The gain made from the invention of the printing press was the long overdue proliferation of the hitherto jealously concealed sacred holy books of the church into many reading hands in Europe. This was the first successful battle against the holy lies of the Church and her lying priests. The simple access that the thinkers of the society had to see and read the contents of the ‘holy book’ instantly cured them of their blindness. For the first time the enlightened ones saw the holy lies of the church for what they were – a park of evil exploitative mechanisms instituted by the priests for the oppressive manipulation of the simple-hearted, the gullible and the ignorant people of the world.

However, according to recorded history the result of the above development was a mild revolution that successfully eroded and took away a sizeable chunk of the political power held by the Roman Catholic Church. The mushrooming protesters of the Christian world gained a breath of fresh air of freedom; particularly, the freedom to interpret the Holy Scripture and to worship their God as the spirit moved them. In those regions of Europe where the Crowns were clever, the reigning kings quickly sided with the protesters to usurp the leadership of the protesting local Christians against Rome.

The Church of England and other Crown-owned churches of Europe were the fall-out of the schism that followed the renaissance experience. The history of the establishment of the Church of England, a very prominent missionary in the civilizing business of Africa, is a fascinating story. It will not attract our attention in this dialogue but it is worthy of a review by all seekers of the truth of life.

Although, the printing press tarnished the claim of the Church to a universal divine right and power to rule, it inadvertently transferred these same rights and powers to the various Crowns of Europe. It took another one hundred years of vigorous agitation by all kinds of enlightened people of Europe before the fundamental rights of the people to liberty, equality and justice became popular agenda issues.

It was the popularity of this new evolving philosophy developed, nurtured and promoted by thinkers and pamphleteers all across Europe on the moral and ethical concepts of fundamental rights of man that informed the British Civil War (1642-1649), the American War of Independence (1775-1781) and the French Revolution (1789-1794). These separate but intertwined upheavals on the moral question of leadership were the principal political events that fashioned the present civilization of the world.

The above is the genesis of how and where the moral and ethical values that informed the institutions of leadership in the world evolved. The role of hoodlums turned monarchs and their cohorts turned noblemen in the standardisation of societal values and cultures cannot be over emphasised. It therefore follows naturally that the standards defined and set by these believers in the faith of ‘might is right’ could not be different from their own innate murderous and avaricious natures.

Consequently and in actual sense, from time immemorial the hoodlums in every society hijacked and captured the leadership positions of our world. Historical records showed that the colonialists brought this unnatural and heinous leadership practice to Africa. The colonial managers, schooled in the perversions established by their rulers, had no difficulty in transferring wholesale this kind of values and morality of leadership to Africa. We shall now attempt to focus attention on Africa as we trace the contribution of the colonial overlords to the emergence of modern leadership practices in Africa.