Leadership is supposed to be stewardship. This means a leader is supposed to serve the people he has undertaken to lead without any hope of getting any monetary reward. In effect, being stewardship, leadership positions are free from monetary considerations.
Upon this, if there is anyone who has the ulterior motive of getting rich through holding leadership positions, that person would be treading on the wrong path.
It is time leaders realized that they have not been employed by their constituents. During the prelude to their appointment, these prospective leaders go round to solicit the mandate of these constituents to confirm them as their leaders.
When they eventually get the nod to lead, these appointees have to work hard to affect the lives of these constituents positively. This is very important because it is through good and dedicated leadership that lives can be changed for a community to develop; not through series of decisions made by the leadership.
People give their mandate to others to get them appointed as leaders not because these prospective leaders are smart or posses some special personality or that they belong to a special caste. They rather give them the mandate upon the belief that such people can positively change their lives to the extent that they can also impact greatly on their generations.
Leaders who overlook this expectation, but rather go behind their people and use their positions to pursue monetary gains would be casting a dent on their integrity. If they persist and continue to tread that dangerous path, bizarre circumstances may befall them and they are most likely going to suffer from that. Nemesis will surly catch them and posterity will never forgive them.
It is very sad the way government funds are wantonly dissipated and the perpetrators ironically go unscathed. This act has obviously emboldened other office holders to serially ignore their core mandate of developing and improving whatever they inherited in office to rather scheming to ravish and deplete whatever money they find accessible to them. Chief executive officers and even Board members of government establishments dissipate public funds with impunity.
What makes the whole scene serious and dangerous is that even student leaders have also joined in the looting. Year in year out, student association coffers are depleted under the watch of patrons who are teachers. If teachers should supervise such a fleece by students upon their peers then they are invariably training these students to believe that there is justification in embezzlement.
I shall conclude with the advice to our leaders that success does not lie in how much money one can make; success rather lies in the positive change which a leader can make in the lives of his people.
