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Leadership And Good Governance At The Grassroots In Nigeria
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1.2 Statement of the Problem
The problem of leadership, governance
and its pervasive bearing on social cum economic development in Nigeria
is multifaceted. The root cause of inequality, poverty and
underdevelopment in Nigeria is attributed to bad leadership. There is
nothing basically wrong with the Nigerian character. There is nothing
wrong with the Nigerian land, climate, water, air, or anything else. The
Nigerian problem is the unwillingness or inability of its leaders to
rise to their responsibility, to the challenge of personal example,
which is the hallmark of true leadership (Ijewereme & Dunmade,
2014).
Developmental research indicates that Nigeria is fraught of
poor leadership, bad governance, corruption and weak bureaucratic
institutions. It is an axiom that since attainment of political
independent, Nigeria has never been governed by selfless, truly
transformational and intellectually endowed leaders. That is, Nigeria
has never selected its best sons to positions of leadership and mediocre
leadership can only lead to mediocre government without any serious
achievement (Egbefo, 2014; Essoh & Udoh, 2014).
However, in order
to curtail this menace and enhance grassroots development, the Nigeria
government has taken some steps to address the twin challenges of
corruption and bad governance in the country. These measures include
public service reform such as monetization to reduce waste and reduction
of over bloated personnel, the establishment of anti-corruption
enforcement agencies such as the Economic and Financial Crime Commission
(EFCC), Independent Corruption and other Practices Commission (ICPC)
etc. Despite the establishment of these policies and measures, the
situation remains rather worrisome as poor leadership, corruption and
bad governance continues to pervade every facet of the society while
service delivery at the grassroots levels remains an allusion to behold
(Anazodo, Igbokwe-Ibeto & Nkah, 2015:54).
Poor leadership and bad
governance have impacted negatively on Nigeria’s democratic stability
and her economic development especially at the grassroots levels. This
holds to the fact that majority of elected representatives that are
meant to steer the affair of the people at the grassroots levels in
Nigeria are product of political corruption, they got their party
tickets through political godfathers and mandate through election
rigging. The implication of all these are mass poverty, unemployment and
insecurity that enveloped the local communities. It is against this
backdrop that this study seeks to explore the relationship between
leadership and good governance at the grassroots levels in Nigeria with a
special reference to Ojo LGA of Lagos State (Ebegbulem, 2012).
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