Abstract

Leadership is undoubtedly a very big challenge in Africa, and Nigeria in particular. Having a competent, effective and purposeful leadership that is capable of turning its highly chorused great potentials into real economic and political power has been quite elusive for over five decades of her independence. This is simply because of the failure to identify the essential values that sustain the various societies now constituting the modern Nigerian society and infuse such values into our social system. Hence the consequent leadership failures become inevitable. The leadership challenge in Nigeria has degenerated into a crisis situation, which is now a clog on its wheel of striving for development. The paper therefore, examines the concept of leadership, the essential qualities necessary for effective leadership and the current trends in Nigeria leadership paradigm. Secondary data were collected and analyze qualitatively using the content analysis. The paper emphasizes on the need for moral education and constant value re-orientation as the means to surmount the Nigeria’s leadership challenges. It recommends among others, the urgent need for paradigm shift in our social system in order to restore a value based Nigerian society that would directly translate to value based leadership. Also, strengthening our institutions with our core values and having their operations rooted and guided by the rule of law is very imperative.

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