The President of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan, may have covertly slammed President Muhamadu Buhari, when he identified leadership deficit as a factor hindering sustainable economic growth and development, including perennial insecurity in Nigeria. Senate President may have berated Nigerian leaders at a time of the Boko Haram regime in the northeast, bandits ravaging the northwest, Fulani militia and herdsmen invading rural communities, killing, and kidnapping, among others.
Senate President Lawan, at the inauguration of the fourth cohort of Kashim Ibrahim Fellowship – a leadership mentorship programme for young people in Kaduna State, sponsored by the Kaduna State government, emphasized the need to bridge the leadership gap at all levels of government if Nigeria would make headway. He also emphasized that there is a need for government at all levels to come up with a deliberate policy to sustain leadership through mentoring young people on leadership skills and public service.
Lawan had declared: “For us to reach the level of development that we need in our country, every part, segment and strata of the society must have a developed, deliberately focused leadership, so that what we do at the local level compliments what we do at the state level and from there, terminating at the apex – at the Federal level.”
The Senate President stated: “no matter how hard we try to develop our country at the Federal level, if our states are not able to provide the kind of leadership and complementary development, then we cannot achieve the kind of goals and targets that we feel we must achieve as a country.”
Senate President Lawan decried that the security situation in the country is alarming. He enjoined the security agencies to redouble their efforts and rout out the bandits from their enclaves; appealing for the support and collaboration of all citizens in overcoming the Security challenges in Nigeria.