An old axiom famously states that the truest measure of a teacher’s greatness is the extent to which their transfer of knowledge resonates, not during the course of study, but long after the student ventures out beyond the four walls of the classroom.
Today, I reflect upon a great teacher. It is true that I am one presidential spokesman who will never write a book about my cherished time in that exalted office — not for lack of memory retention and copious documentation — but born out of a deep appreciation that the most prized experiences are sometimes best kept to one’s bosom until the end.
However, for every year that God Almighty is pleased to add to the life of my Father and Boss, H.E. President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, GCFR, I consider it a solemn honour and obligation to posterity to share specific insights I gleaned from the greatest strategic mind that our nation has ever produced.
Ever discerning of all actors within the vast sphere of Mr. President’s influence — their strengths, their weaknesses, their histories, their motivations, the limits of their fidelity, and their utility in the larger development picture of the country he oversees from the apex — the magisterial eye of the 16th head of state is uniquely guided by the heart of a gardener; one who loves to see good seed grow into all that it has been prepared to become.
While I certainly cannot and will never assert that I stand amongst Daddy’s illustrious sons and pupils, I can attest that the day I met H.E. Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, I could be defined by a vulnerability that comes with most political outsiders and new-to-government technocrats: a knee-jerk instinct to immediately solve a problem once encountered.
The Great Teacher — wielding profound examples, deep native wisdom, and ruthless pragmatism refined in the inferno of life-and-death problem-solving experience — proved that in Nigerian public sector leadership, there are peculiar multi-phase problems for which attentive restraint and foresight are required to resolve. That some problems, in later phases, reveal the final solution to all stages of it, which would be missed in a premature, impatient, but well-meaning rush to address it during the infancy of that same problem.
Daddy, in the silent night’s inner sanctum of the suit-and-gun fortified fortress, with his trademark depth of monolithic attention paid to me in the moment, paradigm-shifted me in hushed tones to understand that the heart to solve a problem is not enough for a leader to possess; neither is it sufficient to accurately diagnose a problem. But that the fullness of effective leadership entails the accurate sequencing, timing, tailoring, and application of solutions while taking into deliberate account all prevailing factors within the ecosystem of a problem.
In the frenetic time of throne room mentorship, I was double-appointed and tasked simultaneously at 37 years of age to be the voice of Africa’s most powerful leader and a mandate-carrying special envoy to the rest of the world on an existential crisis facing all of humanity. In the busyness of that season, much learning could not fully sink in.
And yet, years after leaving office, new levels of understanding of rich but not fully grasped wisdom spoken to me years prior by the great teacher are unlocked. Presently, as an enterprise owner and father of five children, far removed from the intricacies and jousting of power’s corridors, I rely more than ever on words spoken to me by my Father and Teacher while I write the content of this quiet chapter of my life.
As inhabitants of a world in which hyper-ambitious but undertalented men rule over the best to the detriment of all, we are fortunate as Nigerians, in this defining hour of our national history, to be led by a man of merit whose brave rise was not defined by who he knew but by the measure of his performance at every pivot point on his hard-earned ascent to power..
