BY ABEL BABATUNDE
Bola Ahmed Tinubu is a man with a lot of exceptional difference both in governance and in his style of leadership. His innovation and creative way of addressing issues spectacles a typical transformational leadership style. Recent research evidence is pointing at transformational leadership as the best form of leadership and even most universities in advanced countries are beginning to prepare their students with this mindset of leadership style.
As usual, critics of Tinubu are already raising storms in the cup of tea following his creative outing at the Chatham’s House in the UK.
The biggest joke of all the diatribes is the call to question why Tinubu decided to allow other people to answer some salient questions that border on state affairs directed at him at the event.
People’s mind must be ready to accept change. If such has never happened before, it doesn’t mean it cannot happen. What the critics are supposed to do is to applaud Tinubu for his consistency because what he did at Chatham, he has done repeatedly at home during his various town hall meetings with Nigerians.
According to Trent (2020), leadership is “the process where a person exerts influence over others and inspires, motivates, and directs their activity to achieve goals”.
Is this not what a President does? The goal of Tinubu is to transform Nigeria into a better country as envisioned in his “Renewed Hope Manifesto” and his functional implementation strategy is focussed on team work.
This is what he does best from his time as a Governor of Lagos State. He has the capacity to identify and harness human potentials for greater productivity. So, asking those people to speak on those salient issues is a reinforcement of his leadership ideology.
Bola Tinubu met the criteria for Transformational Leadership as described by Burns (1978), “one who raises the followers level of consciousness about the importance and value of desired outcomes and the methods of reaching those outcomes.
Tinubu does this by injecting enthusiasm and energy in people even towards their self accomplishments. It is not surprising that many people that worked with him as Governor of Lagos State many years ago are still speaking for him today which is unlike his other contenders for the same office.
President Buhari’s inability to constitute his executive cabinet in the first six months of his administration has been blamed for some of the woes in the country today. This they argue that Ministers are the key drivers that would help the President deliver on his mandate. Invariably, they are saying the President cannot achieve anything on his own. If this is put forward as an acceptable concern, why criticising a man who is trying to show the way even before he is elected into office?
Oh! The guess is that Tinubu is the one aspiring for the office of the President and should be the one answering the questions. After all no one goes to an interview with other people speaking for or on his behalf.
Well, even though this is a correct analogy, but, at the same time, employers of labour, both in public and private, have since expanded the scope of hiring talents beyond just one – on- one interview. In fact, the one – on – one is now a part of an extended interview, probably the last phase of the selection process.
In a typical extended interview, the job seekers would be assembled together as a team, given a hypothetical question or problem to solve under the watch of the hiring personnel who are very senior officers of the organization.
From amongst themselves, the job seekers will set up a panel, possibly elect some temporary secretary and chairman from the group, brainstorm the ideas, and finally present the outcomes. All these will happen without interference from the hiring officers until when the time given is up.
Another icing on the cake, is that part of the interview is the testing of the “would be employees” ability to identify talents or make judgements on their own. Each job seeker would be asked to make up a list of certain number of people other than himself who should be employed by the company based on the performance in the group discussion.
So, based on this industrial best practice, what Tinubu did at Chatham House is not strange. He has just demonstrated to Nigerians what he is capable of doing as the manager of our nation at that independent Chatham House interview.
Before the election, he would still be engaging Nigerians day to day on his plans for the nation according to his campaign plans and strategy.
Finally, are we taken by surprise what happened at the Chatham House?
The sincere answer to this is a No. His travel to UK was well publicized including those on his entourage.
A day before the actual event, the photographs of Tinubu and his team were circulated on both the prints and social media, capturing their methodological preparation for the event. Therefore, all what transpired at the event eventually were products of painstaking rehearsed efforts ably supervised by Tinubu himself.
In other words, there was nothing said at that event that was not passed by him. Another word for that is that the buck stops at his table. This word seems to me as the responsibility of a President, where whatever anyone under his employment or supervision does becomes his responsibility. In that case, all the answers provided by the other speakers at the Chatham House are Tinubu’s.
.Babatunde, a citizen of Nigeria, writes from Iwoye – Ketu, Zone4, Imeko/Afon LG, Ogun State. He can be reached via adekunle4b@gmail.com.
