Leadership in Cameroon and Nigeria: The Quest for Appreciable, Effective and Sustainable Leadership through Leadership Development

The African context is a shifting and complex environment, the result of a cascading history that has led to a co-habitation of indigenous African and Western constructions of phenomena such as leadership. This cohabitation has inevitably resulted to mutations of practices and understandings of leadership that often veil or subsume visions of Afrocentric construct of the phenomenon of leadership if this ever availed itself a unique film. Contemporary efforts deployed to unpack leadership in the African context have provided building blocks that enable research to advance towards the direction of deriving a practice and understanding of leadership in Africa that squares up to the unique context and challenges of African and much more so for SSA, the focus of this study. Local government councils in SSA as in other countries the world over have the responsibility of governing their communities by solving the multiple and intricate necessities that befall their populations. As the closest unit of governance both central governments and for local autonomous tribal and socio-cultural groupings or communities, they represent the best opportunities to uncover how leadership is constructed and practiced. At the same time, the urban areas present different practices that may or may not reflect indigeneity. This inquiry focused in two regions in Cameroon and two regions in Nigeria, to study constructions, perceptions and practices of leadership in 62 councils (urban, rural and indigenous) within all four regions.
The study addressed four research questions, providing a deeper understanding of the extent to which indigenous African and Western leadership resonate in context. A key finding is there are aspects of indigenous African leadership that impede the development of effective leadership and that some aspects of Western leadership concepts of leadership do not quite fit the African context. Furthermore, the study uncovered that generally, indigenous African leadership theories scored higher in participant approval with only some dimensions of Western concepts rated. Based on findings, a three-segment model stratifying the research field and African society and highlighting the heterogeneity and complexity of the context. Furthermore, the study uncovered that generally, indigenous African leadership theories scored higher in participant approval with only some dimensions of Western concepts rated. Based on findings, a three-segment model stratifying the research field and African society and highlighting the heterogeneity and complexity of the context. The study contributes a model for leadership development referred to as ‘higher purpose leadership’ that elevates the role and duty of leadership beyond the self, but which favours higher purpose achievement and leadership for the collective good through (PATH).