By Seyi Odubanwo and Ekene Okoro, LagosLack of conducive environment for the emergence of credible personalities has been identified as responsible for the seeming lack of quality leadership in the country.Lagos State Governor, Babatunde Fashola, said deterioration in the country's value system was to blame for antisocial tendencies among Nigerians in the present dispensation.Fashola, who made the declaration on Thursday, at the re-launch of uniformed voluntary organisations and clubs in Lagos State public schools, at the Onikan Stadium, Lagos, noted that the re-introduction of clubs such as the Boys Scout, Red Cross, Sheriff Guards, and the Girls Guide, was to begin the process of "building leaders from the scratch by using tried but abandoned methods".Fashola, while charging the students of the various associations to be prepared to take up leadership roles in the nearest future, also noted that the quest for a new generation of leaders and those to exercise uncommon leadership quality has become a matter of global concern, adding that the situation has not been helped with the fact that role models, and institutions created by leaders of yesteryears, such as the United Nations in 1945 and the World Bank in 1946, are the only references available for dealing with the global problems."Ironically, across the world, the models that are being studied are leaders before our generation like Winston Churchill, Eisenhower, Abraham Lincoln, Mahatma Ghandi, Napoleon, Cyrus to mention a few", he said.Fashola also told the students that great Nigerian leaders, both past and present, living and dead, did not become great leaders by taking political office or by attending leadership training institutes, noting that they were leaders in their various professions first."This is the defining element of leadership, responsibility for self, responsibility for others and responsibility to a cause. Mandela, Awolowo, Bola Tinubu were responsible for themselves, so they took responsibility for others and for causes like the fight against apartheid, the enforcement of free education and the enthronement of democracy."This is what we expect from these young faces, who will lead our Police and Army in the not too distant future, people who will be our professors, doctors, teachers and professionals to train others".
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