Leadership Re-Orientation and Engendering Human and Environmental Sustainability in Nigeria

NANJI R. UMOH
Department of Political Science, Faculty of Social Sciences,
University of Jos, Nigeria.
E-mail: nanjiumoh@yahoo.com
ABSTRACT
The quest for positive transformation at all levels of human existence whether individual, corporate, societal or national is endless. This quest also reflects the needs of the public who are the customers of the government, the scarce resources available to satisfy these needs and the role of the leadership in determining what ends to pursue to ensure service delivery and customer satisfaction for posterity sake. Doing this entails the evaluation of the desired outcomes in the light of the situations at hand, the formulation of relevant policies based on available alternatives, human and material resources and a commitment to human and environmental sustainability. These bring to the fore, issues relating to the administrative behaviour of policy makers with regard to their actions or inactions as determined by the value systems or premises and idiosyncrasies they choose to uphold. The theoretical base of the paper is derived from aspects of Herbert Simon’s decision making theory and Robert Dahl’s Three Problems in the Science of Public Administration to give an insight to influences on administrative behaviour that affect the attainment of the Meta-Values which Christopher Hodgkinson believes should constitute the Philosophy of Public Administration. The paper relies on secondary data sources and its general objective is to reiterate the value of transformational political leadership in national development. Specifically, it analyzes relevant sections of the speeches of Barack Obama at his re-election in America and Bukola Saraki at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria in an attempt to proffer reasons for the apparent disconnect between political leadership, governance and transformation while developing templates for charting the way forward in Nigeria. Furthermore, it is expected that the paper will contribute to knowledge and provide guidelines for designing target-oriented strategies for adoption and application as palliatives in the light of the prevalent lapses in governance.