Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, a former governor of Lagos State
and All Progressives Congress (APC) leader, said that choosing a worthy successor
was his greatest achievement and Babatunde Fashola has been his greatest achievement.
Fashola, now minister in charge of Power, Works and Housing
in the present dispensation, took over the governorship of Lagos State from
Tinubu in 2007. Before then, Fashola was Tinubu’s chief of staff.
In “Asiwaju, Untold story of the Leader,” a special
publication of TheNEWS, Tinubu reacted to a question of what he would consider
his best legacy after spending eight years in office. His reply was that apart
from the financial engineering of Lagos, especially to bring financial autonomy
to the state and eliminate wastage and mismanagement, his "greatest legacy
is Babatunde Fashola.”
He added: “I identified and endorsed him. That was when my
corporate background as a recruiter for Deloitte came to play. Part of the
training when you go on operational audit is that the first things you evaluate
are the personnel and the questionnaire given to them and how they answer it.
You look at the ability of individuals to really take and develop others. There
is nothing unique about any leadership. Everybody can come up with different
ideas. You can take different routes and arrive at the same answer.”
Tinubu said further that no matter how much steel and metal
you put together, “the greatest achievement and legacy is the ability to
develop other leaders who can succeed you, otherwise your legacy will be in
shambles.”
He revealed another model his government set up in Lagos: to
separate politics from governance, a situation that gave Fashola ample time and
concentration to perform. As he put: “The model we set up is working well and I
will recommend it for Nigeria. Let the governor take care of the administration
and its nitty gritty, if he is scholarly enough and sharp, while other
political leaders take the political pressures off him. I don’t have files to
sign. Let them go and sign the files and deal with the routine of governance so
that he can focus on the developmental goals of the state.”
TheNEWS
No comments:
Post a Comment