Realnews 2nd Anniversary Lecture
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| By Roberts Orya |
I AM pleased to be here today at the Second Anniversary Lecture of Realnews Magazine and the presentation of the book titled “Paragon of Journalism”. Permit me to first of all congratulate the promoters of Realnews Magazine, under the able leadership of Maureen Chigbo, and to wish you many more successes in your contributions to the journalism profession in Nigeria. I also wish to commend your efforts in contributing to knowledge through the publication of a book. Unfortunately, the co-author, late Mike Akpan, is not here with us to witness this occasion. But we are comforted that he has left his indelible mark through his contributions to this excellent piece.
I wish to specially commend your initiative and thoughtfulness in organizing this anniversary lecture and in gathering together the eminent personalities here present today. The theme of the lecture, “Nigerian Democracy: Getting it Right in 2015” is quite apt at this point in time as it cuts through the heart of our development challenges today. It is in this regard that I am glad to address the topic: “Economic Implications of Getting a Right Leadership” and share my thoughts with the distinguished participants here present today. However, in doing this, my objective is to provoke further deliberations on the subject with the hope that at the end of the event, we should all have been better informed, while also learning some few lessons that will be useful to us as individuals, corporate organisations and as a nation.
Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen, in presenting my thoughts on this topic, I have structured the paper into four parts. I will first of all discuss the concept of leadership, after which I will look at the role of leadership in development. The third part of the paper will attempt to situate the leadership concepts in the context of the development aspirations of Nigeria, while the final part gives some concluding remarks.
Concept of Leadership
Leadership has been described as a process of social influence in which one person can enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a task. It is a process by which one person influences the thoughts, attitudes and behaviours of others. Leaders set the direction for the rest of the group members to follow. A Leader is therefore somebody whom people follow.
Without leadership, a group of people degenerates into arguments and conflict, because we see things in different ways and lean towards different solution. Leadership therefore helps to point people in the same direction and harness our efforts jointly towards achieving a goal.
Implicit in the definitions of leadership is the existence of an organization, an economic agent or a social unit, which could be a Country, a State, Local Government, Business Organisation, Government Ministry/Parastatal, Family, Church/Mosque, Social Clubs, etc. Such an organization must also exist for a purpose. Hence it must have a goal. Organisations are also made up of people who desire to be led towards achieving the group goal. Given this contextual framework, what then is the role of a leader?
Role of Leadership
The most fundamental role of a leader is to define the organizational goal, formulate the plans and organize people to achieve the goals through the execution of the plans. The key dimensions of leadership task therefore include the following:
- Vision crafting: A leader must ensure the existence of a vision for the organization. The vision defines the focus of the organization, that is, a definition of what to do. This requires that the leader himself must be visionary.
- Formulating the Strategy: The leader must guide the process of strategy formulation. The strategy articulates the plan, which essentially is how to achieve the vision. The Plan or strategy demonstrates the job knowledge or skills of the leader. It may involve restructuring or policy reforms.
- Managing people: this involves the determination of who should carry out the plan and how to make people accomplish the strategy. It involves people management skills, which includes providing inspiration and motivation, establishing relationship and intelligently using power and position for leadership.
Central to all the above is the task of “Decision Making” since the leader must deal with an array of options in his everyday chore. Effective decision making is therefore an essential skill for any successful leader. However, while the ultimate decision rests with the leader, the best leaders often need to depend on other team members in the “decision making process” and in this regard, permit me to briefly discuss some myths around leadership.
Myths about Leadership
- a) Leaders know it all: Many assume that leaders must have more insights about the issues as well as specific knowledge about the strategies and tactics than those who report to them. This is not quite so. In fact the best leaders hire people who are better than them. The leader’s role in the organization is to set future direction and inspire team members to achieve the goals.
- b) Leaders have to be liked: Likeability and successful leadership are not the same. Leaders should therefore not engage in popularity contest, but should strive to be respected and trusted. A leader is someone whose judgment is trusted and whose opinion is respected.
- c) Leaders are only found at the Top: In traditional organisations leaders are thought to be the ones at the top of the pyramid: supervisors, Managers and Directors. However, leaders can be found throughout the organization and people at all levels can hone their leadership skills to have significant positive impact on those around them.
- d) Leaders must be Extroverts: Extroverts are thought to be more attracted to leadership positions because they speak up and engage with larger group more readily. However, this is not necessarily so because there are many successful leaders who are introverts. Speaking up and engaging the situation is a skill anyone could learn.
- e) Leaders are born, not made: While it is true that some people are born with leadership qualities such as charisma and vision, effective leadership traits can be developed with patience and focus. What matters is for an individual to develop the confidence and aspire towards leadership positions.
Leadership and Economic Development
Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen, I have taken some time to review the intellectual context to enable us establish the link between effective leadership and economic development.
A major aim of any sovereign nation is to achieve economic growth and development. While economic growth refers to the increase in the amount of goods and services produced in an economy over a period of time as measured by the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), development is a broader concept, which involves economic growth plus “change”. The change aspect includes sustained and concerted actions of policy makers (leaders) to promote the standard of living. Such actions include development of human capital, providing critical socio-economic infrastructure, ensuring social inclusiveness, improving health care, safety and security of life and property and environmental sustainability to mention a few.
The economic literature is replete with examples of the development stories of many nations and the role played by the leadership in promoting positive changes. Indeed lessons can be drawn from the success stories of the East Asian Tigers, which recorded rapid growth over the last few decades owing to the role of government in formulating and implementing the right policies. However, while the story of the East-Asian Tigers are well known and need not be over flogged, permit me to observe that our dear country can achieve a similar feat if we could sustain the current tempo of economic reforms, which has so far achieved significant results.
You will recall that in 2011, the Federal Government of Nigeria, under the able leadership of Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan launched the Transformation Agenda, which aims at achieving rapid economic growth through four pillars, which include Macro-economic reforms and stability, Good Governance and Anticorruption, Investment in Key infrastructure and Jobs creation.
Today, just over three years down the line, I am quite positive that the economy is moving in the right direction. The Nigerian economy has grown to become the largest economy in Africa and the 26th largest in the world. Nigeria is also the largest destination of FDI inflow in Africa, with growing investment interests occasioned by reforms in the power sector, the Agricultural Transformation Agenda and the New Industrial Revolution Master Plan. These positive developments are in spite of the current infrastructure and security challenges, which given the current efforts of government, I am quite positive will soon be a thing of the past.
Also worthy of note is the role of institutional transformation and in this regard, permit me to talk briefly about my institution, the Nigerian Export-Import Bank. We resumed in the Bank in August, 2009 at a time when the institution was in dire need of effective leadership. Prior to this time, there was lack of proper focus, staff morale was low, while the operational and financial performance had deteriorated so much so that the Bank was beginning to find it difficult to deliver on its mandate. This made us to quickly articulate a strategic repositioning exercise with a clear vision to be the Leading Export Development Bank in Africa.
We also built a formidable team, improved our processes and took steps to motivate staff such that within 18 months of our resumption, we were able to turn around the fortunes of the Bank to become a sustained profit-making institution. Right now, the Bank has become more visible as one of the key government institutions facilitating trade in Nigeria, while our objective is to continue to build the institution towards diversifying the external sector of the Nigerian economy.
Concluding Remarks
Distinguished ladies and Gentlemen, my key objective in this paper is to show that effective leadership is quite central and that leadership principles are the same in achieving our objectives either as a family, business or as a county. My parting words therefore as we approach the next election is that we should bear in mind that the choice of leaders will make the difference between where we are currently and where we would be in 2018.
I thank you all for your kind attention.
A Paper Presented by Roberts Orya, Managing Director/CE of the Nigerian Export-Import Bank (NEXIM) at the 2nd Anniversary Lecture of the Realnews Magazine and Publications Limited held on Wednesday, November 19, 2014 at the Sheraton Hotel, Lagos.
— Nov. 10, 2014 @ 01:00 GMT
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