Youth, leadership and values

Permit me to begin this speech with the usual public-speaking cliche of how it is a delight for me to be in your presence this morning. In reality, beyond the cliche, I am indeed delighted to be here. Whenever I have the opportunity of being in the midst of younger generations like yours, it is an opportunity to impact the little knowledge God has given me. The Lead City University Model United Nations (LCUMUN) Conference 2025 is such an opportunity. The chosen title for this conference, “Empowering change: Youth leadership for a resilient future” could not have been more apposite. The timing of the conference also couldn’t have been more auspicious. Both take cognizance of the onerous responsibility on your shoulders as change agents and – yet another cliche – the face of the future of our country and the world. Today, our country and the world in its entirety seem to be face to face with a new order, a new normal, if you like. Right there in the United States of America, we have a new Sheriff in town, President Donald Trump. The world was not used to his against-method leadership. Brash, uncompromising, with a terse bother about the rest of the world, except America, Donald Trump is re-writing the global paternalism that America had been known by for close to a century. With America’s tariff war on the whole world and Trump’s reductionist mantra of Make America Great Again (MAGA) which has seen America discontinuing its Santa Claus, Uncle Sam, avuncular favour to, especially the developing world, America is unraveling afresh.

In Nigeria, too, a lot of negatives are happening. These happenings implicate national leadership and call into question the need to foster a leadership that is people-centric. While we have heard consistent and sustained promises of hope and redemption from the Nigerian political leadership, the honest truth is that our people are yet marooned on an island of hopelessness. The level of unemployment among school leavers is astonishingly high, with a degree certificate from the university not a sine qua non for a daily bread. Parents face such gruelling economic realities that make the platitudes from governments mere rhetoric. If global leadership is not offering hope to the youths of today, shouldn’t the world prepare for a transition to the leadership of those who, in a few years to come, would take over the baton of world leadership? This is where all of you in this hall come in.

You hold the future of Nigeria and the world in your hands. To illustrate this, permit me to recommend an African Writers Series novel for you to read. It is entitled The Future Leaders (1973) by Kenyan author, Nwangi Ruweni. The plot of the novel is wrapped around a lead character, a young graduate of the Makerere University, called Reuben Ruoro. Ruoro had huge hopes of youth leadership of an emergent Kenyan nation. The country was at this period transiting from a British colony into an independent nation. However, through misadventures and miscalculation of his leadership potentials, Ruoro gets into messy adventures and predicaments, which give poignant indicators of a potential leadership that could go awry if not adequately projected. This brings me to a discussion of the role of values in leadership. As the next crop of leaders of Nigeria, Africa and the world, what values are expected of you?

There is no denying the place of pride that values in leadership occupy. Indeed, values are deemed to be very crucial in leadership because of the moral compass that they present for guiding leaders’ decisions and actions. The more fundamental reason why values constitute an essential ingredient of leadership in any sphere of life is that they underscore and establish leadership credibility. They also inspire trust of the led, giving implicit trust in leaders’ ability to get things done almost seamlessly.

Effective leadership comes with value ingredients like integrity, respect, and vision. Ultimately, these ingredients help in shaping decisions. This is because of the implicit trust the led have in the personal conduct of their leaders. These have strong taproots in the approach the leaders take in administering their followers. Apart from all the above, effective leadership also comes with hard work. As intending leaders, you must build yourselves, your tomorrow on the crucible of work and hard work. Hardworking entails doing more than the needful, dredging more than the ordinary and sacrificing beyond the normal. You must inculcate the philosophy behind personal sacrifice being at the heart of leadership. Anyone who follows my writing trajectory will know that I burrow deeply into and borrow hugely from traditional societies. My aim of doing so is to import values that made those societies thick for an application to our present modern world. Folklore, proverbs, lore, songs and customs constitute major pillars through which we can understand those societies. Permit me to use a particular traditional African song to illustrate the values in hardwork. It is from the song of Yoruba’s Apala musician called Ayinla Omowura. In one of his albums, Omowura sang, and I translate:

At cockcrow, when a man (by that very fact, a woman, too) wakes up: “If he is not pursued by something/He should quickly pursue something…/ Whoever works conquers poverty Let us work with dark hairs.” So that it can guarantee us comfort and rest of mind at the latter days of our lives. For a very long time now, Nigeria and perhaps the world, has witnessed a leadership that is not thorough, nor strong on the side of values. Your generation must reconnect with the lost values of Africa, some of which I mentioned earlier. These are values like integrity, truthfulness and commitment to the lives of others. The leadership burden Nigerians carry today is that our leaders seldom bother about the led. Their actions border strictly on selves. It is a leadership devoid of morality, integrity and honesty. Your leadership must totally depart from this depressing and destructive leadership model. At whatever level of leadership you find yourselves, endeavour to underscore, emphasize and factor in the other. You must work towards the uplift and betterment of those under your watch.

If you subsequently become part of the political class, never ever partake in the uncritical and selfish narrative that politics and morality are strange bedfellows. It is why Nigeria is suffering the kind of colossal regression it is battling with today, on all fronts. It is why, wherever you go, you will see survival of the fittest and elimination of the weakest as the abiding philosophy of Nigeria. Not only is this politics of immorality, you only find such politics in Thomas Hobbes’ state of nature. No one can empower your leadership to change from this status quo of immorality to a moral leadership other than you yourselves. So many of your colleagues cannot go to school today, not because Nigeria is not rich enough to provide them free education. Many of our countrymen die from avoidable sicknesses and diseases. Nigeria is wealthy enough to provide quality healthcare for its teeming citizens. This country is wealthy enough to pay social security to people with inadequate or no income as they do in the western world. But we cannot have all those because there is a rat race for primitive acquisition among the ruling elite

My charge to you today is, make up your minds to be impactful leaders. As leaders, you must feel excruciating pain if a day goes by without you impacting lives. A leader must daily wake up to assess impacts they made the previous day. If there was a statistical reduction in the number of impacts they made on their people, they must be sober and persuaded to jerk up their impacts subsequently. In today Nigeria, presidents, ministers, legislators, governors, commissioners and political appointees go and come back from government offices like snakes that glide on the rock – zero impacts. An impact-less leader is a barren leader and such people are easily consigned into the dustbins of history. While I am beginning to bring this address to a close, please believe in yourselves, even from now onwards. Begin to evolve in yourselves a can-do spirit, the Obama creed that made the first Black president of America. Begin to see yourselves as leaders and act it out, even in your small corner. Leaders are not only born, they are equally made. In your homes, act like leaders. In school, act like leaders. Among your peers, act like leaders. Seek the interests of the collective first before yours. Those are values that make the likes of Nelson Rohilala Mandela immortal today. Though their bones are interred and their flesh consumed by maggots, they are here with us and their leadership deeds are still stuffs of legend.

As members of The Lead City University Model United Nations, you must not only simulate activities of UN bodies like the World Health Assembly, Economic and Social Council, ICJ, Human Rights Council, UN Security Council, simulate the ideals behind those organizations. Study the lives and footprints of their past and present leaders who made impacts and find out what the chemistry was that stood them out. Begin even from now to find out solutions to the challenges that our hapless country is confronted with. Immortal Obafemi Awolowo, while a student in the United Kingdom, was literally consumed by the need to find solutions to the challenges faced by the Yoruba nation. He was bothered by why that nation was factitious and was always at war with itself – the Kiriji war, Ekitiparapo war etc. He was thus persuaded that he could find solutions to them. This was what culminated in his founding of the Egbe Omo Oduduwa, even while still a student in London. Those impressions are still imperishable today, close to a century after his mind hatched them.

The challenges of Nigeria can be put to one disease – leadership. You can redraw the map of leadership. You can change the leadership equilibrium. It begins today.

Thank you immensely for having me here with you.

•Dr Adedayo delivered this speech as Guest Speaker at recent Lead City University, Ibadan Model United Nations (LCUMUN) Conference 2025.

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