Philosophical Expositions of Leadership and Human Values in Catholic Social Teachings: Resolving Nigeria’s Leadership Deficit

Copyright © 2013 Ani Casimir et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons At-tribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. In spite of Nigeria’s vaunted claims to leadership of the African continent and the entire black race, the country tragically suffers from an enduring self leadership deficit that has had a negative impact on its development. The masses of the people had been alienated by the ruling class from governance and a lot of ethnic groups had been marginalized and excluded from participating in democratic power. This has manifested in different typologies of conflicts and systemic failure which had served to undermine devel-opment planning since the country’s independence. This paper explores some existing but unexplored linkages, immediate and mediate, between Catholic Social Teachings and some particular school of lead-ership, human values and conflict resolution frameworks, which could, in the future, generate sustainable solutions to the problems of the Nigerian leadership and development challenge in the twenty first century. After a brief survey of community participatory leadership and interactive leadership theories under the framework of transformational leadership concept, we will look at the critical recurring components in community participatory leadership, the five human values, and conflict resolution theories as containe