The National Association of Nigerian Students has urged the country’s leaders to deliberately chart the course for students and youths to be ideologically and intellectually prepared for future leadership in the interest of radical national growth and development.
The Chairman, NANS Joint Campus Committee, Ekiti Axis, Felix Olanrewaju, lamented that the deficit created by lack of political will by leadership to prepare the young ones to be responsible future leaders was a major crisis confronting the nation.
Olanrewaju spoke during a students’ leadership development summit at the Federal Polytechnic, Ado Ekiti with the theme, ‘Redefining students’ leadership’, organised by the institution’s Students’ Union Stakeholders and NANS.
He lauded the development strides of the Polytechnic Rector, Dr Hephzibah Oladebeye, in the areas of infrastructure, stable academic calendar, good student-lecturer relationship and sustenance of academic standard, which he said were geared towards preparing students for meaningful future.
The students’ leader said, “Nigeria is at a point of collapse. The situation can only be salvaged by making students to be ideologically and intellectually prepared for future leadership. This will definitely bring about radical national growth and development.”
According to him, the summit is a way of introducing students to the art of leadership, which he said was lacking in Nigeria and gradually pushing the country to the brink.
Olanrewaju said, “As students, we are seriously bothered by the level of leadership deficit in this country and that necessitated this leadership summit that we are holding today to prepare ourselves ahead of the daunting task.
“At this point of our national life, every hand must be on the deck to rescue Nigeria. That is why NANS is committed to producing students that can fill the leadership gap. We have everything going good for us, except that we have no good leadership culture.”
Oladebeye, in his address, charged the students that they could only be fit for leadership if they valued intellectualism and shunned social vices like cultism, prostitution, ICT fraud, banditry, kidnapping, ritual killings and other nefarious activities.
Oladebeye explained that the students owed it a duty to elect selfless leaders into students’ union positions, saying the arena represented a veritable opportunity to learn the art of responsible leadership.
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