Biblical Moses was a true leader. We read in Exodus that he was a shepherd - a rather unpretentious beginning for the man who would converse with God.

He patiently kept watching as thousands of sheep grazed the fields. Moses noticed that one sheep was missing and went off to look for it, finding it at a distance.

When the sheep had finished drinking, Moses dutifully lifted it onto his shoulders and carried it back to the flock. When Jehovah God saw this, He became convinced that Moses was a man of reason, empathy and selfless devotion — a man truly worthy to lead His people; a man who would put his empathetic qualities at the disposal of the needs of his subordinates.

After all, no one was keeping an eye on Moses; Moses could easily have thought to himself, “why be concerned with one sheep when there are thousands”?

Once upon a time, leadership was believed to be a trait from birth and was only ascribed to tall, handsome, and well-connected individuals.

Obviously, that was an utter misconception. The fact of the matter is that leadership skills can be acquired through schematic tutorials, tacit knowledge, or routine training.

Leadership can be considered to be the personal qualities, behaviours, styles, and decisions adopted by the leader.

In other words, it concerns how the leader carries out his/her role. Hence while the role of leader can be described in a job description, leadership is not so easily pinned down (Waldman and Yammarino, (1999).

The all-important question then is: with so many people purporting to be leaders these days, how do we distinguish between a true leader and a demagogue?

To be able to do justice to the preceding question, we must pause, reflect summarily and ask: what is it that a leader is actually trying to achieve?

A true leader wants nothing more than to make people independent, as leaders in their own rights. And instead of trying to inebriate us with his or her rhetoric and insobriety, a true leader reflects our own light back to us.

More importantly, a true leader always comes up with pragmatic and innovative ideas such as the Free SHS, digitalisation, mobile money interoperability, medical drones, one ambulance one constituency, amongst others, with the view to transforming the lives of his/her subordinates.

The all-important question we should be asking then is: how can Ghana be fixed when we keep backing the losing horses?

It is about time my fellow Ghanaians realised that competence does not reside in ones stature.

Needless to say, the biblical Goliath was tall and handsome, and yet useless, for it took the midget, competent and intelligent David to floor him.

My point is that we don’t vote for handsome looks, we rather vote for competence, integrity and realistic campaign messages, because handsome looks won’t solve the existential problems.

Let us be honest, Ghana can advance meaningfully if we do away with tribal and narrow political coloration and rather vote base on the candidate’s competence, integrity and realistic campaign messages.

K. Badu, UK.

k.badu2011@gmail.com