The Senior Pastor of Day Star Christian Centre, Pastor Sam Adeyemi has observed that it may be difficult to raise good leaders from the crop of leaders in the country; noting that many of our leaders are crisis managers rather than people with vision.
He made the observation at a press conference on October 25 to herald the annual Excellence in leadership conference organized by his church.
Adeyemi who was fielding questions from reporters at the conference said people had had cause to ask him if he had met the president to share some of his thoughts with him. He said he had always told them the present president is not the right person to see.
According to him, “the present leadership in the country at various levels is busy solving one crisis or the other. They are overwhelmed with all kinds of problem. They don’t have time to read and take leadership lessons that will be of immense benefit to them. They also don’t have time to make proper consultation.”
He said further, “When people see some of the things that we are doing and some of the creative ideas on leadership and how a country should be run, they have had cause to ask if I have seen the president; and I have had cause to ask in return: which president, is it the present one or the one to come. And I have had cause to say, if it is the present president I do not think he is the right person for me to see. But if it is president to come then I will tell them I meet him every day.”
Adeyemi who has been hosting leadership conferences for a number of years observed further that leaders in Nigeria are in peculiar situations because many of them did not prepare for the role they are playing.
He however assured that “There is hope. I believe one day something positive will happen that will take us to where we are to be. We believe that these conferences will ultimately have the desired impact. There is always a breaking point. And we are moving towards that in our ministry. We believe that we will leave Nigeria better than how we met it.”
He commended government for the improvement in the electricity supply but warned that it should stop playing politics with people’s lives. “We are in a country where sometimes the government wants to play politics with everything. They know the right thing to do but they will not because of certain vested interest.
“We will continue to repeat what we said when we had the protest on light that government should make the process of privatizing PHCN as open as that of the telecoms sector. That is the only way we can get reprieve in the energy sector. There are many organizations that can generate their electricity but government bureaucracy and bottleneck will not make it possible.