Servant-Leadership and Secondary Schools Principals’ Effectiveness in Nigeria
Dr. Alimi, Olatunji, Dr. Oyetakin, Akinrotimi Iyiomo, Alabi Festus Oluwole, Joseph Sunday Kayode

Abstract
This study examined servant-leadership and secondary schools principals’ effectiveness in Nigeria from 2005 to 2009. As a Correlation and ex-post facto research designs, it made use of 1200 principals of public secondary schools through proportionate stratified random sampling techniques which cut across the six geo-political zones of Nigeria. Three research questions and three hypotheses were raised and tested in the study. Data were collected through the use of developed instruments styled, Principal Servant Leadership Questionnaire (PSLQ) and Principal’s Leadership Questionnaire (PLQ). The instruments were validated and used for the study, while reliability coefficient was found to be r=0.81 for PSLQ and r= 0.92 for PLQ. Data were analyzed through descriptive and inferential statistics tools. Leadership style with a means score of 4.0 and above was classified as servant leadership style and those with 3.0-3.9, 2.0-2.9, and below 1.9 were classified as democratic, autocratic and laissez-faire respectively. The study found that variations existed among leadership styles and public Secondary School principals’ effectiveness with servant-leadership style being more effective than the autocratic, democratic, laissez faire styles. The result of the hypotheses tested indicated that significant relationship existed in the means of servant leadership and academic performance. Also, there was a positive and significant relationship in the mean between servant leadership principals’ and staff discipline, while negative and noncorrelation existed between servant-leadership and students’ discipline. From these results, it was discovered that servant leadership has a symbiotic relationship with public Secondary School principals’ effectiveness across the geo-political zones of Nigeria, and this presented sufficient evidence for recommendations

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