Nexus Between Departmental Leadership, Staff and Students' Academic Performance in Colleges of Education in the North Central, Nigeria.

An Educational Institution like the College of Education is a dynamic and veritable instrument for academic achieving through departmental leadership style. Departmental leadership enhance staff performance and students' academic achievement. This study aims to establish a nexus between the departmental head leadership style of authoritative and democratic on staff performance and students' academic achievement in Colleges of Education in North Central Nigeria. The research study adopted a correlational survey research design from the population of 260 Heads of Departments (HODs) and 1425 lecturers from six states in North Central Nigeria, including Benue, Kogi, Kwara, Nasarawa, Niger and Plateau state. A sample size of428 lecturers in 77 departments representing 30% of the 1,425 lecturers in 260 departments was selected using a simple random sampling technique. The data collected were analyzed through mean and standard deviation, and the Statistical Package for Social Sciences tested the hypotheses using Chi-square. The study reveals the following findings; hypotheses 1 and 2 found X2 calculated values of 5.71 and 5.41 for staff and students, respective are less than the X2 tabulated value of 6.82 with df = 3 and 0.05 level of significance. It indicates no statistically significant relationship between departmental head authoritarian leadership and staff and students' academic achievement in state education colleges. Conversely, hypotheses 3 and 4 reveal X2 calculated values of 8.31 and 6.71 for staff and students, respectively, are greater than the X2 tabulated value of 6.82 with df = 3 and 0.05 level of significance. It established a statistically significant relationship between departmental head democratic leadership and staff performance and students' academic achievement. It is recommended that a training and development programme be given to department heads to combine more than one leadership style with meeting up with the current global leadership style that achieves results.