Professor Is-haq Olanrewaju Oloyede, the registrar and chief executive officer of JAMB has just added another feather to his prestigious cap as he is named NextMONEY Man of the Year.
This is in recognition of his leadership quality and transformational stride he has brought to JAMB demonstrating that amidst leadership deficiency in Nigeria especially in the political space, this is a point to the fact that we still have men of honour that can be counted on.
A leader is someone that has what it takes and is willing to take the followers from a destination to a better one. He or she is a visionary with burdens and passion to get things done.
Leadership is not about position but about influence and sacrifices. A leader sees and thinks ahead of others, communicates his or her vision to followers even as he/she encourages them to run with him.
From day 1 that Professor Oloyede was appointed as the registrar of JAMB, those that have experienced his leadership quality while serving as the vice-chancellor of the University of Ilorin were the first to observe that JAMB was going to witness a positive turnaround.
Unpretentiously, Professor Oloyede from the onset left no one in doubt about his mission and vision to set JAMB on a path of honour and dignity, and in doing that, he makes success seems easy and effortless.
He is an engaging, enthralling, and erudite scholar and administrator.
His leadership style and drive at JAMB is one-of-a-kind, sanitizing a once ridicule-ridden public transforming into an enviable establishment, even successfully raking in unprecedented revenues for the examination board.
Read also: JAMB’s Is’haq Oloyede wins NextMoney person of the year award
This is a man who so much believes in affecting people’s lives positively to amassing wealth for personal glory. Here is a man who believes that life and success ordinarily are not bragging about who you are, rather about doing what you are supposed to do for the benefit of humanity.
And this is a philosophy not easily found among many public office holders in Nigeria today.
Oloyede, while serving as the vice-chancellor at the University of Ilorin (Unilorin), pursued academic excellence as though his whole life depended on it. Concomitantly, Unilorin became the most sought-after institution by candidates seeking admission into tertiary institutions in the country.
And soaring on the wings of academic excellence feathered by him, Unilorin’s ranking among world universities has remained on the upward trajectory.
While as chief executive of JAMB, Oloyede leaves no stone unturned as he relentlessly and avowedly pursues academic excellence by ensuring that admission into tertiary institutions in Nigeria is transparent and credible.
JAMB under the leadership of Oloyede returned the sum of N3.51 billion to the national treasury as an operating surplus in 2021. This practice of remittance to the national treasury has been the standard practice since 2016 when Oloyede remitted the sum of N7billion to the nation’s coffers.
Quietly and steadily, he is leading a revolution in the Nigerian educational system, ostensibly with the objective of implanting academic excellence especially at the tertiary level of education in the country.
The revolution Oloyede is leading ensures that no candidate without the requisite academic achievements finds himself/herself on the campus of any tertiary institution in the country as a student. He is prosecuting this revolution by conducting very credible, transparent, and fraud-free Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), and by ensuring that admission into tertiary institutions in Nigeria is based first and foremost on merit.
It was John F. Kennedy who challenged Americans to set lofty goals, telling them to ask what they could do for their country and to aim to go to the moon within a decade. This was the transformational vision America needed then to bring about the needed change.
America is what it is today simply because some men and women stood out to do the needful. Nigeria is in need of transformational leaders like Is’haq Oloyede.
However, we must bear in mind that transformational leadership qualities are not only inherited in person but also the external environments involved to build up a leader.
Transformational leadership has become so essential in today’s society, especially in Nigeria, where politics, the education sector, civil service, among others all tend to thrive on corruption.
Leaders are effective decision-makers, strong motivators, and masters of situations. Nigeria needs leaders and governments that have passion for education, public service, and social justice and not otherwise.
The problems of Nigeria are so frightening that anyone who is conscious of his responsibility to future generations would not want to treat them lightly.
Certainly, in Nigeria today, multitudes of men of evil, destructive politicians, and civil (evil) servants have combined to make many conclude that the nation is without men of honour. Criminal practices of a few of our brethren outside the shores of Nigeria have painted most Nigerians to the outside world as a horde of criminals and unscrupulous elements. The way we are treated at foreign airports is a summary of the perception outsiders have about us, and the margin of trust we have created is nothing to write home about in the words of Muiz Banire.
Interestingly, in the midst of this miasma, Nigeria still has some excellent leaders such as Is’haq Oloyede whose choice of lifestyle is a source of admiration to the upright.
NextMoney could not have found a better breed than Professor Is’haq Oloyede for this honour.
