Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu is an inspirational and developmental leader, with strong emotional intelligence. He believes in making more resources available to the people. He sees Nigeria’s biggest resources to be the minds of the people. If the minds of people are developed, they will be able to develop ideas for business, committed leadership and good governance and then help the state build prosperity where everyone is financially independent and able to cater for himself. So he believes in building a bigger cake so that everyone can have enough.
Tinubu is a selfless person who possesses a solid negotiation and deal-making skills with a strong vision of tomorrow. Through creative endeavors, he builds the road to recovery, prosperity, and growth. He is a politician who is not creating followers, but rather building leaders at various levels. His spectacular political network, his negotiation skills and understanding of deal-making, his propensity for spotting talent, building and helping leaders to the top are what endear him to many.
He gathers a preponderance of brilliant men and women who can take Nigeria to the zenith of greatness to work as a think-tank to fashion out Lagos development plan along his vision. And this expands his influence tremendously as its grows in national politics as well as West Africa international politics each passing day.
His political assets lie in a sort of family compound politics while many other leaders barricade themselves in castles with dogs at their gates. In the middle of this family compound, he sits a unifying figure who calms frayed nerves. Beyond any other thing, this is what gives Tinubu pre-eminence over all his contemporaries who were governors at the same time with him. While these are keeping followers who they have reduced to slavery and servitude, Tinubu builds leaders at different levels around himself. This explains why his yearly colloquim usually draws a large audience of quality people.
This is what has contributed to his glittering records and achievements in both the private and public sectors, to his general acceptance, to his formidable political network, to his popularity across West Africa. In Sierra Leone Tinubu is a household name just as he is well-known in Liberia and Gambia as he is known in Ghana.
According to Dele Momodu, his excesses are mitigated by several strong and positive qualities. He is generous to a fault. He has lifted many souls, old and young, from penury and perdition. He is a classic example of the Good Samaritan.
In 2014, Tinubu demonstrated this in Sierra Leone. At that time, the Njala University in Sierra Leone awarded him a doctorate degree for his service to development in Africa. Njala University, marking its 50th anniversary was agog with over 6,000 people in attendance when Tinubu landed there in the company of the then Sierra Leonean President Ernest Bai Koroma.
“The key to our future is by investing in education and the lives of the youths who are the limbs, the hands of our development, so that Africa will not remain stagnant.” Tinubu said, praising the University for the Quality Education it had offered thousands of youth through the years.
Tinubu excited the University faculty, students, their parents and community when he announced a 5-year rolling scholarship for 50 indigent students of the Njala University and also donated a building to the rebuilding efforts of the University. He said he had no other choice than to be part of rebuilding Sierra Leone, particularly a campus that was destroyed and abandoned for 15 years. He thanked the University for the honor awarded.
when Tinubu became Governor of Lagos state in 1999, there were multiple challenges on the way to achieving his aspirational vision of making Lagos state become the best place in Nigeria and one of the best places in the world. The educational facilities in the state needed much attention. Transportation system was chaotic, as the roads that the military left behind were terrible. From Abule Egba, Agege, Ikorodu, Badagry to Lagos Island, the roads were mostly in bad shape. There was also a shameful waste management procedure. At that time, the filth in Lagos was massive, especially during the rainy season when heaps of corn husks would fill the side roads. Hospital buildings were dilapidated and wards were often overcrowded and in deplorable condition. Court buildings, too, were equally in deplorable state. The problem of job creation was also there. Equally, the internally generated revenue ( IGR ) of Lagos was nothing to write home about. It was a paltry N600 million monthly.
His background in Accounting set him thinking. Having been head hunted by top accounting firms like Arthur Andersen and Deloitte, Haskins and Sells, and joined Mobil in Nigeria where he excelled and rose to become a top executive in the company, Tinubu believed he must not fail the people.
So he assembled some of the best Nigerian local and international minds with expertise to form a think-tank group that would help his government fashion out the blue-print for Lagos state development in different areas: education, economy, environment, food security, security, transportation, healthcare and productivity.
When the group submitted its findings to him, one thing struck him: investing in and qualifying citizens to become productively useful. This is not a luxury, it is essential for any society that seeks to be among the most advanced globally, and a role model of development, as is the case in Lagos state. There are many considerations in this regard:
First, he believes the progress and development of a nation or any society is inconceivable without capable and qualified individuals in various fields. Therefore, advanced countries have prioritised the human being, ensuring freedom and providing the means to qualify and empower individuals in all sciences, knowledge and skills to make them a key building block in the country’s progress. In this way the public are an active element in building civilisation and achieving a nation’s aspirations. “Men are the ones who build factories” and “the true wealth is that of men” are the best expression of his inspiring vision.
Second, was the focus on the economy. To do this, he reached out to the organized private sector and created the yearly Ehingbeti retreat where government officials hold dialogue, with some private sector inputs. This led to the idea of encouraging knowledge economy. The state’s move towards a knowledge-based economy, which depends on vital fields such as IT, sciences, especially medical science, environment and other areas of knowledge required the existence of a qualified population adept in these fields. This would enable Lagosians to stay abreast of progress in the future as the state continues the comprehensive and sustainable development process it is experiencing.
During his term in office, he put on ground a sort of entrepreneurship incubation to develop the skills of Lagosians so that they would be able to cope with such challenges as those being ushered in by industry 4.0. now, through the gradual emergent of robotics and artificial intelligence,
In this regard, it is worth mentioning that the Lagos state University Medical College is one of the first university of its kind in Nigeria in terms of service delivery. This stresses that he while he was Governor of the state, Tinubu was keen to advance education to cope with new technologies to deliver quality healthcare to the teeming population of Lagos.
Third, qualifying citizens through human capital development was crucial. Putting on ground mechanism for giving people, especially youth, access to different areas of knowledge and equipping them with modern skills in various fields that serve the goals of productivity and human dignity became central to Tinubu agenda then. So, it was necessary to provide some training programs in various fields to hone the skills of Lagosians with different educational levels. Development covers all, not just for graduates alone, but also other categories of people such as artisans as well. So that everyone would play a part in the advancement of the state, which “is moving toward a bright future.”
He ensured that this became a reality in the state. The successful implementation of which has become a priority for subsequent authorities in the state. Undoubtedly, equipping Lagosians with in-demand labour-market skills and specialisations would help achieve the objectives of this policy by providing different Nigerian entities with citizens capable of running them effectively and efficiently. This highly skilled workforce would also spearhead the development of many organisations, improving their services and the tasks they were entrusted with, in order to achieve their goals.
Fourth and most importantly, Tinubu gathered exceptional human resources for his leadership recruitment programme , infusing them with leadership and management skills. Thus a sort of ‘leadership school’ came on board under his tutelage. Many of those occupying various levels of leadership positions in Nigeria today were once students of the school. Tinubu mentored them along developmental vision and began to help them climb to the top.
The “Tinubu leadership school”, which intensifies the need for qualified human resources able to keep pace with, and adapt to rapid global developments in governance landscape as well as the economic landscape, developing the soft skills and intelligence to solve problems and cope with developmental and governance challenges in Nigeria. This is on the back of Awoism philosophy and progressive tradition of development. Many politicians owe the success of their careers to Tinubu, notably Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo, Femi Gbajabiamila, Rauf Aregbesola, Lai Mohammed, Kayode Fayemi, Babatunde Raji Fashola, Akinwunmi Ambode, Engr Ganiu Johnson, Hon. James Faleke, Senator Opeyemi Bamidele, Senator Tokunbo Abiru, Comr Tokunbo Jaji, Williams Genesis, Abike Dabiri
Half of all those currently occupying seats in the various houses of assembly in the south-west Nigeria have passed through Tinubu leadership school. His model has always been to encourage the younger generation for development. Dear to his mind is the need for a clear commitment to meet development targets, whether in the state or local government level.
The aim was to ensure they are aligned with the mechanisms and plans in place to achieve the aspirations and directives of the leadership that had made development a top priority, with the leadership’s goal to create opportunities for Nigerian citizens
When the APC was formed–a merger of the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP), the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), Congress for Progressive Change (CPC, headed by current President Muhammadu Buhari), and the All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA)–Tinubu was a key member and a key player in bringing together these parties to oppose the ruling Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) ahead of the 2015 elections.
Strategic vision
Tinubu’s political career started in 1992. He was elected to the highest legislative house in the Nigerian Senate. When that ill-fated experiment by General Ibrahim Babangida went the way, it was programmed to go, Tinubu fled Nigeria and regrouped with like minded patriotic Nigerians to form the external wing of the pro-democracy National Democratic Coalition (NADECO). After the death of General Sani Abacha, Tinubu returned home to contest as Governor of Lagos State and won a convincing victory. Then he put on ground mechanism to raise young leaders with commitment to development through a compelling world view.
In an effort to raise more leaders like himself in the country to deliver efficient and effective services to the people, Tinubu regularly gathers brilliant men and women and mentor them. The mechanism is to work with stakeholders, including various entities in government and the private sector. The success of Bola Tinubu’s strategic vision, which aims to raise Nigerian happiness rates, with the current target of increasing the number of Nigerians, cannot be achieved without the engagement and effective involvement of all stakeholders. Thus, it is a tradition of that leadership tradition to link up with stakeholders and the grassroots in their actions.
But it’s a powerful developmental worldview, which resonates with a lot of people. Each leader has followers who don’t merely believe that worldview. They inhabit it. It shapes how they see the world, how they put people into this category or that category. And they can’t get their facts wrong as long as they get the worldview right, and as long as they don’t disappoint followers who stay embedded within that worldview.
This explains why none of Tinubu’s successors—from Fashola through Ambode to Sanwo-olu can be described as intellectual lightweights. And Lagos has become one of the better run states for it—development in every sector.
Many of the roads that were so bad when Tinubu became governor gradually became motorable before he left office in 2007. Now Lagosians are impressed by the state of many roads. He also raised the IGR from N600 million to over N6.5 billion before he left office. The same Lagos that had an IGR of just N600 million in 1999 now has the fifth largest economy in Africa.
Some of Tinubu’s notable achievements as Governor of Lagos (1999-2007) include; improving the state’s waste management system and better incentives for civil servants, (salary increases and better quality of working environments). creation of the Lagos State Traffic Management Agency (LASMA) as a response to traffic hold-up, creation of KAI Brigade within the Ministry of environment. The establishment of Lagos state mediation Centre to help settle some cases among Lagos citizens, upgrade of primary and secondary schools, upgrade of the state healthcare delivery system. In light of his leadership’s awareness of the importance of investment in human resources, Lagos state under Tinubu made it a top priority within the holistic development strategy to create enterprise training centres across the state
LCDs and Investment as a Prior
The need for fast and even development of the grassroots made Tinubu to create 37 additional local development areas (LCDAs) to join the 20 local government in the state. By so doing, investment and development would be fast-tracked across the state. Not just within Lagos metropolis.
His successor, Mr. Babatunde Raji Fashola, was responsible for the implementation of the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) Lite System, which ferries passengers in high-capacity buses on dedicated bus lanes. Governor Akinwunmi Ambode, the immediate past Governor also did well in the area of road construction, Mr. Babajide Sanwo-Olu, the current Governor, has been praised for his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic in the country’s most densely populated state.
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