Nigeria’s Priority Requirement: Good Leaders or Good Institutions

Abstract

The phenomenon of leadership and good governance has assumed greater interest in Africa. Good
leaders globally guide governments of nation-state to perform effectively for their citizens. The paper
explores that, good leaders provides their citizens with a sense of belonging to national enterprises to
which everyone can be proud. The paper also emphasizes that good leaders produce results in terms of
enhanced standard of living, basic development indicators, and abundant new resources of personal
opportunity, enhanced schooling, and skilled medical care, freedom from crime and strengthened
infrastructure. The paper adopts Desk Research as its instrument of data collection and
Transformational Leadership Theory as its theoretical framework with a view to assess, critique, and
indicate the Nigeria’s priority requirement in respect of good leaders and good institutions. The study
observed that, lack of target/vision, endemic corruption, employment and federal character issues, lack
of self-confidence are the major problems bedeviling qualitative leadership in Nigeria. Hence, the
Nigeria’s priority requirement is good leader’s not good institutions. The paper recommended that, there
is a need for flexible and dynamic, genuine and sincere leaders who are pragmatic in their approach to
things for better leadership delivery and services to peoples.