Leadership, Followership and Accountability in Contemporary Nigeria: Challenges and the Way Forward

No nation the world over, has achieved meaningful development politically and economically without the input of effective and visionary leadership. It is apposite to say that Nigeria seems to have failed to produce quality leadership capable of addressing numerous challenges confronting the nation. Leadership, followership and accountability is a universal challenge to all nation states; while some developed countries have overcome the primitive stage to propel their economy and social welfare of citizens to a comfortable level, other developing economy are still grappling to grow above such challenges. The main objective of this paper is to examine the challenges of leadership, followership and accountability in contemporary Nigerian society, and propose a way forward. The paper look into the concept of leadership, types of leadership, qualities of good leadership and followership. This paper adopts descriptive approach and content analysis as its methodological orientation. The paper concludes that Nigerian must be ready to ask and demand for accountability if they want to make the society a better place. The paper recommend among others that: followers should be allowed to speak out their mind and show support when appropriate, there should be a good public opinion pool that will serve as a check and balance to leadership since docility of followers can plunder them into dictatorship and underdevelopment. Nigerian government should embrace practical approach to the promotion of accountability in governance and democracy, there must be roles and strategies to promote a set of values of responsibilities from the followers and leadership traits, integrity, transparency, responsiveness, rule of law, and efficiency should serve as the basis for consideration of leadership.