Politics, Good Governance and The Imperative of Leadership Mentoring (Published)
The success or failure of governance is determined primarily by the quality of leadership overseeing the affairs of the entity in question. In a democracy, good-governance is berthed when political leadership is nurtured from the onset by a deliberate leadership mentoring process that inculcates the values of transparency, accountability, responsibility, productivity and efficiency on the mentee. This paper in its hypothesis, ties up the three key variables of politics, good governance and leadership mentoring, proffering the latter as the foundational tonic needed to nurture, grow and institutionalise a culture of effective political leadership, good-governance and progressively-working institutions for the benefit of the nation (Nigeria) and its citizens. Case study examples are drawn from the People’s Republic of China and India as nations which have harnessed and optimised suitable leadership mentoring processes to raise and nurture leaders who have gone on to facilitate the growth and development of their respective nations. This paper, which harps on Nigeria, concludes by recommending the institutionalisation of structured leadership-mentoring schemes and their liberalisation nationwide as critical paths to nurturing upcoming and young actors across, political parties, civil society, educational institutions and the society in general, with the requisite leadership ethics, ethos, skill and capacity to positively impact governance for the good and development of the nation.
Keywords: Good Governance, Leadership, Politics, leadership-mentoring
Governance, Corruption and the Democratic Order in Africa: The Case of Nigeria (Published)
The triumph of the democratic order in Africa will depend to a large extent on the capacity of stakeholders to tackle the ravages of corruption. Across the continent, the quest for economic and political development had been hampered by corruption on the part of the leaders and followers, thus making the democratic enterprise appear as condemned to being subverted, as it turns out, from within. The scourge appears intractable due to its prevalence, thus, encumbering most States in the continent. For decades, Nigeria’s has been performing below average in the transparency international index of corruption. At some point, Nigeria was oscillating between the first and second most corrupt nation in the world. This unenviable status continues to assert negatively on the State and the growth of democracy despite the several strategies put in place by past and previous regimes to combat the scourge. This paper therefore considers the hindrances of corruption to the development of the democratic order and explores the imperative of good governance in remedying the malaise.
Keywords: Corruption, Democracy, Elections, Good Governance, Leadership
AN ANALYSIS OF DIFFERENTIAL PERFORMANCES OF THE ECONOMIC AND FINANCIAL CRIMES COMMISSION (EFCC) ALONG LEADERSHIP REGIMES IN NIGERIA (Published)
One of the greatest enemies of human growth and societal development is corruption. More worrisome is when there is manifestly a deliberate failure to get rid of its spread and existence. This research is a survey type that assessed the perception of Nigerians on possible differential performance of EFCC along leadership regimes. This research is an extraction of a Ph.D thesis that explored both primary and secondary data. The theory of prismatic society provided a frame work for the analysis. The study reveals a differential perception on the performance of the EFCC along leadership regimes. It also shows that president Olusegun (1999-2007) is favorably higher in ranking in the fight against corruption than the YarAdua regime with Goodluck’s administration at lowest ebb of the score. The research concludes that the premise for this leadership cocksureness is the vacuum created by weak institution of governance. This vacuum provides an avenue for tendentious attitudes and despotic inclination to governance. The study recommends inter alia; a need for virile institutions of governance, political culture of discipline and leadership consciousness and conscious national agenda.
Keywords: Anticorruption, Corruption, Leadership, Performance, Regime