WHAT'S WRONG WITH NIGERIA'S DEMOCRACY -TAMBUWAL

Speaker of the House of Representatives, Alhaji Aminu Tambuwal, has asserted that Nigeria's democracy lacked participation as leaders exhibit absolute knowledge of governance to the detriment of the masses. He challenged the political class to provide a new or desirable leadership by engaging in constructive dialogue with the followers.

The Speaker stated this while delivering a lecture entitled 'New Leadership: The Challenges of Nigeria's Political Class' at the Benue State University (BSU), as part of the university's 11th and 12th combined convocation ceremony.

He posited that desirable leadership has continued to elude Nigeria over the years with the attendant consequences of inefficient governance.

This, according to him, has also led to mass poverty, unemployment, squalor and diseases and serious threat to the very fabric of our existence as a sovereign entity.

'It is the people's participation that results in ownership of projects and programs by the critical mass and thus translates such programs and projects from government owned to people owned. In such circumstance, it can be taken for granted that the people shall rise in defense of such programs and projects at all times without any further prompting from government officials or leaders,' he said.

Tambuwal opined that leadership failure does not suppose that followers should simply exclude themselves from blame by pontificating at elected leaders, stressing that Nigeria requires a value added leadership that has a sense of right and wrong

as well as moral courage to choose what is right for the benefit of its citizens.

'Nigeria needs a leadership with a sense of compassion, understanding, vision and core moral principles of integrity, patriotism, courage, social justice, equity, fairness, transparency, accountability, prudent management of scarce human and material resources, sacrifice, selflessness, service ands above all, respect for the value and dignity of the human person,' he said.