THE ABIOLA AJIMOBI I KNOW | ‘Soji Eniade, mni
THE ABIOLA AJIMOBI I KNOW | ‘Soji Eniade, mni
“In a man’s life, there are many low and high seasons; seasons of failures and seasons of successes. It is the quality of courage with which a man handles his success or failure, that determines the kind of person he is”
The quality of a man, therefore, will not be found in how he handles his successes but in how he takes his season of failures.
Like Abraham Lincoln said it, ‘every man can handle success, when you want to know leaders, test him with adversity.’ For how do you as a leader carry on in the face of staggering personal losses? How do not drop the ball when you are enjoying unrequited successes? Not just that, how do you convince people to follow you towards a future that is not yet certain?
These questions forms the ideals, for me, as to what a successful leader must possess.This somewhat simple analogy wraps into the wealth of knowledge I have about the persona and leadership of Governor Abiola Ajimobi.
My first encounter with him was sometime in June 2011 during his meeting with the then set of Permanent Secretaries; it was shortly after he was sworn-in as the Governor of Oyo state.
I was the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Education, and the first impression most of us got from that maiden meet was that, we just got in our hands, a man who had a clear grasp of his vision for Oyo state.
He was bold and daring about his ideas.
He stated a clear goal to bring the best out of the public service of the state, having acknowledged that the public service was the machine and engine room that drives governance.
A man of his words, Governor Ajimobi took no time to indeed introduce a plethora of productivity-driven attributes from his private sector experience into our public service.The idea of key performance indicators (KPIs) as instrument to measure performance, a better dress code, and the Efficiency Unit, were few of all the concepts he brought to redefine our public service.
Though, many did not initially understand nor take to the changes, however, it is no gainsaying that all performance indices show that since the assumption to office of Gov Ajimobi, the productivity in the Public Service has been on the rise. The records are there.
The Federal Government had at the time introduced the ‘Efficiency Unit’ to ensure that the level of productivity is raised from the Nigerian public service, and Governor Ajimobi was probably the first to adopt it at the State level. All these at those early days proved to us that he was a doer. A first impression that lasted as long as he was here with us.
Right from those initial days in 2011, I came to the quick understanding that Ajimobi was the type of person, the kind of leader who bravely chooses to go down the untraveled path in his drive towards achieving success at any cause he deems needful, especially for Oyo state.
He adopted the Treasury Single Account (TSA) before the Federal government even mused about it. He travelled that path which seemed unpopular, and its success at the time and apparently till now, proved what I stated earlier that the man had a clear vision, a distinct purpose for his administration, and most importantly, how to achieve it.
I got to know more about his attributes at close contact when I worked with him as the Head of Service, Oyo State. In 2014, Governor Ajimobi appointed me as the Head of Service – according to him, he chose based on his need of a brilliant and creative mind who can fit into his own idea of operations and vision for the state.
This afforded me the opportunity to know his ways. He is a highly disciplined man, he doesn’t spare any ounce of laziness or dereliction to duty. His knack for structured and patterned administration is testament to this fact.
After serving for 35 years in the Oyo State Civil Service, I can unarguably say that Governor Abiola Ajimobi was the one who brought a ranking sense of discipline and culture of renewed productivity into our Civil Service. For example, he does not believe in the idea of ‘working hours’, rather, to him, work continues until the job is done and on this, he isn’t a leader who simply leads by words but he does by example. I can attest to the fact that he sleeps for a maximum of 3 hours, working all through 21hours of the day until his tasks are executed.
Of all these attributes however, there are two that are very endearing to me and, I have seen moving brilliantly together are, his insurmountable spirit and his prowess at financial management.
To Governor Ajimobi, there’s no such thing as a ‘challenge too big to handle’. He is always bold in the face of uncertainty or adversity, and this had a way of arming members of his team with courage and motivation to keep striving when the going gets tough. It is when the stakes are high that he was always at his best.
“In a man’s life, there are many low and high seasons; seasons of failures and seasons of success. It is the quality of courage with which a man handles his success or failure, that determines the kind of person he is”
These were the Governor’s words to us at those times, and they ended up becoming words we kept on marble.
AJIMOBI LISTENS
Another hallmark of a great leader is that they are aware that they don’t know it all. Hence, they commit to proactively listening to others whose area of expertise is different from theirs. This is another character Ajimobi epitomizes – he always submits to superior opinions, easily at that, but, YOU MUST be armed with facts and figures.
After I retired from Civic Service as the Head of Service, His Excellency, (humbly not knowing what he saw in me though), appointed me as his Executive Assistant on Administration. In that role, I’ve enjoyed somewhat of a more relaxed relationship with him. From this vantage point, I saw a man who stops at nothing, seldom sleeps, and who always goes in head and heart first, to make decisions deemed best for his state.
He raised the bar of governance in Oyo State, and I know he achieved this because like a gallant soldier, he had a clear vision, but more importantly, he had the attributes of brilliance, finesse and unmatched candor to bring his vision for Oyo State to life. Ajimobi’s strides in leadership even goes beyond his own dear State but across the South-West of Nigeria and the nation at-large. This is testamemt of a Stateman fueled with a naked desire to get the best for his State and fatherland.
His loss was sudden, for he had just signed up for another leadership position. True to his nature, leadership was not some showbiz to him, it was a task of blood, sweat and gore and he was prepared to give it his all. Like any forward-thinking and foundational-shift leader, “the present may not fully understand him, but the future will appreciate him”. Now that he is gone, one thing can only be said in retrospect; He lived for his people, he did his best and posterity will be kind to him.