For economic advancement and also to save the country from collapse, there is need for innovative leadership with intelligence, vision and drive, speakers at an annual innovation series in Lagos have said. The speakers added that the country must undergo a leadership and cultural rebirth and ensure that the youth are driven by passion in every field of study they are found in order to create a new agenda for their development.
“Nigeria must deconstruct her past advancements in order to create future innovation; revamp its comatose education system by inculcating entrepreneurship into the curriculum from the primary to the tertiary levels”, Pat Utomi, the founder of Centre for Value in Leadership (CVL), said.
Utomi who was the keynote speaker at the series with the theme, ‘The Role of Innovation in Creating New Agenda for National Development’ pointed out that, by nature, man was created to continually innovate, adding that society must “creatively destroy” past innovations in order to make way for today and future inventors.
“For society to advance, it must creatively destroy yesterday’s advancements that are averse to innovation in order for young, budding and creative entrepreneurs to rise”, he said, adding, “though capitalists often emphasise the need for free economies and trade, they are actually the greatest threat to capitalism as they are often unwilling to allow the arise of young innovators”.
He called for leadership that could shape society’s culture through the right value system, explaining that “it is values that shape human progress; most societies have failed to do so due to failure of values; the most important thing that leaders do is to shape culture.” Steve Omojafor, executive chairman of STB-MC CAN and chairman of the occasion, had earlier said Nigeria was in dire need of innovative leadership given its rate of inflation at 8 percent, employment at 30 percent, lending rate at 25 percent, economic growth at 6 percent while poverty rate was at 69 percent as at 2014.
Kayode Akintemi, general manager, operations, Channels Television, who was the moderator of the discussion session, led other panellists that included Lere Baale, director of Business Schools, Netherlands; Funke Egbemode, general editor of The Sun Newspapers among others.
