A NEW DIMENSION OF LEADERSHIP

    “Leadership is not euphoria of unalloyed comfort and untroubled ease” (Martin Luther King Jnr.). This was the conviction held by Luther King Jnr in the late 19^th century. To all intents and purposes, he lived up to that conviction as he demonstrated selfless leadership in civil rights activism that contributed in making America the democracy that it is today. Leaders like Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, Julius Nyerere of Tanzania and others also lived up to this profound conviction.

    Today, this understanding of leadership is lost on our leaders. The propensity to lead has taken precedence over the propensity to serve. Leaders of contemporary times easily forget about the purpose of their ascension to high office which is to serve their followers. Rather, they preoccupy themselves with trivialities undeserving of attention. Thus the difference is clear between the two groups of leaders. Whereas the former understand leadership as service to the masses, the latter think of leadership as the mere exercise of the potestas.

    Bright or dim, the future is contingent on the present which in turn is in the hands of leadership. What they do with it will define our future; and this is true for various levels of leadership - student or national. This makes it preeminent for our leaders to possess certain critical virtues, one of them and the most important being INTEGRITY.

    The new dimension of leadership is the one that puts integrity at the centre of leadership. Integrity does not consist in public pronouncement of it. Contrarily, it connotes the adherence to the “ethos” of life viz. ethical principle and moral aptitude. These are values that can exact the highest sense of sacrifice and duty from leaders and no leader can succeed without these fundamental ingredients.

As we go to the polls to elect our new JCR executives, let us as a matter of necessity, assess all those who seek to be leaders on the basis of integrity. Indeed, it is only through this that we can secure our future and leave a positive legacy for posterity.