LEADERSHIP CRISIS IN THE EDUCATION SECTOR: IMPLICATIONS FOR HUMAN CAPITAL DEVELOPMENT AND NATIONAL GROWTH IN NIGERIA

This study investigated the leadership crisis in Nigeria's education sector and its implications for human capital development and national growth. Against a backdrop of chronic policy failure, institutional decay, and declining educational standards, the research sought to diagnose the multi-level leadership deficits and their consequent impact on the nation's developmental prospects. The study was guided by four specific objectives, four research questions, and three null hypotheses. The study adopted a descriptive survey research design. A sample of 400 respondents, comprising education administrators, lecturers, and policymakers, was selected from public tertiary institutions and relevant government bodies across Nigeria's six geopolitical zones using a multistage sampling technique. Data was collected using a structured, validated questionnaire titled the “Educational Leadership and National Development Questionnaire (ELNDQ),” which demonstrated high reliability with a Cronbach's alpha coefficient of 0.85. Data analysis involved descriptive statistics (mean and standard deviation) to answer the research questions and inferential statistics (simple linear regression) to test the hypotheses at a 0.05 significance level. The findings revealed severe manifestations of policy-level leadership failure, including chronic underfunding, policy instability, and ineffective governance. Regression results confirmed that institutional leadership quality significantly predicts academic disruptions (R² = .622, = .789, p < .001), instructional leadership significantly affects graduate skill quality (R² = .691, = .831, p < .001), and educational outputs significantly correlate with national economic growth indicators (R² = .555, = .745, p < .001). The study concludes that the tripartite leadership crisis in education is a fundamental threat to Nigeria's human capital base and economic stability, necessitating an urgent, systemic overhaul of leadership governance at all levels to reposition the sector as the bedrock of sustainable national development.