FASHOLA ADVOCATES SOCIETAL VALUES AS BUILDING BLOCKS OF GOOD LEADERSHIP, GOOD GOVERNANCE “For people who trample upon what the whole world want to acquire every hour and every day, it must speak volumes about their values”, he says Lagos State Governor, Mr. Babatunde Fashola SAN, Friday advocated the promotion of societal values as the building blocks for good leadership and good governance saying every society is solely responsible for the type of leadership and governance that it gets. Addressing participants at the Oriental Hotel, Lekki Expressway, Victoria Island venue of the 2014 Annual Conference on Corporate Governance organized by the Society for Corporate Governance Nigeria with the theme “Leadership and Governance In the Public Sector”, the Governor said leadership is a matter of values. He said although he has been asked to speak on leadership and governance in the public sector, justice would not be done to the subject if it is limited to that sector alone adding that in order to give it a thorough treatment, the other sector, the Private sector must also be included. “It seems to me that if any justice is to be done on that subject, it cannot be limited to the Public Sector alone. We must look across board to the other side, the Private Sector also rather than in one sector alone. This is because to me there is a thin dividing line between the Public and the Private sectors and one good or bad leadership in one sector has the potential to breed more good or bad leaders in the other sector”, he said. According to the Governor, “The Leadership question is really a question of values. It is at the centre of everything; values such as trust, integrity, merit, strength, compassion, courage, justice, fairness and so on and so forth and this must be so because human life and affairs have been organized around representation”. “From the small to the big corporations, the owners are the large body of shareholders only in little units. But ultimately, who do we see? We see a small unit of men and women representing this large body of shareholders. So the leadership issue has been a representative issue and as it is in the Public Sector so it is in the Private Sector”, he said. He pointed out that whether it is a monarchy where they cannot vote, or a dictatorship where they can neither vote nor be heard, or democracy where they can vote, complain and can be heard, what the people inherently seek is the assurance that their representative or the one who decides for them, is trustworthy, honest, can keep his word and thinks of the people as much as the thinks of himself. “We seek to know whether such representative has the strength to bear all of our burdens even if only in a metaphoric sense, and the courage to protect us when we face aggression of oppression. Will that person be compassionate when we have problem? Will he at least listen even if he does not have a solution? Will he be fair even when we know he has his favorites?” the Governor asked. He noted that these questions range in the public sector as much as they do in the private sector adding that whether as a governor, a king, a baale, a church leader, an imam, a chief executive officer of a company or just a family head, when a leader who exemplifies these qualities is about to go, whether as a result of natural causes or by legislative limitations, the question always is “who steps into his shoes? Will there be any like him?” “The truth is that we make our leaders what they are. Our leaders embody the values that we live by. The sad thing is that those values change and more often than not societies, organizations and institutions that end up with bad leaders have been shown to have adopted wrong and poor values”, he said. The Governor maintained that bad leaders are unlikely to emerge where good values reign and when they unfortunately do, they do not last there noting that conversely good leaders seldom emerge from a school of bad values. “In a corrupt society, it is the corrupt that will decide who leads”, he said. He noted that in a society where merit is subjugated for nepotism, the weak will lead the strong. So you can imagine trying to tow a trailer with a beetle. It may move but ultimately some things will fall apart. In a society where money is more important than ideas and knowledge, leadership responsibility will fall upon those who cannot think to the exclusion of those who can think”, the Governor said. Using currency as an analogy for societal value, Fashola noted that every country has a currency and while some are of high value, some are of low value and in terms of quality some are of high quality while some are almost worthless adding that the value and worth a society places on its currency is often a reflection of the leadership of that society. “For some countries the unit of their currency is a revered national asset. For others it is neither here nor there and for others still it can be thrown around, it can even be thrown at people or trampled upon”, he said adding that for people who trample upon what the whole world wants to acquire every hour and every day, it speaks volumes about their values. Noting that it is the collective values of a country that define its reach, the Governor recalled an incident in the past where an aged grandmother had to stop her son’s neighbour from coming into the house to see her son because she heard that the visitor was involved in a fraud adding, “Do we have such values today? Mama didn’t dislike that neighbor. She just had strong values about accountability and trust”. He thanked the organizers for the courtesy of their invitation to him saying that when he saw the signature of the President of the Society on the invitation card, he considered it a must to attend the occasion. Earlier in his welcome address, President of the Society for Corporate Governance Nigeria, Chief Olusegun Osunkeye, expressed appreciation to the Governor and the former Governor of Anambra State, Mr. Peter Obi, for honouring the invitation, expressing confidence that they would do justice to the subject matter. Also present at the occasion were the Chairman of MTN Nigeria, Dr. Paschal Dozie, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor, represented at the occasion by the Director banking and Payment System Development, Mr. Dipo Fatokun, First Bank Company Secretary, Mr. Tijani Borodo, Chancellor, pan African University, Professor Emmanuel Elegido, Captains of Industry and top government functionaries.
Posted on: Sat, 20 Sep 2014 14:51:31 +0000
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