Why Leaders Abuse Office, By Cardinal Arinze
Sept 04, 2007
THE Prefect, Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacrament, at the Vatican, Francis Cardinal Arinze has called on Nigerian political and religious leaders to see leadership as a service, saying that deviation from this virtue leads to abuse of office and corruption.
Posted to the web 3 September 2007
By Anayo Okoli
Onitsha
Vanguard (Lagos)
THE Prefect, Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacrament, at the Vatican, Francis Cardinal Arinze has called on Nigerian political and religious leaders to see leadership as a service, saying that deviation from this virtue leads to abuse of office and corruption.
According to Arinze, leadership should be made a joint responsibility between the leaders and the led, and both sides must appreciate the quality of leadership.
Arinze who spoke yesterday in Onitsha while giving a lecture entitled, "Leadership as Service: the Nigerian Situation", organized by the Catholic Archdiocese of Onitsha, emphasized the need for training leaders to know that leadership is service. Making allusions to the Bible, Arinze explained that even Jesus Christ led by service and also preached that as a good virtue.
He called on leaders to make their appointments based on merit irrespective of who the person is, saying that appointments should not be a "weapon to reward friends and punish enemies"
His words: "The good leader should be convinced that he or she is there for the good of the community, for its service, to help the community realize its best objectives.
The leader is there for the people, not the people for the leader. It follows that the leader should embody the best hopes of his people and be ready to sacrifice himself for those hopes. The good leader should have clear ideas of the good of his people. He should not be afraid of the reality.
Together with like-minded members of the community, he should carefully map out where their society is going, what equipment it has or should have, what impediments are on its way, and how it can get there. The able leader is anxious to identify the best capable people who can help to clarify these objectives, to articulate them and to make them available to the people of the community, since everybody cannot be an expert.
"A good leader has the ability to share a vision, to present the desirable objectives to convince people and to bring them along to share his vision, his inspiration, his fire. But you cannot inspire unless you first have fire. A leader who cannot fire people with enthusiasm or conviction is not a good leader.
Why Leaders Abuse Office, By Cardinal Arinze