Contemporary Family Leadership Challenges and Nation Building

Abstract

Nation-building is about developing a common sense of purpose, a sense of shared destiny, a collective imagination of belonging to a functioning state. It encompasses all efforts made at both formal and informal settings aimed at developing the tangible and intangible threads that hold a political entity together and gives it a sense of purpose. It is against this background that theoretically, the role of family training in leadership qualities as part of the intangible threads in nation building is covered in this paper. To achieve this objective, the relationship between family leadership and nation building was examined alongside the contributions of family leadership character training function to nation building. The review show that, in spite of the essential nature of the first leadership training qualities that the child is supposed to receive  from their parents in their respective families to nation building unfortunately, largely due to socio- economic pressures in contemporary times on the heads of families in the country, parents no longer devote sufficient time to consciously give their children this desired home training and this is not without far reaching consequences on their character development and by implication on their expected future roles in the larger society. Based on this finding, it was concluded that, if the family must effectively contribute its quota to nation building, heads of families need a re –socialization so as to develop the needed resiliency and continue to inculcate attachment values in their children character development process for the long  run homogeneity and stability of the country