Fashola Preaches Integrity, Honesty

Lagos State Governor, Mr Babatunde Fashola (SAN), yesterday called on Nigerians to rediscover the core values of integrity and honesty as national ethos needed to build a successful nation.
Governor Fashola, who spoke at an Excellence in Leadership Conference organized by the Daystar Christian Centre, Ikosi road, Oregun, Lagos, added that “we must consciously identify the basic values that drive and guide our conduct and activities. Without character, we cannot attain excellence in leadership at any level of responsibility.”
His call came as the Senior Pastor of Daystar Christian Centre, Pastor Sam Adeyemi, called for a review of the concept of leadership from the nation's cultural basis which sees the leader as being above all mortals and not being a servant.
The guest speaker and Senior Pastor of the Fountain of Life Church, Pastor Taiwo Odukoya, in his presentation had also said that there is no complete independence in nature as all mortals have to be dependent on God.
Pastor Odukoya added that leadership comes with character, reiterating that everyone had the potential to lead.
The Governor contended that Nigeria is experiencing a dysfunction in her core value system because of a failure to support the structures that can nurture those qualities that are essential to qualitative leadership.
Said he:” By sowing for an early crop, the capacity ‘to lead’ particularly in our youths, we can guarantee this nation a harvest of exemplary leaders that our people so dearly expect and indeed deserve”.
Governor Fashola contended that leadership qualities or the lack thereof represents the greatest historical and perhaps prospective challenge to the developmental goals of Nigeria as a nation.

He reiterated that several of these challenges have their root cause in the poor supply of quality leadership or the unsatisfied demand for leadership qualities and in the extreme, the outright lack of purposeful leadership.

While describing leadership as the symbol of hope for the well endowed and a basket of expectation for the hopeless, the Governor contended that there are leadership responsibilities at every level of society.He added: “Therefore we are all required to be leaders and yet will at the same time be led by others. This duality of roles and responsibilities must be kept in perspective. The qualities required to attain excellence in leadership remains constant”. Governor Fashola said the inability of political leadership in Nigeria to inspire and mobilize the led for social and economic progress, is often linked with the perception that men and women of character find it difficult to emerge in our political system.He challenged credible people to pick up the gauntlet and come into politics towards making the desired changes possible; saying with concerted effort, the desired societal changes can be effected.He contended that Nigeria can indeed become a destination point for best practices as no one would be ready to do it for Nigerians if they are not ready to change the country for the better.I