The challenges of leadership that confront Ghana and Africa as a whole have their roots in indiscipline, lawlessness, corruption and bribery, President John Dramani Mahama has noted.
President Mahama who made the observation in an address delivered on his behalf at the opening of the African Biblical Leadership Initiative (ABLI) Forum in Accra, yesterday, added that that the values of integrity, discipline, justice and hard work were a sine qua non for socio-economic development.
He, therefore, stressed the need for ABLI to become a platform for searching for and applying the appropriate ethical values that should become a complement to economic development.
He also underscored the importance of the family as the basic unit of national life, adding that if the family was given the right leadership, the high incidence of indiscipline, miscreant behaviour, juvenile delinquency, streetism, teenage pregnancy, armed robbery, corruption and other vices would be reduced to the barest minimum. “Fix the family and the life of the nation and community should be on the right footing,” the President said.
In a keynote address, Prof. Jerry Gana, Pro-Chancellor and Chairman of the Governing Council, University of Lagos, Nigeria, noted that good leadership was central to the achievement of good governance.
Prof Gana said the driving force of good governance was effective leadership and that not much progress could be made, if at all, without good leadership.
He explained good governance as a phenomenon relating to the exercise of political, economic and administrative authority to manage a country’s affairs so as to produce development and progress, and in a manner free of abuse and corruption, and with due respect to the rule of law.
He said the true test of good governance was the degree to which it delivered development projects, thereby guaranteeing the right to high quality education, sound health care, adequate housing, regular power supply, together with justice, fairness and security.
Prof. Gana said the objective of good governance was human development within the context of equity, fairness and social justice and that to sustain good governance, there was the need to pay serious attention to constitutional democracy.
He said to sustain democracy, there ought to be a strong, effective and accountable state, effective Civil Society Organisations, regular elections, properly-functioning markets for the exchange of goods and services in a productive economy, and freedom, human rights and social justice.
In her remarks, the Chief Justice of the Republic of Ghana, Mrs Justice Georgina Theodora Wood, said the options offered by ABLI, namely promoting the use of biblical truths―the key being integrity―as a tool for real leadership transformation in Africa, were worth considering as a solution to the many fundamental problems facing the African continent.
The African Biblical Leadership Initiative (ABLI) Forum, the third in a series, is on the theme: ‘The Missing Factor In Leadership.’
The three-day international Forum is the first of its kind to be hosted in Ghana by the Bible Society of Ghana. ABLI is a United Bible Societies-supported project initiated and supported by the British and Foreign Bible Societies (BFBS) and the American Bible Society (ABS), with Lord Boateng of Ghana as one of the chief advocates and official moderator.
The main objectives of ABLI are to increase the credibility and profile of the Bible in all aspects of the African society and to empower African leaders by discussing the Bible’s emphasis on integrity, compassion and justice in leadership with the belief that this will lead to positively-transformed nations.
