By Ibrahim Hassan, Kaduna

The Arewa Consultative Forum, ACF, has said leadership, insecurity, poverty, unemployment and marginalization among other challenges have been stalling Nigeria’s development.

ACF Chairman, Gabriel Aduku in a statement to commemorate the World Peace Day Celebration, noted that without peace, Nigeria cannot achieve any meaningful development.

He said “the trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely, failure of leadership. There is nothing basically wrong with the Nigerian character.

“There is nothing wrong with the Nigerian land or climate or water or air or anything else. The Nigerian problem is the unwillingness or inability of its leaders to rise to the responsibility, to the challenge of personal example which is the hallmark of true leadership.”

Among others, he said “As a member of the United Nations, Nigeria is a signatory to the UN Convention on World Peace.

“Sadly, peace appears to be elusive in the country. A number of factors revolving around political, socio-economic and leadership crises have literally conspired to hold the nation down and the consequences are enormous, indeed.

“These factors include the leadership question, insecurity, poverty, unemployment and marginalization, to mention but a few.

“Nigeria is a land literally flowing with the proverbial milk and honey. Nigeria is the envy of many nations because of her enormous human and material resources. Sadly however, despite Nigeria’s humongous endowments, the country is unarguably one of the least developed in the world.

A major problem associated with Nigeria is the nature of the leaders that have ruled the country, be they civilian or military. Chinua Achebe, one of Nigeria’s iconic and celebrated literary giants acknowledged this much. Chinua Achebe (1983, P.1) in one of his delectable books aptly titled the “The Trouble with Nigeria”, declared that:”
“The trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely, a failure of leadership. There is nothing basically wrong with the Nigerian character. There is nothing wrong with the Nigerian land or climate or water or air or anything else. The Nigerian problem is the unwillingness or inability of its leaders to rise to the responsibility, to the challenge of personal example which are the hallmarks of true leadership.”
“While other nations have been blessed with charismatic and visionary leaders, Nigeria is bedeviled with what Victor Dike (2013) calls ‘instrumental leaders’ as against ‘societal leaders’. According to Dike, the instrumental leader uses power and influence, primarily in the pursuit of private (personal, close family, cohort) goals. Community objectives are secondary to an instrumental leader.”