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Nation Building
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The Intent and Purpose of Leadership
There are many ways in which people have defined leadership across time and age. I have been privileged to come across a few of those definitions. Amazingly, all the ones I have come across in my study about leadership are insanely good. However, the definition that resonates with me the most was the one given by John Maxwell, who defines leadership as “Influence, nothing more, nothing less!” Maxwell also says, “Everything rises and falls on leadership!” I couldn’t agree less with him because, whichever way you look at leadership, it is simply about influencing, inspiring, and motivating people to do things they would not think of doing on their own. Leadership is taking people from a state of inactivity to a place of extraordinary accomplishment. When you can genuinely mobilize people to get things done without force or coercion, you become enlisted in this type of ingenious leadership. But when you fail as a leader to inspire people to get things done, it reveals a deep flaw in your leadership ability.
There have been many questions about those who aspire to become leaders. The problem is not always with leadership aspiration. Some people have thought it is wrong to aspire to become a leader. No! There is nothing wrong with wanting to be a leader. What you should be concerned about is why you want to become a leader. This is a question that reveals your leadership motive, intent, and purpose. Your motive is very important if you hope to become a leader that society would be proud of and to celebrate.
The Facade of Virtue
In today's society, it's not uncommon to encounter individuals who present themselves as paragons of virtue, justice, and equity. However, beneath the surface, their actions and behaviors often reveal a different story.The consequences of hypocrisy, eye-service, and pretense can be far-reaching and damaging. Anyone who engages in these behaviors risks losing the trust and respect of others, which in turn damages their reputation and compromises their integrity. Moreover, these behaviors can also lead to feelings of guilt, shame, and anxiety, which can negatively impact mental and emotional well-being.
Finding the Courage to Lead
No matter what anybody tells you, it takes courage to lead. Different people want to lead for different reasons. Whatever it is that is propelling your desire for a stake in leadership cannot be effectively achieved without a measure of some dose of courage.Courage is an amplifier! It magnifies your actions more than what you are capable of doing ordinarily. When you have it, you will overcome obstacles. When you don’t have it, life will be drudgery. Courage helps you to act with swiftness, while you unleash terror against every opposing force that is out to trap you. To state it even more clearly, courage in itself is not the absence of fear as some people conceive it, but acting with audacity even in the presence of your fear.
Lekki Shooting Massacre: A Lamentation of Human Suffering through Police Brutality
Human suffering is akin to Africa. There is nowhere else, in our modern world today where economic and political suffering is more pronounced than in Africa. The level of man-initiated pain and catastrophic suffering inflicted on the masses by the political elites is on an unimaginable scale.
October 2024 marks the fourth anniversary of the protest against police brutality directed towards Nigerian youths. No doubt, the day remains one of the most horrific scenes I have ever witnessed in my whole lifetime. It was bothersome for me to see the Nigerian government turn a simple protest into a mayhem of bloodshed in what we now know as the Lekki shooting massacre. The dastardly act was perpetrated by the Nigerian government, through a military special operation on innocent Nigerian youths.
Why Transformational Leaders Are the Real Nation Builders
To build any viable nation, you need a different species of leaders called transformational leaders. We have had lots of these enigmatic leaders throughout the history of human civilization. Still, society has a shortage of them in Africa and around the Globe in the twenty-first century. Most transformational leaders don’t need political power to change human society; they need their conviction, roadmap, and strategy more than anything else. Don’t let anyone deceive you into thinking that you can’t make a change until you become a politician. The American Society, envied by all, was principally built into a flourishing state by entrepreneurs. The role of the government was to provide policies to curb their excesses.
In Search of Creative Leadership for Social Change in Africa
The more I think about the possibility of a new Africa where you will no longer worry about…
The Rise of Pentecostalism and its Influence on the Socio-Political Context in South Korea
Introduction The historical account of the success of Christianity in South Korea defiles the normal missionary activities of…
Boko Haram/Fulani Herdsmen Unchecked Violence Against Christians, the Declaration of Just War By Some Christian Leaders, and the Threat to the National Stability and Peaceful Co-existence in Nigeria.
Introduction Over the years and in most recent times, Christians’ view on when a just war declaration may…
A Synopsis on the Socio-Political Implication of Pentecostalism in the Nation-Building in Southwestern Nigeria
Pentecostalism in Nigeria has witnessed three distinct waves or stages of evolution in the last hundred years or…
The Imperfection of Secularization in Addressing the Promise of an Ideal Society and the Re-emergence of Spirituality in the Global City
Introduction Since the beginning of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century, the academia milieu…