Deremi Atanda is the Executive Director of Systemspecs, an IT company passionate about capacity-building and motivating young leaders across the country. In this interview with Yetunde Oladeinde, he talks about equipping young people for the future, challenges faced and more
WHAT is your assessment of leadership in Nigeria today?
I think many times, we over generalise the issue of leadership. Most times, we think about political leadership, yet this is just a single dimension of leadership. For you to raise corporate leaders, religious leaders, political leader, they must be great leaders of home.
Most important, if there is leadership deficit in the corporate space, you need to look at where they are coming from, what shaped them and that is why I would always give more attention to leading from the home. Nobody ever becomes a product of what they are not. So, what I see today is that we are fast losing those fundamental issues of raising leaders right from the home. I tell people before now that it was tough for a thief to become a chief, but today it takes so little to remove the ‘T’ and substitute with a ‘C’. I would rather focus on developing the next generation of leaders, the social structure and the environment that would help us groom good leaders. It is a complex mix, by the way. So, where we do not have people that we can look forward to within our social environment, from our home. It will be difficult to have people we can look forward to in our religious spaces, business spaces and in the political spaces.
As we plan or prepare for 2019, we shouldn’t be looking for what we don’t have. We have not sufficiently groomed people that can take us there. So, these are the people that we believe can take us to realise the kind of visions that we have for this country.
What is the problem with the home today?
Many things. I think one of the greatest challenges to me within the context of social evolution, is that we are trying to be like other people without thinking about the consequences. Some of the values we cherished before now were easily done without thinking about the consequences. The environment is allowing us to throw away our guard without thinking about the consequences and I think we need to go back to say getting leaders would be a function of investments made on the home and the community. In our traditional communities, before you give anyone a title as a chief or a king, so many things are considered. But the things that are considered today are changing. We must learn to say what things we cannot do, when we are in positions of authority. Those values of integrity, hard work, respect for values and commitment are important. If we put those on the back burner, then we would not end up the way things are. That is what I think; we no longer give respect to the home institution and when those institutions are broken down, you probably would have broken down leaders. It is something we have to look into urgently.
Tell us about your personal experience and how it worked for you
I am a product of more than three generations of leadership. I am privileged to have met my grandparents. In fact, I met my great grandfather on the paternal side. I think he died in 1974. I recall seeing him putting me on his lap, and coming from that background, the first thing is that you cannot soil the family name. There are so many eyes looking at you, you just cannot. Even if you are going to misbehave, you have to try to hide it so that nobody would know; you would still get caught anyway. So, when you have this kind of things behind you, you are from an environment that makes the home the main matter and then a product of people who never give up. Again, from the background that I came from, you are never too big for correction. No matter what you have, the focus is not on the material thing. It is an environment where the things you have can be disregarded when you misbehave. I think that has worked for me; an environment where people just take genuine interest in what would make you reduce your potential. I think that is what it is supposed to be.
Some people think that our youths are lazy. What is your view about the not-too-young-to-rule law?
That is the place of leadership. That is one of the things that we are eroding. If you look at the typical African society, once you have a sibling, they make a leader of you and you are responsible for that sibling, even if it is just one year between you. You take that sibling to school. Today, we are not even allowing our young people to grow. We are not even entrusting them with responsibilities. It is shocking to me, and I say that with every sense of awkwardness. We are getting to a stage where you have parents’ forum for university students. It is not about age, it is about the mental development. If you do not let them realise this from the early years, that they are responsible for their siblings; that they are always going to be there for them. We need to go back to those values. Many of us know the products of who we are; I wouldn’t say anyone is lazy. It is about who we are entrusting them with responsibilities and not letting them feel that everything would always be there for their taking. Our old parents and forefathers were rich in mature things but never gave it for free as an inheritance. This made their children believe in hard work as a way to making ends meet. So, I believe in trusting our young people with responsibilities. Giving them work within the context of responsibility.
These days, the things you hear are words like assurance and so on. What do you think about this?
That is where we have made them look. It is not their fault one bit. As leaders, we have failed them and the earlier we realise this, the better. We need to redirect them to the things that matter. Money has always been there but the older generation did not use it the way it is done now. Even children of the older generation of politicians were taught how to hold onto their heritage. We need to redirect our younger people to redirect our younger people to talk about the values that matter.
There are so many vices like yahoo going on among the young ones
It has a lot to do with social dynamics and it has always been. If you studied the social sciences, you know that these are the demands. These are people who know that there is a norm but do the opposite. However, if you now find that those who are deviants are now more than usual; say 80 per cent to 20 per cent, then something is wrong somewhere. So, this is a reflection of where we have taken the society to. The things that represent the soul of the community have changed.
What is the way forward?
If we are true to ourselves, that the virtue of hard work is still relevant and must be celebrated. If we are still true to ourselves, that respect is important; these are the things we must celebrate. But where we celebrate the things that are contrary to the things that we say we believe in, then it is clear that we are deceiving ourselves. Until we get back to those basics, sorry no deal.
The only thing that stands is the impact that you create and you keep recreating. There is hardly a Nigerian who doesn’t have a doctorate in national diagnostics. That is a course that is not taught in any university in the world. But we all know what the problems are and many times we are so much overwhelmed by the size of it. Most times, we think that until you are able to think it all through not knowing that you can break it into chunks. I am talking about the area of creating strategic thinkers. This is all within the framework of developing managerial effectiveness. If everything has to start and end with you, then you can’t get anything done. You need to raise people who can think like you do, think better and challenge what you think. That is what makes you think and your edge can be refined. If you raise people who cannot challenge what you come up with, then you cannot get better, even as a leader. Create people who can take decisions; who are not afraid of taking decisions. We also need to appreciate human resources management and not just financial management. It is important to help people utilise their resources, especially time, and as a leader that is your starting point. At the end of each day, never go to sleep except you have evaluated how much of what you set to do in a day, you have actually done. What is not done actually tells you how effective you are. You need to be self evaluative at the end of each day. These are dimensions of managerial effectiveness. Influence, impact and inspiring others are all important.