Abstract

The desire and quest for good leadership and effective governance that would lead to smooth national development continues to gather momentum daily especially across African countries and most specifically, Nigeria. Both the citizens and those in power are clamouring for a better life and better leadership. This affirms the fact that leadership is significant to the development of any nation and to get it right, all stakeholders must play significant roles. In this, not much attention has been given to the place of literature, especially the dramatic genre as written by indigenous playwrights, as a panacea to the tooth-aching challenges of leadership in the African milieu, notably Nigeria. It is against this backdrop that this paper: literature and leadership in Nigeria: an examination of students’ reading of David Baba Danjuma’s The Honourable Chairman in the Federal Polytechnic, Idah, aims to examine leadership and national development in Nigeria. The paper, anchoring on the theory of transformational leadership vis-à-vis the literary theory of realism adopts the use of structured questionnaire analysed using the simple percentage method of data gathering and analysis. Four hundred (400) respondents randomly selected across four departments of two National Diploma (ND) and two Higher National Diploma (HND) formed the population of the study. Based on the findings which reveal that corruption, sycophancy and ignorance are parts of the triggers of leadership failure in Nigeria, the paper recommends amongst others a process of reconscientization and mobilization of the masses towards resisting the negativisms that breed underdevelopment through inefficient and corrupt leadership.

Keywords: literature, transformational leadership, realism, polytechnic sector

How to cite

Baba, D. D (2026). Literature and Leadership in Nigeria: An Examination of Students’ Reading Of David Baba Danjuma’s The Honourable Chairman In The Federal Polytechnic, Idah. NATELCEP Journal of Languages and Communication Studies (NJLCS), 19(1), 73–87. https://www.natelcep.org/journal/articles/6aa8774064cf5c0e8f125d44