Lousy Leadership, Nigeria's greatest challenge says Mimiko

Ondo State Governor Olusegun Mimiko has attributed the nation's woes to bad leadership.

Mimiko spoke in Akure, while hosting the officials and participants of the 33 Senior Courses of the Armed Forces Command and Staff College, Jaji, Kaduna who were in the state on study tour.

The governor said: "The greatest challenge we are facing as a nation is the type of leadership we are providing for our people. Democracy will be sustained so long as our people see a connect between their social economic circumstance and democracy, so long as people see government as changing their lives, so long as people see government as partnering with them to attack poverty, so long as people see government as their own. I'm sure we'll be able to sustain democracy in this nation. But the greatest challenge to democracy itself is credible election.

"I'm sure, as a major institution in Nigeria, the Armed Forces will do everything possible so that we can have credible election, but if power emerges from godfatherism and all manner of gangsterism, we'll not get anywhere in this nation and I don't have any doubt in my mind that with the quality of leadership we have in the Nigeria Armed Forces, they will play their own part in ensuring that we have credible election in this nation."

The people, he said, accepted his administration because of their belief in his style and policies.

 
He said: "In one of our dualisation projects, we have had to pull down more than 200 buildings, some of them ancient, some of them grave sites, some tombs of ancestors, but people readily cooperated with us. Some of the ancient shrines have to give way, but people have cooperated by and large believing that with the government in place that tomorrow will be better than today and they can see the dividends already.

"They voted us in, they fought to retrieve their stolen mandate which was forcibly taken by the hawks at gun point; and they are ready to make the best of this mandate while it lasts. I'm sure you've seen the evidence on our streets. We are very excited about the programmes we are driving. Some of them are novel in many aspects. And I can assure you, with every sense of modesty that the country also has a lot to learn from some of the life changing programmes of Ondo State. I hope I'm not sounding immodest but that is the truth."