Academic Paper from the year 2023 in the subject Organisation and administration - Public administration, grade: 1.5, Federal University of Technology, Owerri (SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCE), course: POLITICAL SCIENCE, language: English, abstract: This thesis will provide a broad knowledge on the roles and qualities expected from the leaders in the public service especially the political office holders and their impact on employees' performance in public service. Incompetency in the public service as a result of leadership impacts. Therefore, this study is centre on the roles of leadership in the public service: the Roles of Political Office Holders in Nigeria. The objectives are to assess the roles of leadership in public service, examine the leadership qualities expected from the political office holders in public service and to assess the impacts of leadership on employees' performance in public service. In getting adequate information for use in this research, literature reviews of previous works were used. Primary data were collected from public servants in Nigeria through the use of questionnaires and were analysed adequately by using frequency distribution and mean score. After the analysis, it was found out that leadership trainings and implementation and maintenance were roles of leadership majorly agreed by the respondents. Competence, empowerment and listening are qualities mostly expected from political office holders in public service. Furthermore, Loss of confidence, incompetency and low turnover by public servant are the most negative impacts of leadership on employees' performance in public service. Therefore, the study recommends that political office holders should create an adequate empowerment for public servants in order for them to give higher levels of service delivery, increased productivity, and commitment towards achieving the goals of governance.