Develop yourself as a leader and become the change you desire. We all know the problems stem from leadership yet phantomize the solution as insurmountable. Are you practising your leadership? Or do you assume that you will automatically produce outstanding leadership without practice? Great leaders like great minds think alike, and you can only sing in chorus if you practice together. Anything else is a fallacy!
We have worked so hard to offer you the practice and preparation desperately needed to make the required changes. Will you come along and learn? We will never all agree on everything, but the more we have in common, the more likely we will cooperate and surge ahead. That is what education does for us. We have seen the appalling political, social and economic conditions in countries across Africa in this 21st century, especially Nigeria.
Expecting leadership from a batch educated 20-60 years ago is like expecting my great grandmum to operate my smartphone, having woken from her grave. The way the world has changed in the last 20 years is hardly possible for anyone not abreast with education from the 21st century and its enlightenment to understand, let alone play catch-up. If our leaders could comprehend this fact, they would willingly hand in the towel to better future generations. But that is wishful thinking.
Nigeria after 61 years of independence is far behind in
- Agriculture. We can’t produce the food we need; we import.
- Education. We can’t produce a skilled workforce to provide the expertise and services communities need.
- Electricity generation. We can’t produce the power (hydro, wind or solar) to invent and improve living standards.
- Healthcare. We can’t produce vaccines and medicines to cure common illnesses, let alone significant diseases.
- Infrastructure. We can’t build better roads, bridges, tunnels, and rail tracks in urban areas, let alone rural areas.
- Manufacturing. We can’t make a bicycle, a motorbike, a car, a smartphone, a laptop, a fridge; things we use daily.
- Technology. We can’t make or use the technology readily available to do the enormous things technology can do.
- Research. We can’t find ways to improve our existence, let alone share or sell that knowledge to our advantage.
- Energy. We can’t use our God-given resources (oil & gas) to provide the fuels and minerals needed. We import.
- Clean drinking water. We can’t provide safe drinking water to over half the population.
- Satellite and space exploration. We can’t launch satellites or join in the space race, even for the data we use.
- Cargo ports. We can’t transform or build seaports on our coastlines to spread development deep in the hinterland.
- Wealth creation. Nigeria remains one of the poorest countries in the world, with more than half its population impoverished and living on less than $2 a day.
So, who are the leaders behind these achievements? Do you still believe that after 60 years of recycling the same type of leaders, a continuation in 2023 will make any difference?
When we talk of leaders, we misrepresent the definition of a leader and point only to the elected politicians.
We made up a riddle in class asking who was to blame if while a 33-year-old father taught his 8-year-old son how to use a catapult, a pebble from the son’s catapult lodged into the eye of an innocent bystander?
99.9% blamed the father with reasonable justifications relating to culpability and responsibility. We then explained to them that the father was like your public servant who served 35 years in governance, while the son was like an elected politician who, with some luck, only fit for a maximum of 8 years. The atmosphere in the auditorium was ecstatic.
The leaders are not just those we elect into office but everyone within the establishment not playing their fair part. None of us will agree to ride in a car with a blind man behind the wheel?
If the leaders haven’t fixed Nigeria in 61 years with a population now 220 million, what is the plan to fix Nigeria before 2050 when the population would double to 450 million? Or is it such that it will get worse and worse decade after decade?
Meanwhile, in the forests, bandits and kidnappers are lurching out sporadically and snatching us like prey. How do we stop these things for good?
The good thing is that we can turn all these misfortunes around. A committed nation-building executive education programme for everyone in decision-making positions right from the local government grassroots level to the top will make all the difference. Education has a profound way of changing the thinking and ways of people. We can only change when even your local constable, gateman, civil servant or soldier is educated to these types of levels.
PS2 is looking for the best and brightest 5 million people to put through this programme to help this country start growing again. Nigeria could become the first black G7 nation by 2040 if the programmed attendants are charged to grow this country. A time when many now will no longer be.
The way to change is through education, training and the ballot box. It is easier to rig a few hundred or thousand votes than several million. I frown at the risky enterprise of street protests in these parts of the world as necessary as it may be. The Lekki Tollgate affair is yet to be resolved satisfactorily.
Evolution-not Revolution is What the Brightest Must Seek! It is now for you to use the PS2 platform in educating and training yourself in becoming the change your country deserves. PS2 has ensured that we offer an implementable route for any solution we advocate. It makes less sense otherwise and becomes mere opinion or scholastic banter.
We want you if you can study and want to lead! It is the only way we can avoid a repeat of our past mistakes. The best ideas, leaders, and money cannot reform or restructure a country like Nigeria without first restructuring the individuals. The Character of Persons determines the Character of a Country!
Develop Yourself As A Leader!
Mike Ike Ikunna
Social Scientist, Development Strategist
The detailed inquiry on how to fix these issues can be found as a free preview in unit 8.7 under the curriculum of the course; How to Avoid and Prepare for Banditry and Kidnapping or click here → A Disposition- Unit 8.7: NATIONAL STRATEGY FOR THE CESSATION OF ABDUCTIONS, BANDITRY AND SEPARATIST AGGITATIONS (ps2.education)