The Platform highlights national development, productivity

The 2019 edition of The Platform was held at the Covenant Place, Iganmu, Lagos, yesterday, with the Chairman Board of Directors of First Bank of Nigeria, Ibukun Awosika, stressing the need for national unity.

The theme of the event was ‘The Drivers, Enablers and Obstacles to our Growth.’

Awosika, whose speech was greeted by a standing ovation, noted: “When there is pain in one part of the country, it has to be our collective pain. Let’s look at ourselves in the face and tell the truth to each other – we are one nation! We are one country!”

The event, designed to facilitate growth in the areas of personal capacity, productivity and national development within Nigeria, featured other speakers like Founder and President of the African Institution of Technology, Dr. Ndubuisi Ekekwe; Founder and Chief Consultant of B Adedipe Associates Limited, Dr. Biodun Adedipe and an expert on strategy, globalisation and emerging markets, Dr. Anil Gupta.

Oyemade told participants: “The event, which was later named The Platform, was conceived in 2007 as an offshoot of a small seminar that I used to run when I was a student at the University of Lagos.

“It was designed to bring experts and inspirational figures from different walks of life together, for them to share their expertise, knowledge, experience and challenges with the purpose of inspiring, educating and challenging people into greater heights in terms of enterprise development that was our first thought as a way of celebrating May 1, which is workers’ day.

“So, the initial thought when we had the first Platform, which was May 1, was to celebrate workers’ day.

“Then on October 1, we later added another event and this was targeted at national development. The idea behind it was to start a public conversation over the set ideas we believed could push our nation forward.

“This is why we called it The Platform which was simply a stage to promote ideas. We believed that if certain progressive ideas entered the public consciousness and conversations, they would eventually become public policies.”