Poor Leaders May Cause Third World War, Afe Babalola Warns

Legal luminary, Aare Afe Babalola (SAN), has said bad leadership in different parts of the globe may soon lead to a third world war if the narratives do not change.

Babalola who is the founder of Afe Babalola University, Ado Ekiti (ABUAD) spoke at the university yesterday during an international conference on “Leadership and Governance for Sustainable Change and Wealth” jointly organised by ABUAD and Trinity Western University (TWU), Canada.

He said the world has witnessed two world wars between 1914-1918 and 1939-1945 because of bad leadership.

At the event being part of the activities lined up for the 11th convocation y of ABUAD, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed between the two world class universities.

He said, “The title of the conference, as mentioned above, is very apt. having regard to the situation in Africa and the world in general today.

“These avoidable World Wars led to the loss of millions of people all of which could be traced to bad leadership.

“Adolf Hitler, derisively called the ‘bad guy of history’, was a tragic example of bad leadership. He had the negative accolade of having created Gas Chambers where millions of Israelis were killed. What a leader indeed!

“We also have the tragic Russian invasion of Ukraine with Putin (the Russian leader) turning deaf ears to entreaties by the United Nations, the Security Council, the injunction by the World Court at The Hague and various appeals by world leaders including the Pope

“Africa is not left out of this tragedy. There have been a series of coups and counter coups which happen almost every six months. Again, the reason for all these is poor leadership.

“Since the rush to partition Africa in 1884, there had been no peace. Unfortunately, the poorest countries in the world are in Africa, including my own country, Nigeria, a country that is well endowed in everything.’’