not make our leaders enemies of themselves, primitive accumulation of wealth and throw several people into penury, but rather leaders that will loathe corruption and criminality and if perpetrated will attract punishment no matter who is involved.
“For when leaders embark on primitive accumulation of wealth and throw several people into penury, they jeopardise their own security, because if the poor must live they must do so by visiting violence on the rich like kidnappings, ritual killing, Internet fraud and violent religious extremist,” he added.
He said, “if there will arise in many African countries leaders like Lee Kwan Yew of Singapore who through selfless leadership moved the country from third world to to a developed nations in fifty years without fighting any internal war.
“Therefore we need not fight wars before many countries in Africa can change from the present primitivity to modernity,” he added.
Oyedepo said the Nations Leadership Institute is for a revolution of thought that will indoctrinate altruistic leaders of integrity and character, that will not promote an ethnic, sectional agenda or a preffered section of their countries to be number one in multi-ethnic society.
Other dignitaries at the event include a representative of the Deputy Governor, Femi Yusuf, state APC chairman, Bashir Omolaja Bolarinwa, Alhaji LAK Jimoh and some members of the Kwara House of Assembly