Come June 6, 2014, the Press Club, University of Lagos will be honouring late Mrs. Ngozi Agbo, their mentor and initiator of the Campus Life pullout in this great newspaper who passed on on May 28, 2012. The event would be the third annual Ngozi Agbo Memorial Lecture, which the Club, an organisation with members drawn from all faculties within the campuses of the university undertook on their own to keep the vision, ideals and dreams of this great woman – and my late wife – alive. They also intend using the event to launch their Journal – UNILAG Gong – a monthly magazine to be freely distributed within the university community.
This singular act goes to reinforce the fact that great ideas and visions don’t die; they blossom even if the visionary is no longer alive. Being a mental picture or concept in the imagination, a vision is also the ability to anticipate the direction a worthy cause or future an event will take, such is the power of vision.
Ngozi dreamt years before she passed on that Nigeria – despite the socio-economic and other challenges she faces – has the potentials of being a great nation. She believed that the potentials lie in the hands of the youths and she birthed an idea that would give them the platform to express their dreams for the nation. A veritable platform, The Nation newspaper employed her and gave her wings to soar. Ngozi, the lovely lady who wrote this column for four years, passed on two years ago and the mantle fell on me to “run with the vision.”
Her vision is anchored on building the total man and looking at the core values and attributes that defines him, attributes that always emphasises the highest level of moral and ethical regeneration and the molding of sound character which she instilled in her “children.” She never failed to remind them that they are always a shining light to their generation, and coming into contact with these students you will realise that the objective is bearing fruit as the UNILAG students clearly demonstrated by their instituting an annual lecture in her memory.
Does that mean her preoccupation is only with undergraduates? Absolutely not, Ngozi was also a student of leadership and those who were familiar with this column when she handled it know too well of her passion for leadership; from leadership in the home to religious and secular leadership.
She often drive the point home to her undergraduates to steer clear of ethnic jingoists and divisive individuals who have the innate capacity of filling their minds with xenophobic ideologies that have the tendency of creating hatred, rancour and bitterness in the society. This they can only do if they are inculcated with the right value system. The annual capacity building Workshops and Award ceremonies she undertook every year with the support of Coca-Cola Nigeria Limited and Nigerian Bottling Company Limited is a pointer to the fact that apart from merely sending in articles for publication she ensures she has one-on-one contact with her undergraduates to be certain that the venture they are undertaking is far bigger than having their stories published in the newspaper.
Another sterling quality of the vision is the molding of character. Ngozi was a disciplinarian to the core and she doesn’t mince words when it comes to discipline and her students know that, I will point out two instances here. Two weeks before her death she held her 9th Annual Campus Life workshop in Lagos where she invited more than 50 students from tertiary institutions across Nigeria. Some undergraduates who could not make it to the workshop called her and pleaded that she sends them their certificate of attendance.
She took her time to patiently lecture them that it is morally wrong for her to send certificate to someone who did not attend the workshop; she equally told them that it will be against the tenet of what she teaches them. Some of the students called back to apologise for their misdemeanor saying they never saw it that way. What actually touched me was how she linked the whole incident to the vision of Campus Life. There are countless other encounters that I can’t mention here for lack of space.
So what are the marks of true leadership that she bore? I will list five clear attributes that I identified in my time with her. The first is deep insight. Authentic leaders have insight which we sometimes refer to this as vision, but that usually has exclusive reference to the future – the project at hand clearly demonstrates that. While leaders must have vision, they need more, they need wisdom and discernment.
Secondly, initiative plays a fundamental role. In this regard, authentic leaders go first. They don’t sit on the sidelines. They don’t ask others to do what they are unwilling to do themselves. Instead, they lead by example. Ngozi blazed the trail by introducing Campus Life which almost all the newspapers today have variants of.
Thirdly, authentic leaders exert influence. Ngozi did. I found out that it is no coincidence that influence and influenza (the flu) come from the same root word. Real leaders are contagious. People “catch” what they have. People are drawn to their vision and their values. They are able to gather a following and move people to act. In essence, they create ripple effect wherever they go. Ngozi did.
True leaders have impact. At the end of the day, leaders make a difference. Ngozi made a huge impact on a generation of Nigerian students, she did not sit and bemoan “our falling standard of education,” she just did what she needed to do. The measure of leadership cannot be found in the leader; it is found in the impact the leader has on his or her followers.
A true leader has integrity which in a sense is the foundation of authentic leadership. Those who knew her can attest to this sterling character in her. She abhors mediocrity and sloppiness, she dots her “i’s” and crosses her “t’s” always.
There is no better epitaph to write for this bold, unique, courageous and determined lady than to say that some of her “children” are now living out what she taught them, her efforts were not in vain. Wale Ajetunmobi now oversees the Campus Life pages in The Nation every Thursday, Gbenga Ojo now publishes Exceptional Magazine, Faith Olaniran now runs a Youth Development programme, David Osu of FUTA is a United Nations Ambassador on Education, and Jumoke Awe runs a girl-child NGO. Again, there are more of Ngozi’s former students contributing positively toward the emergence of a better society which space will not allow me to recount, they will tell their own stories someday.
The child she died giving birth to is now a strong and happy toddler with visibly signs of intelligence which goes to show that her blood runs in his veins. No doubt, Ngozi the trailblazer lives on.
