At this point in Nigeria’s history, the nation needs a new generation of strategic leaders that will take the country speedily to the next level of development, Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo has said.
Osinbajo stated this in Abuja, on Saturday, at the launch of a book titled “Winning Leadership” written by Maj. Gen. Pat Akem-Vingir (rtd), explained that he takes special interest in any discourse or project on leadership studies.
Osinbajo said the progressive environment in the country is characterized by socio-economic problems which are manifesting in several security challenges across the country adding that the situation is more volatile with the increasing pace of technological innovations especially the negative use of social media.
He said it is for such reasons that there has been a consistent call for a new generation of strategic leaders with a clear understanding of the demands of the nation’s current complex volatile and uncertain environment to help the shaping and re-orienting of the minds of the youths.
He said, “This book sets out to evaluate strategic leadership within the context of a work-in-progress as it is characterized by the volatile, uncertain, complex and unresolved situation. Having obviously, defined strategic leadership, the book continued to outline and summarise some conventional strategic leadership functions that could help the leader’s clear understanding using life experiences across the world.
“It also provides some soft skills to deal with leadership challenges in a local environment which to my opinion are quite relevant to strategic leadership across all public and private sectors including the military. In my estimation, this book is a must-read for anyone undertaking research in leadership studies, particularly at the strategic level.
The Vice President commended the author for his scholarly works noting the long hours and days that have been put into the writing and used the opportunity to call on those who have had leadership opportunities to imbibe the culture of putting down experiences in form of books for the benefit of others.
In his remarks, the author Maj Gen. Pat Akem-Vingir said strategic leadership is important because of the colonized nature of the world and the security challenges that the world faces.
He said it is worth noting that strategic leadership perches at the highest point of the leadership pyramid for very good reasons saying that with the advantages of that best eye view that strategic leaders have over the domestic and personal environments of the areas of their responsibilities, they are able to spot challenges very far off and tackle them before they shrink into more complex events.
“From that perch high up there, leaders at the strategic level are able also to spot opportunities and harvest them. Let me state that the challenges of the 21st-century world actually have opportunities wrapped up under the gap of challenges. In other words, for every challenge, you can harvest opportunities.
“I noticed the impact of strategic leadership when covid-19 took the world by storm. I saw the manner in which strategic leadership tried to make sense of it and understand it. I saw the disruption unleashed and realized a certain new character of leadership was required that the old conventional style of strategic leadership even though still relevant, was not enough to handle the destruction for the advent of covid-19.
“Leaders, who were up to their game, quickly began to harvest opportunities. Mark Zuckerberg for instance, quickly hired more staff, Netflix started producing more films etc. so while other leaders were harvesting the opportunities, others were trying to make sense of what the whole thing was about. It was at that point that I began to work on the book that we are about to unveil” he stated.
Akem-Vingir said he also noticed that while the world was on lockdown, students were migrating to online platforms in some countries but sadly, in some nations including Nigeria schools lost one year because of the lack of infrastructure that was required.
“Strategic leadership is always able to spot leadership from afar and tackle them before they become unmanageable. So that formed my writing on strategic leadership with a view to adding my own perspective gathered from many years of military scholarship, paid courses, many years of serving under exceptional leaders.
“So that is what motivated me to do strategic leadership but I captured it ‘winning leadership’ because the 21st century must be won and it is being won right now by leaders who are agile, flexible, adaptive, and ready. Those are the kind of leaders that this 21st-century world requires,” Akem-Vingir added.
