CHRIS NGIGE’S SERMON ON LEADERSHIP

Recently, the Minister of Labour and Employment, Senator Chris Ngige set a bar for leaders and aspiring leaders in the country, with what he listed as the premium characteristics of quality leadership, that inspire hope and unpack failure. The minister stopped short of asking Nigerians to use the standard for a thorough scrutiny of governance recruitment process in 2023 general elections. The Institute of Leadership, Entrepreneurship and Corporate Governance of Nigeria (INSLEC) a leading global professional body of leaders, entrepreneurs in corporate governance had converged on Abuja, to induct the minister as a distinguished honorary fellow of the Institute. The event took place at the conference room of the minister and somehow provided an opportunity for a deep reflection on nation’s leadership. Among the leaders of INSLEC who graced the occasion were top academics and politicians including, Professor Gabriel Emecheta who is the leader and chairman of the body: Professor Ayandiji Aina, the Chairman of the Planning and Resource Committee and APC stalwart; O’tega Emerhor among others. Besides the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry, Peter Tarfa and other management staff, members of the management team of the agencies under the ministry were also in attendance.

The President of the Institute, Gabriel Emecheta set the tone when in his presentation, he summed up the minister recipient as a “bridge builder whose pristine and differentiated worth as leader and mentor” informed the institute’s decision to seek him out for induction. He said the minister who had served with merit in other tiers and branches of government as governor, senator and now minister, would bring to the institute, much honour as the induction would confer on him. Describing leadership, entrepreneurship and corporate governance as the three major legs that sustain the growth and viability of the global economy, Emecheta said the focus of the institute was at the base of the current global industrial revolution. Practitioners under the institute, he argued, were best equipped for poverty eradication through quality leadership. He added that as governor of Anambra State, the minister set a pattern of distinction in every material metric.

Reflecting on the underlining motif of the Institute and the day’s investiture, Ngige said leadership was critical for the survival of any nation and that the relevance of the institute as anchored on its tripodal theme cannot be underrated. “By definition of each of the tripod, one can discern the importance of leadership in realizing the two other components of entrepreneurship and corporate governance,” he said. Further dissecting the theme, he said the number one quality of a good leader is vision. “A good leader must be visionary. He must see things, others cannot see. In fact, he is the third eye for the people. He is futuristic and thinks and projects ahead of the people. When he visions, he must also crystalize the vision, bringing it out for implementation.” According to him, being a good leader goes beyond being visionary, to being adept in implementation for the benefit of the people.

“He must be an implementation person and cannot achieve this if he is not knowledgeable because after the vison, he must be able to crystalize them, meaning that he must be a generalist, who is versatile in so many areas. If you like, ‘a jack of all trade and master of all.’ He must not score distinction in all, but be able to score it in many.” The next he said was that every good leader must be courageous to implement hard decisions. “If he doesn’t implement courageously, some of the visons will die or will not be implemented for the benefit of the people. Similarly, he must be compassionate, knowing when to temper justice with mercy. To show a human part of him, exude the milk of human kindness.” Ngige finally enthused that a good leader must be pro-people so as to be able to bend backwards to ease their burden.

Taking an up-close and extrapolating this leadership thesis, Ngige acknowledged that all was not well with Nigeria, but exonerated the Buhari administration, while blaming it on the lack of vision on the part of preceding administrations. Said he, “I know that our country is passing through a very rough time now because we have not planned well.” He inferred that previous administrations, knowing that Nigeria was dependent on oil, did not plan for diversification, hence when disruptions arising from security and drop in oil prices came, the country was badly hit. “Later on, COVID-19 forced us to go into a second recession and we are not yet out of the woods,” he reasoned. He emphasized it was Buhari’s foresight in diversification of the economy, especially, into agriculture that saved Nigeria from the ugly Venezuela experience.

However, some observers are beginning to ask if Ngige who has been under pressure to take a shot at the presidency in 2023, indeed, has promised to make his decision known in April, during the Easter holidays, was not tacitly opening a window to his yet to be declared aspiration. However one looks at it, the qualities Ngige listed, form the critical minimum for any successful leader as time has proved. Ngige should know better, having demonstrated quintessential stewardship as Anambra governor about two decades ago. It was his vision and the ability to courageously implement them, that untethered the state from the backwaters where it stagnated for decades. It was this exceptional vison that broke the jinx of retardation, that vicious hands of godfathers that held the state by the jugular. Ngige made a massive sacrifice that can only be paid by a leader, whose resolve is firmly cast in the province of the people.

Isma’il Auta, Abuja