The Chairman, Centre for Value and Leadership, Prof. Pat Utomi has said that the death of leadership values among political elites as become the bane of development in Nigeria.
Utomi made this known on Friday at the Emerging Leaders Conference organised by Guardian of The Nation International held on Friday at Civil Centre in Lagos.
The programme tagged Self-Reinvention; The Trigger for Economic Boom brought together thousands of youth drawn from across the country which feature seminar, interactive session, and breakout sessions.
He said that the problem of our society is that we are obsessed with a title. Many are in the position of authority but are not leaders.
“Nigeria inflicted recession on itself through the bad behaviour of previous governments. It was the result of an elite that is too lazy to restructure the economy. Our leaders are lazy and they always want the oil price to rise,” he said.
He challenged the youth not to emulate the crop of ‘mentally lazy elite’ that are not ready to build their country. “You must not be like them. If we continue to act the way they acted, in my view that is irresponsibility”.
He lamented that we are all Biafra’s now. Everyone is feeling marginalised. It is the tragedy of 1966, they took Nigeria in 1966 and are still running Nigeria now.
He asserted that the leaders rule by the hunter mentality and being driven by entitlement and rewards. Nations are not built by hunters. The people who build are farmers’ . You sow; you water. Our people need farmers, not hunters.
“We are in dire need of leaders with a sense of service towards others and contribution to the Society. Nigeria is a paradox of progressive degeneration. Every government is worse that the one before it because we have not refused to learn,” he said.
He stressed that leadership is living a life that has an impact. You are achieving immortality and doing what gives meaning to your existence. To live is to pursue immortality. And these can be done on two levels: Material immortality and spiritual immortality.
In her words, the outgoing Chairman of Niger Delta Development Commission, Ibim Semenitari identify transparency and corporate governance has veritable factors that would take Nigeria out of the recession.
Semenarati, who is the outgoing Chairman of NDDC said that transparency and good governance were values that opened up the process for building trust and confidence of the Niger-Delta people toward development.
She added that Nigeria has so many potential and young people can.
Earlier, the President of GOTHNI, Linus Okorie said that self-development platform designed to groom leaders for positive impact on their areas of influence.