Regardless of the statistics one choose to adopt, the figure of Nigeria’s population does not project anything short of being fat. Figures differ but it is safe to adopt the United Nation’s estimates that the current population of Nigeria as at 4 September 2016 is about 187,780,165 which is equivalent to 2.4% of the total world population. The caveat of what statistics one can choose to adopt is excusable, the country had her last census in 2006.

Nigeria has worn a beautiful toga of being the giant of her mother continent for years, perhaps if one look beyond the population figure, that brand of being the giant can be challenged by all standard and as the year went by, Nigeria continued to slip from every front at which she has lead the mother Africa. Can this be explained? Most likely! Any country that won’t take leadership serious is bound to slip and eventually fall.

Nigeria has an unpalatable history when it comes to leadership. The dark days of military dictatorship are better left unmentioned and even though the country has returned to democracy for more than 17 years, the story of satisfactory leadership has remained a mirage, a great illusion. If one sees people in group or in groups, one can predict that the discussions are about Nigeria, her leaders and the many problems facing the country. One of the things you can’t take away from the beautiful people of Nigeria is the ability to analyse problems and apportion blames with little or no emphasis on the way out. An analytics of many discussion has continued to lean on whether the many problems of Nigeria is that of leaders or followers; bad followers or bad leaders.

Everything rises and falls on leadership said John Maxwell, but does this absolve the lead of leadership responsibility? This question brings one to the concept of self-leadership. Though not too popular in this part of the world, the subject of self-leadership is the missing link between the lead and the leader. The many followers with great grudges about their leaders have never taken self-leadership serious. We take it for granted that the lead will one day become the leader and as a bad self-leader, such person cannot lead others better “the one who is poor at being lead cannot by any means be good at being the leader”. John Ng said in his book “Dim Sum leadership: your second serving” that great leadership is a cultivated art and great leadership begins with self-leadership. Leadership success or failure begins with how the leader approaches self-leadership.

The model of self-leadership hinges on the fact that the effectiveness of other-management (leading others) stands on the firmness of self-awareness, self-management and then other-awareness. Self-awareness focuses on the ability to acknowledge and understand one’s own values, perspectives, strengths, weaknesses and emotional needs while self-management deals with the ability to nurture and harness one’s own passion, abilities & emotions into sound decision making. Other-awareness refers to the ability to acknowledge and recognize the passion, gifting, strengths, weaknesses, potentials and needs of others.

This underscores our focus at Lofty Transformation Centre on an inside-out approach to leadership. As a centre, we believe that the concept of self-leadership implies that a man has the responsibility of first leading himself and how much good work he does leading himself is good predictor of what he will do if ten subjects, ten thousand subjects or even ten million subjects are added to him to lead. And because such a leader has done a good job with himself, becoming a transformation leader is with ease.

Through the strength of his awareness and acknowledgement of his vision and personality, he is able to inspire and motivate his followers to work towards common goals. Governance therefore to the followers does not appear as government of a few by a few and for a few.

A sincere shift from transactional leadership to transformational leadership is the transformation we need as a people whether as a leader or as a follower. It throws a huge weight behind a shift from give and take relationship to leadership by example and articulation of vision. Every single Nigerian must assume the office of transformational leadership either as the lead or as the leader in order to become moral exemplar of working towards the benefit of the nation.
This is the way to go as a people and this is a call unto transformation.

http://www.loftycentre.com/blog/2016/09/06/nigeria-the-lead-the-leader-and-the-link-a-call-to-action/

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