Ghali Umar Na’Abba, a former Speaker of the House of Representatives has stated that every leader Nigeria has had since the transition from military rule has been an accidental one.
Olusegun Obasanjo, Umaru Yar’Adua, Goodluck Jonathan and Buhari have all taken on Nigeria’s highest office in this time.
He was speaking at the 2016/2017 Matriculation and Fellowship Endowment ceremony of National Institute for Legislative Studies, NILS, in Abuja,
He rued Nigeria’s leadership recruitment process and blamed it for the accidental leadership problem in the country.
According to Na’Abba, “Circumstances at hand or situations on ground have, to a large extent, overdetermined who and who was elected into office in Nigeria as President since 1999, against level of preparedness on the part of the leaders in terms of clear vision and programmes obtainable in most democracies of the world, culminating in accidental leadership for the country.
“I believe that not just the legislature, but every arm of government serving the purpose of governance, must invest in exposing democracy to the people.
“It is a sad commentary on our political life that today, recruitment into leadership has been subverted by a few politicians because they deny Nigerians opportunity to contest elections and achieve their aspirations through the systematic appropriation of political parties to themselves.
“These politicians have stopped the growth of democracy. And it is true that unless democracy is allowed to grow, we cannot achieve the desired political growth, we cannot achieve the desired economic growth and we can also not achieve the desired social growth in our country.
“That is why we are still in political, economic and social doldrums. We have been having successive accidental leaders since 1999.
“We have been advocating that tutorials must be taking place on a continuous basis for stakeholders in democracy, from the local governments to the states.”
Leave a Reply