By Johnbosco Agbakwuru

ABUJA—SPEAKER of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, has lamented that the nation’s educational system, as designed by the colonial masters, was not made to train leaders but workers.

According to him, those trained were to serve as workers to enrich the colonial masters.

Dogara, who stated this when he received the Zik Leadership award for Public Service last weekend, said the only option to ensure that the country groomed its leaders was by redesigning the educational curriculum.

Yakubu Dogara

He said:  “The only way we can grow in this nation is for our own ivory towers to begin to establish centres and institutes of leadership that will ingrain the culture of leadership in our young people.”

He lamented that lack of   credible leadership had been the bane of Nigeria’s development, adding  that with patriotic leadership, Nigeria would over come its challenges.

Dogara in a statement issued by his Special Adviser on Media and Public Affairs, Turaki Hassan, noted that Nigeria’s founding fathers wanted to be seen as people who were not just leaders, but leaders of a country that had the needed population and resources.

He said:  ‘’They fought for the unity of this country. We may never be like them but we can strive to ensure that the ideals for which they fought and gave everything are replicated and sustained.

“What has been the problem with Nigeria is lack of leadership. If we have credible leadership that speaks about the challenges we face as a nation, there is no way that in spite of our challenges, we won’t make progress.”

He said so many nations in the world that had the diversity of Nigeria used it  positively, wondering why such countries were making progress and Nigeria was not.

Dogara argued that the leadership that the nation needed was such that would lead it to always overcome its fears and not yield to them, stressing that what would be at the centre of that leadership would be justice.

He said: “Justice is needed in building a civil society, and we must understand the workings of justice which is necessary in democracy. And then we have equality.

“If we establish both principles, there is no way Nigeria will not have progress. I don’t believe that the variety within Nigeria is a mistake, just as Nigeria is not a mistake.”

“In a place where you find variety, God dwells there, so we don’t have any problem in this save for leadership. Unfortunately, we have been pursuing everything as a people except training leaders.”

He called on the present crop of leaders to rise to the challenges and   build a generation that will take over from them, sustain and even surpass their legacies.

To achieve this, Dogara said,   “our ivory towers must establish leadership centres. I would like to dedicate this award to my colleagues who trusted me enough to make me the Speaker and for their constant support, and to my immediate family for their support and tolerance, for having to endure an almost non-resident father.”

The speaker who extolled the virtuous of the late Zik, described him as   pan-African,   and a   nationalist that the world referred to “not as Zik of Nigeria, but as Zik of Africa, and that is the man we celebrate today.

“From the lessons we have learned concerning the kind of leadership that speaks to the challenges that we are having as a nation at the moment, the idea that they struggled not for the independence of their regions but for the independence of Nigeria; they wanted something bigger than themselves, which could give them prestige anywhere they stand.”

In his remarks, the Ooni of Ife, Oba Adeyeye Enitan Ogunwusi urged leaders to invest in the youths and equip them to take up the challenges of providing quality leadership.