By Dayo Adesulu
In preparing the youths of this generation for future national challenges and services, the Chief Executive Officer, Standard Mandate International (SMI), Mr Nelson Ayodele has said that school prefects and leaders should exhibit good leadership qualities in the various offices they found themselves.

While challenging the over forty secondary schools’ prefects and leaders in attendance at the University of Lagos, Main Auditorium recently, Ayodele pointed out seven habits of highly intelligent leaders that must not be missing in any leader.

He charged the students to be proactive saying that a proactive person is a person with initiative responsiveness to the ability he possesses as he does things without being told what to do. If you are not proactive, he said, you are liking to a stationary wheelbarrow that can only move when it is pushed. “You must identify what should be done and do it without being told,” he said.

Moreover, he noted that intelligence as a quality is important for a leader and should be built upon stressing that it makes one to know the right thing to do and the right people to deal with as it produces wisdom to relate with people.

As a leader, Ayodele maintained that you need to be above the people you are leading in your moral standard saying that pride, anger, dishonesty, greediness, stealing, selfishness and disobedience will mar your reputation as a leader.

Courage was another virtue mentioned by the motivational speaker as he tasked the students to be bold when confronted with challenges.

Other leadership qualities according to the CEO include: good manners and selflessness

Speaking on successful leadership, Ayodele continued, you must have a vision of what you want to accomplish adding that in this part of the world, most of our leaders do not have vision for their people.

Explaining, he reiterated that a vision is a mental picture of an actual future. He asked rhetorically, how do you want Nigeria to be in future? To see Nigeria in the future having uninterrupted electricity, where every school’s classrooms will be air-conditioned, where nobody will be jobless, where every single graduate will own a car after graduation and where we will have access to good medical services.

As soon as you are appointed as a senior prefect, Ayodele said that the students should start to think of the positive changes they want to effect in  school and be ready to take responsibility for their action. He said: “

As a leader, you must always look forward to the well being of your students. You must know how to deligate and groom your successors who will take over from you. Effective leader delegates authority and supervises to ensure that it is done.

Empower others to achieve the objective. Before you motivate others you must be motivated as you cannot give what you do not have. There is no one that can frustrates you without your permission. You must create a motivating environment. Appreciate the works done by others and train them to be leaders.

In the practical session, each  student was asked to write an essay identify five good leaders and five bad leaders in the world. Topmost on the list of good leaders according to the students is Martin Luther King, followed by Nelson Mandela, Barrack Obama, Queen Elizabeth, Pop Benedict, Abraham Lincoln, Babatunde Fashola, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, Obafemi Awolowo and Goodluck Jonathan.

The world bad leaders include: Adolf Hitler, Idi-Amin, Sanni Abacha, Ibrahim Babangida, Osama Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Benito Mousseline, Charlse Taylor, Rev King and Abdul Mutalab.