An Assessment of the Leadership-Sustainable Development Nexus: Bayelsa State, Nigeria

The present Bayelsa State, Nigeria was part of the Niger Delta region, described by the Henry Willink Commission (HWC) report as “poor, backward and neglected” in 1958; and urged the federal government to establish an agency to develop the area/people. The people never wanted an agency, rather a state; and when the agency – Niger Delta Development Board was established in 1961, it couldn’t develop the area. This prompted perennial agitations until Bayelsa state was created, along with 5 others – Ebony, Ekiti, Gombe, Katsina and Zamfara (BEE-GKZ) in 1996. After 24 years, the area is still least developed, even within the 6 states; and the problem was traced to bad leadership (i.e., governors). Thus, the study aimed at interrogating the nexus between leadership and sustainable development (SD), as well as, comparing and contrasting the level of SD with the other 5 states on 6 critical indices developed by the researchers between 1999 and 2020. It adopted the ‘CAABA model’ of development, along with the “people – task orientation leadership” of the Michigan Studies in 1950 as theoretical frameworks; and applied a combination of descriptive survey and historical design of data collection. The instruments containing 3 questions were given to scholars/experts in the Niger Delta University for face and construct validity, and subjected to reliability test. Data was presented in table and analysed in qualitative and quantitative formats; and the study recommended some drastic improvements in the recruitment processes of political executives (governors) by political parties and Nigerians by insisting on strict adherence to guidelines on internal democracy during party primaries. The implication is that without improvement, the political executives shall ‘drag’ Nigeria to become a ‘failed state’.