Academy trains 94 on sustainable leadership

As part of efforts to transform communities for a sustainable future by imparting leadership skills and values to the younger generation, the Quality Health, Safety, Environment and Sustainability (QHSES) Leadership Academy has graduated 94 students after successfully completing their six-month course of 36 modules.

Speaking at the inaugural convocation ceremony, the initiator of the academy, Jamiu Badmos, said the academy was his Personal Social Responsibility (PSR) project.

“This tuition-free academy is driven by my passion for humanity and envisioned to develop sustainable leaders who strive to have positive and lasting impacts on people, organisations and society through professional excellence, integrity and spirit of service.

“It is critical in life that before you can be successful as a business, a government and a society, the people, planet and prosperity are very important. That is why sustainability hinges on these three Ps,” said Badmos, who is an enterprise risk management professional.

Keynote speaker and dean of Leadership at Covenant University, Prof. Charles Ogbulogo, stressed that governance, in many parts of the world was failing, hence “professional institutes like this have a very strong force in reversing the trend that is making us very uncomfortable.”

He added: “I believe leaders of tomorrow, who will be sustainable, will show a lot of commitment; they are those who are going to be very strong on the ground; they will not be deterred by encumbrance. They are not going to be thinking about their own personal comfort. Leadership is about sacrifice and that sacrifice is what makes sure that the next person looks up to you because as a leader, you become a role model.”

Ogbulogo noted that the country appears to have lost all variables and parametres to measure leadership.

“The first principle of leadership is security. If we cannot guarantee security, that’s not leadership. The second principle is welfare, which deals with the basic necessity of survival. If people are not able to feed their families, we have also lost it. Then the next is territorial integrity; the map of Nigeria shows we are withdrawn; we no longer know the boundaries of our country. So that shows we have also lost leadership,” he explained.

One of the graduands, David Olojo, said the programme has exposed him to detailed information on QHSES.

“I have been in Health and Safety for a number of years but there are not a lot of concept I am knowledgeable about hence this programme has been really helpful,” he said.