Nigeria: Don Tasks President Jonathan On Education Empowerment

Dayo Adesulu

30 June 2011

Professor Anthony Oguntoye, Lecturer, Faculty of Education, University of Lagos has said that for President Goodluck Jonathan to be remembered for good after his four years in office , he should be able to empower Nigerians in the area of education, electricity and infrastructures. He dismissed the attitude of leaders concentrating on too many agendas without achieving any at the end of tenure, referring to it as lack of clear goals and proper priorities.

Delivering a lecture on “Transformative Leadership in Public Administration: Towards Result-Oriented Governance” at the Lagos State Public Service Week Lecture, Adeniran Ogunsanya College of Education (AOCOED), Lagos, Oguntoye pointed out that transformative leadership is results-oriented rather than activities oriented.

According to the Professor, for any leader to succeed, he must put on result oriented behaviour which he refers to as: clear goals, pro-acting, cooperation, proper priorities, consistency in decisions, flexible organizational structure and goal achievement. He noted that followers have a clear idea of what results they are attempting to accomplish through leaders efforts stressing that leaders are expected to plan ahead as actions are geared towards a purpose and desired results.

Oguntoye maintained that leaders and individuals must work in harmony toward agreed upon results saying that personal goals and organizational goals are congruent through the trans-formative leadership process. “Priorities are set to give prominence to critical areas to achieve desired result,” he said.

On consistency in decisions, he said that because goals are clearly understood and are agreed upon, there is consistency in decision making by individuals over time and throughout the organizations. He argued that flexible organizational structure and goal achievement is pivotal as the focus is not in organizational role parameters but more on goal attainment.

Explaining the functions of leadership, Oguntoye reiterated that leadership concerns itself with achieving results through people stressing that the leader asks question on what must I do to lead the people for whom I am responsible. To achieve set objective, he insists the group must stay together adding ” The measure of their cohesion is their morale and team spirit as people need to work in a coordinated fashion in the same direction. Team must avoid arguments, tensions, conflicts and differences that can injure the organization.

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