By Oladosu Ibrahim
Effective leadership is putting First things first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it out (Stephen Covey).
Leadership development is one of the manifest functions that the institutions perform which is realized through the various political offices that are being held by students. The statement from centuries acknowledging that “Children are the leaders of tomorrow” has been faulted since the Ugly ones among the leaders are yet to die and the Beautiful ones refused to grow.
Ranging from heading religious association up to the cadre of Students’ Union level, these associations and organizations prepare young minds of today for the herculean tasks of leadership. We have seen how this has helped some past students’ leaders in developing their leadership skills and moral uprightness, for instance: The late Ken Saro Wiwa of Ogoniland was once the Hall chairman of Kenneth Mellanby Hall; Omoyele Sowore is a one-time student leader in University of Lagos etc. However, recent trends have shown that the leadership skills which students’ leaders ought to imbibe are being neglected.
Various articles preceding this has in one way or the other dug, exposed and demonstrated the excesses of student’ leaders. Similarly, this article seeks to dig and examine the more recent cases and remote causes of the excesses associated with student leadership such as dictatorial tendencies, abuse of power, moral decadence, which rested in corruption of offices and misappropriation of funds, and less quality in service delivery. They are then briefly discussed below.
WEAK LEGISLATIVE HOUSE
Just like the case in the Federal Republic of Nigeria, the executive arms of government are dictatorial in the sense that other arms of government are either being annexed or act as puppet to the executive arm. It is noteworthy to mention here that this is largely associated with various associations on campus.
Montesquieu propagated separation of power in order to reduce the dictatorial tendencies of one arm over others; the associations on campus seem to lack this ideology of Montesquieu. This is apparent has association affairs has turned to family/relationship affairs.
More so, the executives of some associations defy the resolutions of their legislative houses. For instance, the executives of the National Association of Political Science Students (NAPSS) do play their Senate house like football when it comes to auditing and presentation of statement of accounts. Without doubt, these practices among various students’ leaders are bane to the attainment of effective leadership in Nigeria.
MORAL DECADENCE.
Moral values have always been stressed in the society through formal and informal education. The emphasis is to bring up leaders who are morally upright. Despite these, our contemporary society has witnessed much decay in our moral institutions which in turn influences the integrity of present and tomorrow’s leaders. Moral decadence has eaten deep into the social structure and taken to our political system with full force.
Implication of this is the reason corruption, bribery, misappropriation of funds, etc are well established in our political system both on campus and in the mainstream.
HIGH COST OF CAMPAIGNING FOR OFFICE.
From buying forms to run for electoral offices to publicity from graphics designing to banner printing, every political aspirant engages in all these so as to crawl into the consciousness of the electorates. Funds that are used to run the campaign during electioneering process are quite much with little or no financial returns from the offices they are running for. Meanwhile, in this capitalist world, everybody including student politicians contest more or less because of gains. Since there is less financial gain in the office being contested for, they engage in dubious acts in order to improve their pockets. Such acts include mismanagement of funds, corruption, less quality service delivery etc.
VERDICT.
Based on organized view and some informal discussions with students of the University community, the following are their opinions on the weak and corrupt student leadership:
Suspension and Impeachment.
Just like it has been done for many students leaders that are guilty of being corrupt or abuse of office to be either suspended or impeached, various student leaders have been served with these punishments among whom are the Independence Hall AG -Mr. Aderibigbe Yusuf, FATSSSA President (2016/17) -Mr. Ogelekeme Sola (Janglas), NAPSS President (2017/18) -Mr. Ebenezer.
Disciplinary Committee.
Punishment for student leaders that abuse power should not be restricted to suspension and impeachment. They should as well be transferred to the Student’s Disciplinary Committee (SDC) for proper administration of justice.
CONCLUSION
Student’s association are always viewed as the micro states where intending leaders garner indispensable experiences but the situation is ironical as students’ leaders rather than learn good leadership skills, conflicts resolution, etc., they are in the web of abusing power, misappropriating funds, power drunk etc. This tends to demonstrates Chinua Achebe’s expression of “Things fall apart “. This is because the center could not hold -the center has always been the micro states (associations) – as it has produced bad leaders, which automatically led to Nigeria’s society being falling apart.
“To keep developing effective leadership spirits and traits is a task that must be done.” (Walter Rodney).
