LEADERSHIP RECRUITMENT PROCESS AND GOVERNANCE CHALLENGE IN NIGERIA

Multiparty democracy clearly defines the process through which political leaders could emerge. A due adherence to the process in any nation would give room for the emergence of credible and visionary leadership who would appreciate the import of good governance and properly harness the country’s resources in order to translate them to wealth for the nation. The vast natural resources and adequate manpower which Nigeria is endowed with have not translated to prosperity of the citizenry. The masses have always had to grapple with extreme poverty and hunger, coupled with other palpable indices of underdevelopment. This contradiction portends governance challenge in the country. The main objective of this research is to analyse the nexus between leadership recruitment process and governance challenge in Nigeria. The research discovers that the leadership recruitment process in Nigeria is often fraught with sectional bias and other undemocratic principles which almost always lead to the emergence of deficient leadership and bad managers of government resources, resulting in the consigning of the masses into the position of unending socio-economic squalor. The paper also finds that the electorates are culpable in the warped recruitment process which leads to the bad governance which they experience. It recommends that the masses should use the franchise power conferred on them by the constitution with discretion in their own interest. Qualitative research methodology was adopted in the study.