Nigeria’s Developmental Question: The Role of Market Servant Leadership

Abstract

The discourse of Nigeria’s development has attracted wide attention, and several templates have been suggested to guide those saddled with the responsibility of piloting the affairs of the country. This paper proposes servant leadership as the answer to Nigeria’s developmental challenge; based on the notion that followers model servant leader’s behaviour, especially the combination of humility, servitude and action-orientation, and that servant leaders inspire followers’ intrinsic motivations and encourage them to flourish by creating meaning for them and giving them a sense of justice and satisfaction . These are considered as necessary inputs for development. The advancement of market servant leadership as answer to Nigeria’s developmental question is also based on the idea that market servant leaders are propelled by a desire to promote the growth, satisfaction and wellbeing of followers/market. It is thus logical to posit that servant leadership practices if adopted in the governance of Nigeria will increase the sense of citizenship in the people, get them to show support to leaders, and reduce apathetic behaviours in them.