Chairman, Nigerian Institute of Public Relations, NIPR, FCT Chapter, Dr. Tayo Haastrup, has blamed the country’s under development on leadership failure.
Hasstrup spoke at a news conference organised in Abuja on Tuesday in preparation for the 2019 Annual General Meeting, AGM, of the Abuja chapter of Public Relations practitioners scheduled for Nov. 5 and Nov. 7.
Acknowledging that the leadership failure cut across all areas of the society, he noted however, that the failure of political leadership appeared to be the biggest challenge facing the country.
He lamented that though the country had one of the best human resources it was still far down the ladder in all areas of development.
His words: “Part of the dilemmas is the lack of good succession plan for young people. This has become a clog in our quest for visionary leadership with the requisite drive to deploy our resources for the good of the populace.
“Hence, we today have a country with one of the best human resources, yet not living up to global expectations in all ramifications.
“It is on these grounds that the 2019 AGM of the NIPR FCT chapter with the theme: “The Leadership Question: Search for 21 Century Leaders”, is considered apt given the apparent leadership problem that has become a monster not only in Nigeria, but the whole of Africa.
“It is therefore, important to kick-start the process of national rebirth through provision of platform such as this to enable all stakeholders generate insight in the area of the type of leadership Nigerians must look out for if we are to have hope of resolving our unresolved national issues.
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“These unresolved issues are poverty, rapid urbanisation, regional integration, gender inequality, food, insecurity, violent conflicts and political fragmentation among others.”
In his comments Chairman of the NIPR’s 2019 AGM and Conference planning committee, Franklyn Ginger-Eke, said the NIPR would use the conference as a platform to address the leadership challenge facing the country.
He also disclosed that there would be an essay competition for selected secondary schools in the FCT, saying: “We added this to the programme because leadership begins with students; university undergraduates are also part of this process as Microsoft is collaborating with NIPR to train some of them.”
He said the keynote speaker for the AGM would be Dr. Ladi Thompson.
