Effective Leadership: Tool for Achieving Political Stability and National Development in Nigeria

Abstract

Since gaining political independence in 1960, Nigeria like other developing Countries of the world has virtually become poorer and under-developed while nations in the developed World have become richer and more developed in all ramifications. Implicated in the Under-development of these Countries now described as ‘third world countries’ is ineffective leadership that has also lead to ‘bad governance’, lack of ‘best practices’, a myriad of intimidating problems and a differing forms of conflicts that borders on a variety of factors and magnitudes. In this paper therefore, we examined leadership as a concept in Nigeria’s governance. Leadership constitutes the backbone of management. The study argues that ineffective leadership is at the heart of Nigeria’s under-development and opines that effective leadership can be used to achieve political stability and engender growth and development of the nation. The study further argues that effective leadership will help to reverse the nation’s drift and slide to anarchy. The study adopted the theoretical approach as its methodology and finds that there is an incontrovertible evidence of the failure of successive governments in the process of leadership in the developing countries. It concludes by calling on all Nigerian leaders to step-up their effort at communicating vision and also initiate change. The paper recommends among others that Nigeria should adopt leadership styles that conduce to optimal human resource productivity to achieve the much desired development in this century.

Keywords: Effective Leadership; Political stability; National Development; Nigeria.