School of Government and Politics (SOGP) has trained more than 200 individuals in Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Rwanda and Burundi in transformational leadership skills.

Speaking at the end of a recent eight-week intensive training in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, Media Consultant to SOGP, Ugochukwu Uwajeh, said the nonprofit aims to raise transformational leaders in Africa.

Nigeria, for instance, has been struggling to get it right in the areas of leadership, national unity, and economy.

Africa’s most populous nation accounts for over 200 million people and available data shows that about 87 million Nigerians, or half the country’s population, live on less than U.S.$1.90 per day.

Corruption, according to economic analysts, has undermined economic progress and impeded policy changes required for Nigeria’s development.

‘The SOGP recognises the need to evolve the development and governance paradigm in Nigeria and Africa undergirded by genuine servant leadership in all arms of government’, the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) quoted Uwajeh as saying.

‘A leadership that is imbued with a sense of mission, engaging the machinery of government to achieve the cardinal objective of forging the institutional and inter-sectoral linkages.

‘This will help facilitate the design and delivery of public policies that engender accelerated, inclusive and integrated economic development on a sustainable basis’.

The nonprofit, it is understood, commenced the leadership training in November 2019, with the vision to develop transformational leaders in government and politics.

‘The SOGP management and alumni have driven nation-building conversations on national identity, politics and governance, sustainable development, and have served as a think tank for the government in policymaking’, Uwajeh added.

‘Some of SOGP annual programmes and activities include the “Statesman Series”. It is designed to leverage the experience and expertise of seasoned men and women with enduring legacies in the spheres of government and politics in building capacity for deepening good governance and charting a course for a better Nigeria’.

SOGP, according to the organisation, was established to prepare the next generation for governance, to develop leadership capacity as a solution to leadership crisis in Nigeria and other African countries.

Photo source: SOGP