Nigeria has been grappling with the problem of development as a country since the exigent amalgamation by the colonialists in 1914. So tortuous has been the itinerary that prohesies of doom have become commonplace. Apprentice clerics and all manner of hustlers have gained ascendancy, claimining to foretell what is clearly discernible to average citizens. News emanating from government circles depresses the populace. The people are daily assailed with tales of how the fortunes of a potentially great country are frittered away by the profligate impostors in Khaki and Babaringa. There appears to be no end in sight for thehapless citizenry.

Reasons advanced for the parlous state of affairs are as multifarious as the fact of our divergence. Some blame it on the fact of our existence, a geographical expression with infinite multiplicity of ideas cannot start to think of development without resolving the contradictions of the contraption called Nigeria. The agitations for independence failed to address the basis of our co-existence. The various constitutional amendments from the Clifford’s Constitution of 1922 to the Richard’s Constitutional reforms which gave birth to regionalism, through Macpherson’s to Lyttleton’s up till the time of the independence in 1960, the “freedom fighters failed to advert their minds to the issue of nationhood.”

Others. and this number is quite significant, opine that the problem bedeviling the country is leadership. They are of the unshaken belief that once the problem is solved, the country possesses the ingredients for greatness. They posit that other things put in place, there is the need for the charimatic leader to galvanise the resources, both human and material, to lead thc country out of the woods.

What is leadership? Are leaders made or born? What marks out a leader from the pack of rabble? What are the qualities expected of a leader below which a personality once reverred sinks into the ocean of infamy? Do leaders need the structures of thc society to function optimally? Where does a leadcr derive his legitimacy? Must a leader emerge solely from an electoral process? Can a profession such as journalism have its own leaders? What role does experience play in the making: of a leader?

Finding appropriate answers to these posers will assist us in appreciating the enormityof thechallenges faced by the country for having the misfortune of placing its affairs in the hands of mediocres, erstwhile beggars who will now live in benumbing opulence, barely literate thugs, felons of unimaginable crimes, jobless hustlers whose only means of sustenance is poltiics and a scary assemblage of despicable characters. The activiteis of these people continue to threaten the very existence of the country as geo-political entity.

Unless and until charismatic leaders emerge to salvage the polity from the ravage of this pestilence,the future is indeed bleak.

The exercise of executive powers deals primarily with the administration of laws for the maintenance of order and good government. All ingredients for erecting abiding structures for the development of the country are present in the country. There is an abundance of arable land, water, mineral and human resources. Nigeria has no business with poverty.

Earnings from crude oil alone since the exploration of oil commenced at Oloibiri in 1958 runs into several hundreds of billions of dollars till date. The only evidence of this huge earning is found in the ostentatious lifestyles of a few looters who continue to impose their will on the rest of us. These unscrupulous elements will stop at nothing in ensuring that the vast majority of the populace are treated as underlings who must wait on their plaesure to survive.

Akeredolu, President of the Nigerian Bar Association, delivered this lecture at a forum organised by the League of Veteran Journalists, Oyo State branch, in Ibadan recently.