Reflection on Leadership and Governance:
A Nigerian Perspective .Paper presented by Distinguished Senator Shehu Sani at the first Induction of the Chartered Institute of Leadership and Governance USA(Nigeria Chapter) on 10/11/2018 at National Merit Award House Maitama Abuja Nigeria.

Shehu Sani is the Chairman Senate Committee on Local and Foreign Debt and
Vice Chairman Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs
National Assembly, FCT Abuja.

Distinguished ladies and gentlemen, it is with a profound sense of honor that I welcome the opportunity to be among you today. Equally important to me is the call on me by the organizers of this event to share with you my thoughts on Leadership and Governance from a Nigerian perspective. I appreciate this.

Let me begin by saying that there can be no gainsaying the great significance of the theme on which I have been asked to focus. For most people today, and for Nigerians in particular, the leadership question alongside its corollary, the question of governance are issues which lie at the epicenter of our national development challenge. And it is very easy to accept this position because God Almighty and nature have resolved for us the most crucial challenge: the question of resource availability.

Nigeria is one of the well-resourced countries in the world. Every available factor of production in the country can be described in superlative terms. Our immense and diversified natural resources apart, the country has huge human capital resources waiting to be harnessed and deployed appropriately and strategically. There are no spheres of human endeavors that Nigerians are not found and are not excelling at.

I reiterate therefore that God and nature have mercifully resolved the primary developmental challenge for this country. Since this is a settled matter, the intractable question that remains therefore is that of leadership and governance, the subject matter of my remark here today.
Leadership is key because of the critical role of organization and management of resources in the quest to achieving set organizational or national targets. The mental, intellectual and philosophical mindset and convictions of the leadership class is, to my mind, therefore the most significant of all the indices in the development process. I will even rank this factor above resource endowments. For while an over-abundance and mismanagement of resources can translate to the so-called resource curse, I doubt that it can be the case that a bountiful supply of functional, well dispersed and capable leadership traits can ever retard any nation.

From a Nigerian perspective, I think that the bane of development as it relates to the question of leadership and governance is a function of our faulty and counter-productive leadership recruitment process. Somehow we have failed to historically recruit into our team of first-eleven the best that Nigeria has to offer. On the whole mediocres, charlatans, semi-illiterates, bigots, and narrow minded people have found their ways into the driving seats of the commanding heights of the economy. And in those positions they have continued to replicate and perpetuate a Nigeria after their own images and likeness. They doggedly ensure that capable, efficient goal-getters either never get recruited or amount to anything under their watch. As we all know, no man willingly employs his own future boss. Hence the tendency of people to kick the ladder away when they get to the top.

World class institutions must be driven by world class minds, values and support teams. This is a necessary pre-condition for sustainable growth and development. The marked absence of this explains why comparatively Nigeria presents suboptimal outcomes sector by sector relative to other nations which were at similar levels of development in recent history. To illustrate, take for instance the security and defense sector, a critical area that should concern us all given the present national security challenges confronting the Nigerian nation-state. The Defense Industry Corporation of Nigeria (DICON) was established at about the same time with its Brazilian counterpart. Where is the Nigerian DIC today? How relevant is it to the needs of the Nigerian Military and defense architecture? Compare this with the Brazilian case where, I am told on good authority, substantial military and security soft and hard wares are produced both for national use as well as for the international market