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When young people say leadership feels unfamiliar, they are not saying they do not care. They are saying they do not recognise what they are being shown. Leadership once felt real because it showed up in decisions that changed everyday life.
You could disagree with those decisions, protest them, even reject them, but you could not ignore them. They shifted power. They carried consequences. Leadership was legible.
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Today, that clarity is harder to find.
I grew up in a household where leadership was spoken about plainly, not as status, but as responsibility. My father, General Murtala Ramat Muhammed, is often remembered for decisiveness. What mattered at home was simple: the belief that leadership meant being truthful, owning consequences, and being present when it mattered. Leadership was not something endlessly explained; it was something people felt in how decisions were made and followed through.
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That sense of leadership was not unique to Nigeria. Across Africa in the 1960s and 1970s, leadership was tangible because it disrupted power. Governments took positions that challenged entrenched interests and accepted the risks that came with doing so.
In Nigeria, General Muhammed’s government responded decisively to Western positions on apartheid-era Southern Africa, including the withdrawal of operating rights from a major multinational oil company and moves to strengthen national oversight in key sectors such as banking.
These were not symbolic gestures. They altered who controlled resources and who absorbed risk. Whether people agreed or not, leadership was visible.
Elsewhere on the continent, similar choices were made. Tanzania pursued rural and land reorganisation under Julius Nyerere. Zambia asserted state control over its copper industry under Kenneth Kaunda. Algeria nationalised hydrocarbons under Houari Boumédiène. These decisions were controversial and they were clear. Leadership was willing to choose, and to live with the consequences of those choices.
That clarity is what many young people struggle to find today.
The unfamiliarity young people feel is not a rejection of leadership itself. It is a response to how leadership now appears: distant, procedural, and often disconnected from the pace and pressures of their lives. Leadership is encountered through screens, statements, and ceremonies, but rarely through proximity or shared experience. In a world shaped by speed, digital access, and constant visibility, expectations have shifted. Authority is no longer assumed; it is assessed.
What young people respond to most strongly is not perfection or polish, but presence. Leadership revealed itself, and still does, in who stayed when others grew tired, who listened before speaking, and who honoured commitments when no one was watching.
It must be close enough to be felt, yet steady enough to inspire confidence. General Muhammed’s leadership offers a useful contrast here. He did not lead with elaborate convoys or excessive distance from ordinary life. His movements were often direct, his style spare.
That choice carried risk, a risk he ultimately paid for with his life, but it also communicated something essential: leadership was not meant to be insulated from consequence. It was meant to absorb it. That may be an uncomfortable idea today, but it is a necessary one.
So how do we reshape leadership for the present, because leadership has not disappeared? It has merely changed shape.
First, leadership must become time-aware again. Young people live in real time. They see problems unfold quickly and expect responses that acknowledge urgency. Second, leadership must be felt locally. Young people are not waiting for grand national gestures. They respond to leaders who show up in schools, communities, workplaces, and online spaces and who remain engaged after attention fades.
Proximity does not weaken authority; it strengthens trust. Third, leadership must be learnable. When leadership appears reserved for a few, it becomes alienating. When it is framed as responsibility, the willingness to act, to listen, and to follow through it becomes accessible.
Young people need to see pathways, not pedestals. Fourth, leadership must embrace accountability without performance. Young people are not impressed by certainty or spectacle. They are drawn to consistency.
Leaders who admit mistakes, adjust course, and remain present earn credibility over time. Most importantly, leadership must make space for young people not just as beneficiaries, but as contributors. Young people are already leading, in technology, community organising, climate action and the creative industries. The task now is not to include them symbolically, but to trust them meaningfully.
*Aisha Muhammed-Oyebode a Nigerian lawyer, entrepreneur, author, activist and philanthropist is the chief executive officer of Murtala Muhammed Foundation.
