Stories by Bimbola Oyesola 08033246177
The widening disconnect between government officials and the people they represent has been singled out as the bane of good governance in Nigeria.
Delivering the 2017 Justice Mustapha Akanbi lecture, to mark the 85th birthday of Justice Mustapha Akanbi (rtd), in Ilorin, Kwara State, the national executive council member of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Issa Aremu, in his paper, titled “Nation Building in Africa: The Role of African Leaders,” said that the crisis of leadership in Nigeria would not be resolved through discovering “better new leaders,” but through “a new relationship between elected leaders and the mass of people they claim to represent.”
According to Aremu, past leaders of Nigeria and Africa such as the late Sir Ahmadu Bello, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Aminu Kano, Amilcar Cabral, Sekou Toure, Leopold Senghor, Samora Machel and Agostinho Neto represented the aspirations of their people, while most present-day leaders are “self-indulgent” and “self-absorbing.”
The labour leader said Nigeria then was not short of good leaders who were rooted in their communities, compared to “present-day dealers.”
Aremu stated that good leaders as retired Justice Akanbi must be celebrated while alive. He decried the “fading national consciousness among elected and appointed leaders,” urging Nigerians to demand accountability from those representing them.
He, however, commended Governor Akinwunmi Ambode of Lagos for what he termed “all-inclusive celebration of Lagos state at 50 in a number of creative mass participatory ways,” compared to other states.
Aremu, who is also the general-secretary of the National Union of Textiles Garments and Tailoring Workers, explained that, as part of the 2017 Independence anniversary, the NLC, “as a pan-Nigeria organisation,” would hold rallies “for a united Nigeria for good governance on October 1st, with Nigerian flags” insisting that “nation building is too important to be left alone with the increasingly unpatriotic political elite.”
“Nigerians,” the labour leader said, “should reject the lowkey mentality of self-serving leaders and take the challenges of national development into their hands.”