LEAD-ER-SHIP: INVOKING THE LEAD-ER-SHEEP SPIRIT IN AFRICA

LEAD-ER-SHIP www.toyinsrunway.blogsport.com

INVOKING THE LEAD-ER-SHEEP SPIRIT IN AFRICA

The major problem in the world today; especially African Continent is obviously that of leadership, as Africans we therefore owe ourselves a duty of find solution(s) to the problem. This being the reason why I decided to put down my thought on this important matter so as to help put things in the right perspective. Any you reading this piece will be helping in a great lot of ways by adding your comment and or forward this to others.

Embarking on this write up I asked myself; why should Africa’s problem be that of leadership? And three reasons readily came to mind apart from the general sociological reasons:

1)      Africa’s Past Colonial history.

2)      Military Rule across Africa.

3)      Literary Misinformation / Misconceptions

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Africa’s past colonial history:  This goes a long way in setting us up for bad leadership, in the light of this; it is not surprising why what we have in most African nation is DEALERSHIP and not LEADERSHIP because most of the mentorship we got from the colonial masters where how to DEAL with the people and not how to LEAD the people. For Colonialism to take root in Africa it had to first root out the African indigenous leadership system.

Dictatorship and Military Rule: To further push Africa far into the wood of miss-leadership; Colonialism Metamorphosis in to Dictatorship and Military Rule and the art of DEALERSHIP must have to be continued for their selfish perpetuity reasons, or what do you suppose a despotic leader would do?

However a more worrisome reason is the fact that Dictatorship and Military Rule is gradually being replaced with Money-bag Politics and Politicians all across Africa and most of whom will readily opt for the inherited DEALERSHIP Hegemony structure rather than being the peoples LEADER, this is understandably so for following reasons:

1)The fear of being called to account for their ill gotten wealth, where the people were properly lead and do made to know their right; 

2) And for lack of knowledge (they do not know better), how could they have known better? When the only practical training they had was under Colonialism and Despotic Rule.

All leadership books they read were written with heavy Colonialism and Despotic Rulers influence and when educationally they are taught that LEADERSHIP is etymologically derived from LEAD-ER-SHIP and defined it as the art of Resources Management.

The art of managing resources is not leadership but DEALERSHIP and it is just a small aspect of leadership but not all there-is to it.

This myopic view of leadership (covering only the Managerial and Entrepreneurial aspect of leadership) is what our Rulers relied on, to lead the people; fortunately for the rulers but unfortunately for the rest of all of us,  this myopic view / training seems to have paid-off well in business and financial management, having applied it in business by our so-call leaders and have been proved to be successful which has translated to huge wealth for these rulers and with these wealth they can buy their way into power (thanks to the prevailing poverty situation) why should we not have expected them to keep on applying the only success strategy they know in their new found political expedition.

It should therefore not surprising to any student of LEAD-ER-SHEEP that African Rulers only apply their Business Managerial skill in their new role and erroneously thinking that they are our leaders, but this is NOT SO!!! They are our DEALERS; their dealing with us has resulted in this dismal leadership failure in Africa.

LEAD-ER-SHEEP

UNLEASHING THE RIGHT LEADERSHIP PERSPECTIVE IN AFRICA

Defining Leadership from LEAD-ER-SHIP etymological point of view the picture of leadership you get is something like: Number one Person, Oga at the Top, The Boss, A lord, The winner, the most visible, the Commander in Chief, The on Presiding, the one to be worship. the on to be feared, the big brother, the central man, the set man, the point man, the one who drag others along, the one who knows all, the master, the richest, the one with the biggest pay packet, the chairman, the one who dictate the tune, the arrow head the one to queue behind, the captain, the King, the burden and whose burden others must carry, etc.

However when we define Leadership from LEAD-ER-SHEEP etymological point of view, the picture you get is simply  that of  A SHEPHERD

Every persons in position of authority and leadership especially African Leaders must know and play the role of A SHEPHERD ...... to be continued ...... watch out for a expose on the art of shepherds