The sixth edition of the Get Involved Leadership Training (GILT) of Lead Generation Initiative (LGI) has successfully kicked off today in Ilorin, Kwara State.
Ekpa Stanley Ekpa, National Secretary in a statement said more than fifty participants drawn from the sixteen local government areas of the state were practically trained on public advocacy, civic engagement and how to identify the core leadership practices for organizing, as well as how to create connection between understanding the concept and realizing it through target action.
In the same vein, it also exposed the participants to the imperative of relationship building in civic engagement, as well as exposing them to building effective relationships for the successful implantation of advocacy initiatives at all levels.
Earlier in his opening address, the founder of the initiative, Hon. Shina Peller, had observed that to achieve a greater Nigeria, there is need for a new culture of super active citizens who understand the importance of politics, build strong institutions and community engagement. “Those are the kind of persons we are here for to train,” he stated.
In addition, Hon. Peller said, “Our mission here is simply to train interdependent leaders who can in turn train others that can drive development right from the grassroots. We believe in the bottom-up kind of leadership approach, because from our findings, if majority of our communities are led by well-informed citizens, our challenges as a nation will be minimal.”
Similarly, Hon. Peller noted that there is widening orientation gap amongst the citizenry, particularly the young ones, and added that the need to re-orientate new crop of leaders to actively get involved in socio-political process and in nation building necessitated the training.
It would be recalled that LGI had successfully held five editions of GILT in five different states namely Oyo, Osun, Bauchi, Gombe and Niger respectively. The 6th edition continues tomorrow.
