Mr Lamin Fatty who is also the managing director at The Standard newspaper gave the exhortation on Thursday while addressing students of St Joseph Senior Secondary School in Banjul.
He said: “If you want to be a good leader and a good citizen, you must be realistic about it… you cannot become a good leader without imbibing the virtues of leadership. Even in your various organisations in schools, a leader should not try to serve his or her own interests. What the individual needs is to advance the collective interest. As a good leader of an organisation, you should first put the interest of the group at the forefront.
“You cannot do anything in this world without having a purpose for it. Purpose means sense of direction and the purpose of being a leader, is to represent an institution and safeguard its mission and vision. A leader cannot function without his people and if you are leading you should have the consent that you are there for the people. A good leader should be knowledgeable and have the ability to understand the culture and tradition, because in every setting we have norms and values.”
Describing the students as the custodian of the future, Fatty urged them to be wary of bad behaviour, which undermines these and other positive values to the detriment of the general good of the society.
He added: “You have to join hands with each other in your groups in re-orientating the mindset of others students, and to imbibe the right values to build a virile society. I must challenge you that you are leaders of tomorrow. I want to tell you that you have a lot of work to do. Not only do we call on you to study and dedicate yourselves to acquiring knowledge so that you will be able to compete favourably with your peers for any position in this country and anywhere in the world on an equal basis. But you’ve got to know the peculiar problem that this society has that we must collectively deal with.”
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