Lagos 2015: Akinwunmi Ambode as bridge builder

“Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality”- Marren Bennis, Notable America Business Leader.

It is an unarguable fact that the quantity and quality of any nation’s professionals determine its economic development because they are the people with the skills and intellect necessary to shape the course of growth of any Country. It is also a statement of fact that advanced Countries of the world have their professionals and leaders to thank for the heights they have attained.

Ever since democracy took root in Nigeria, there has been sustained effort on the part of government to bring the Country out of the backwaters of underdevelopment. This was the reason why the vision 2020 was drawn. Specifically, the vision aims at transforming the Country into one of the 20 industrial powers in the world by Year 2020.

For this goal to be realized, the nations’ professional’s class and leaders must be involved to drive the process. Nigeria boasts of thorough bred professionals and leaders who can hold their own anywhere in the world. The feat of its crop of professionals, leaders and their knack for excellence are legendary.

Name any country of the world and you will find Nigerian professionals in strategic places, helping to advance the cause of development. Mention any profession and you would find a Nigerian rubbing shoulders with the best in the world, Nigerians are endowed with one talent or the other, no matter how the extent of deformity.

Indeed, a professional and leader is a person who has achieved an acclaimed level of proficiency in a calling or trade. The term can also apply to a person who engaged in a certain occupation for gain or as a means of livelihood. The fact definitely cannot be gainsaid that the professionals and leaders in any country are its greatest asset because they shape the course of economic growth of that country which in turn leads her to sustainable development.

Even though Nigeria is abundantly blessed with human and natural resources, it is sad that this has not translated to economic development as the country still wallows in the morass and mess of underdevelopment. Even nations with whom we had the same economic indices 50 years ago have all left us behind and are now rated amongst the advanced countries of the world.

Infact, some foreigners have often argued that our continued underdevelopment is due to the underperformance of our professionals and leaders of this country saying that it is because they are not competent enough to move it forward that Nigeria is still where it is today but we Nigerians know that this is not true as they are very much capable of making the desired transmutation of Nigeria possible.

More so, leadership is a practical thing. It is not a theory. Leadership is epitomized in the continuity of societal progression. Leaders move the society from a state of stagnation. The leader takes a painstaking, far-reaching and bunker drilling decision for the generality of the society.

Akinwunmi Ambode is an epitome of the above-mentioned qualities of leadership. In the long history of Lagos State government, in which Ambode served as a civil servant to the extent of rising to the Permanent Secretary, there has not been such of his record ever in the civil service terrain as has been under the Akinwunmi Ambode leadership as an Accountant General of the State.

Ambode is calm, immensely knowledgeable, organized and focused. There is no gain saying that the main Ambode, led the most organized, painstaking and deeply managed Lagos State treasury during Obasanjo’s regime which starved the state with funds all because of the additional LCDAs; like a comet, serenading throughout the period!

His management trains then throughout the period dwells deeply on education, agriculture, due process, rural and urban transformation, localization/domestication of contract award, the re-engineering and re-organization of the Civil Service in Lagos State.

Ambode, Rising from the humble position of a junior Accountant, he moved rapidly up the ladder of success to becoming the youngest ever Auditor General for Local Governments in Lagos State in 2001. Subsequently, he was made the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Finance in January 2005 before being combined with the additional responsibility as the Accountant General in February, 2006. As one determined to make his mark the genius in him, restructured the financial transactions that resulted in the state budget’s performance of over 80 percent increase.

But of a remarkable achievement was how he assisted to keep the state running during the embattled period when the Chief Olusegun Obasanjo-led administration unilaterally stopped allocation to Local Governments in the State. A more critical look at his book: Public Sector Financing may shed more light on the strategies used to keep the State afloat in those dark days. The book simplifies government accounting system from the local government through the state to the federal level. Or, he may have to write another book specifically focused on how states and even individuals could survive the hard times.

Furthermore, Nigerian youths would have to learn from Ambode what it takes to fuel one’s passion for quality education. If they do, they would agree with Malcolm X’s assertion that “education is our children passport to the future.” From the award of the US Fulbright Scholarship for the Hubert Humphries Fellowship Programme in Boston Massachusetts, Ambode has traversed the Wharton Business School, for Advanced Management Programme.

In his insatiable quest for quality knowledge he has also had stints at reputable institutions, including Cranfield School of Management, Cranfield, England, the Institute of Management Development, Lausanne, Switzerland, INSEAD Singapore and Harvard Kennedy School of Government, Boston, U.S.A. Now, he is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN).

Little wonder that he gained recognition for outstanding excellence by the Joint Tax Board (JTB)/FIRS on the successful organization of the 1st National Tax Retreat in Nigeria in 2005. All these no doubt have fully equipped him with leadership capabilities that the good people of Lagos State, being a microcosm of Nigeria could gain from.

Perhaps, this explains why the people of Lagos State and the leaders of the Lagos State Chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) could not hide their tacit support for Ambode, urging him to throw his hat into the ring of the gubernatorial contest in preparation for 2015. Declared the respected Obas in Lagos State, “APC stalwart, youths in the State, Women Leaders and followers in the State, other traditional rulers and some notable elders have met and decided that Ambode should be the next governor of Lagos State.”

What else remains for the other contestants and pretenders in the State, which till date does not clear the air on their intentions and ambitions whether they are on the race or not, Akinwunmi Ambode in a matter of time would flag off his campaign team and declare his intention to contest for governorship race in State.

Balogun Ibrahim