Former presidential candidate of Social Democratic Mega Party (SDMP), Professor Pat Utomi, is the Director-General/CEO, Centre of Value in Leadership (CVL). In this interview with GEORGE OKOJIE, he contends that in a world of new challenges, the best practice is to train leaders that would secure the future, and to instill in the populace the right values.
What actually necessitated the establishment of Centre of Value in Leadership?
We all know that though leadership is desperately needed, but it is in short supply in the country. We founded CVL a decade ago as part of our commitment never to complain about a problem without doing something concrete to change that condition.
Eleven years after that same philosophy had led to the founding of the window of support centre programme, after I had written a number of opinion essays on the agony of the Nigerian widow. From a decade ago I found myself repeatedly lamenting leadership failure in Nigeria.
The CVL whose goal is to shape our world? and bring forth credible leaders, one young person at a time, is structured to provide young persons with values that will make them effective as leaders in whatever spheres the found themselves.
In the effort to inculcate these traits in the young professionals and in the young under graduates who participate in CVL activities, a number of programme are offered. Among them is the Role Model Forum which, every month, brings two people of outstanding career tracks to share with young professionals on one track, and quarterly with undergraduates the value which underpin their success.??
What has CVL’s programme got to do with providing relief for victims of flood disaster that sacked many Nigerians in different parts of the country?
The original motivation for Centre of Value in Leadership’s (CVL) involvement in drawing attention to the challenge of flood is more than justified by what I found on the field travelling through flood infested areas. First of all, is why CVL has an interest in this – the Center of Value in Leadership is designed to help develop young leaders, so that they can provide leadership that can?? change our lives in whatever sphere of activities, whether as entrepreneurs, as mangers in the industry, as politicians, as leaders of civil society, as even leaders of the family. It is a platform to help deepen our democracy.
CVL has a tripod of drivers of success in leadership. In this tripod is one’s knowledge because if you do not know you cannot lead. Knowledge is critical; so what we try to do is to train people to learn so that they have a habit of continuously seeking knowledge. That fulfils that dimension.
Secondly, we believe that people who do not have compassion, who don’t have a sense of service towards others will not be effective as leaders. Leadership behaviour is others-centred behaviour not self centered behaviour. Most people who have been pushed into positions we can call leadership positions in the country are driven by self than by the interest of others. That is clearly not going to succeed with leadership because leadership is others behaviour not self centered behavior.
In the third dimension of CVL tripod is that we need people who have courage of conviction once they have spend time building character because character counts , they have a sense of good, right, wrong. Then if they believe in something they have rectitude of intent.
We believe it must, because others do not believe it then you give up, so courage of conviction is critical of that platform. In this area we have taking time to form our conscience and believe a position we have come to about a common good is right , even when the majority live in denial or choose the easy path.
What have you been able to achieve as the leader of CVL?
We do a number of things to encourage that sense of behaviour in the leaders we are trying to develop. And the dimension of the sense of service means sacrificial giving of your services to people who will not be able to give you back. So we do things like cleaning up the environment and stuff like over the years in the last 10 years in Obalende, Iponri. And all of those areas, we rendered those services as a means of getting new lineage of professionals to develop a habit of self giving.
So when the riot in Jos broke we worked with a group of people Jos called Plateau Youths for Peace. We tried to distribute relief items; we starved ourselves to give to them. We did for Haiti? tsunami victims, but we were really shocked at the level over disinterest and disconnect for the rest of Nigerian society.
We found out that the number of people who are victims of the flood and the level of devastation to their lives is much worse than Katrina, yet the whole world turned when Katrina happened – even Nigeria government gave cash donation; and here we have people are suffering a worse state and it didn’t seem to matter – it was just some people far away; and we became very agitated by it, and that is why it has become a broadened initiative.
We are using it to train our young leaders to understand and develop compassion and understand human solidarity, and that humanity is a shared one, and if something diminishes some other human beings in some ways, it diminishes us;? particularly because what happened to one person can happen to you next day so that is how the idea started and it has build the momentum and when the name was put on the internet and by blackberry I found that hope has not been lost because a lot of Nigerians are actually sensitive and will be willing to support others.
What seems missing is the proper way of organizing this kind of commitment and the lesson for us is that we need in Nigeria a few more civil society initiatives that will focus in different aspects of human challenge. If we have a lot of Nigerian organizations focused in different areas of human challenges will be able to mobilize the compassion of the societies in a way that we can solve problems and also get people to learn certain habits that can help us sustain progress.
This is really a very critical lesson for us from this. As convener of the Nigerian Summit Group National Conference early in the year, I have also observed the frustration of the Nigerians who want a structure that will work for Nigerian people and reduce the poverty that is driving us towards anarchy.
What are the challenges CVL is facing in its quest to tackle dearth of leadership in Nigeria?
Well, in any of these things you need to build organizational acumen. We were not a relief agency; we were a human development organization but suddenly we found ourselves involved in relief and we are beginning to develop capacity for this kind of logistic drive efforts. We have to appeal to transporters to help us to move some of the things we have collected to some of the destinations that we need to, and we have to create state committees to help liaise and get these efforts on track.
There is also a challenge of financial resources. We have tried very hard to get people to focus on giving things than giving money because that creates more problems of accountability and all of that. For example, mattresses, foams are so in dire need.
Some of these people have been flooded out they sleep on bare floors. There has been some very good initiatives on the part of some governments, individuals and government agencies but it needs to be done more professionally. So we have been resource challenged but we have been mobilizing good will to help bridge resource challenges bringing in people who have skills of what we lack in these kind of efforts.
How will this departure from value system and culture affect Nigeria’s economic sector?
Nigeria will never experience industrial rebirth and increased manufacturing activities if the values and culture of its citizens did not change. For the country to move forward, the manufacturing sector need to account for a significant percentage of output of about 35 per cent but currently, we are less than three per cent of GDP in Nigeria whereas Nigeria has the capacity of growing at 16 to 17 per cent per annum without any challenge, because we have the ingredients but how do we offer leadership to take us where we are going.
Our economic policies, our human capital, entrepreneurship, leadership, institutions and access to capital are not sufficient enough to make us competitive and advance.? When the sector is revived, it would help to actualise a long-term strategic development plan that would stimulate economic growth and reposition the country onto a path of sustainable economic growth and rapid development.
With all that is happening, can you say Nigeria is on the path of revival?
Well you have to look at Nigeria from a number of perspectives. I am one of those people who say that Nigeria is at the tipping point where it can grow dramatically up. I believe Nigeria is ready for the big upswing. It is easy to be permanently pessimistic but, with or without us, I believe Nigeria will make progress, partly because of where we are located historically.
If you look at Ghana rising, Angola rising, we don’t have a choice than to become a lead-player in this? phenomenon of new African triumph. You can expect that the future is very bright for Nigeria, but for it to be bright it is not about building more roads, not about building power generating stations; it is about getting people to have right kind of value because if you build many roads and the people do not have the right value to maintain the roads, they do not have the value to do the right thing, obviously it would collapse again.
Look at the roads we built in the 70s all over the place – what happened to them; they are all gone. Leadership is about making those things come alive that sustain these other things that are useful, necessary and structured but not the very end. It is the platform on which the othes rest.
So, what is the way forward?
True federalism is very critical for this.? We can see the kind of progress made in leadership in the 60s.? We have not quite made it there in this prebendal era of people wanting to grab their share of the national cake whereas the leaders of the sub-national levels were obsessed with whom will most bring progress to their people, and they were held accountable by their people .
They were self given sacrificing leaders. Think of the Chief Obafemi Awolowo, the Okparas, and all of those people – look at the things that they did back in the 60s: they were not rich men; they did not come out of leadership position rich people, but today people in power are so self-focused that they are not advancing that which need to be advanced. There is too much emphasis on self.
True leaders should shape culture in a way that elevates the dignity of the human person if sustainable progress is to be attained.
This is where our politics fails us badly, because it measures progress with miles of roads tarred. If that is success, then what happened to the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway. It is a heart of care for the people who use it , the setting up of instructions and system that ensure it is not only maintained but expanded in response to the traffic flows and economic trends.