By Olajide Hamzat
To get things done on a massive and impressive scale, a whole of things revolve around leadership. From intentions, decisions to actions, a right leadership understand the stakes, mobilize and motivate people and lead from the front. In today’s fast paced world, leadership has evolved to be participatory in nature. For a fact, it is no longer sufficient for leaders to sit idly while their subordinates do the hard stuff. Stage by stage, brick by brick, step by step, the right leader moves with the people, set the pace, engages with them, build the process and identify with their worries and concerns.
Whether in politics or in the corporate world, a participatory leader stands a far better chance of changing the status quo, transforming the system and reinventing the wheel of societal progress. By grasping the reality of the modern time, its uniqueness and style, such a leader stays on the line while avoiding the dangers and risks often associated with leading in an unpredictable environment. By understanding the perils and pitfalls of leadership in an atmosphere fraught with mutual mistrust and distrust, such a leader not only redefine leadership but remodel the process and rework on both the expectations and reality. For Amofin Beulah Adeoye, leadership is more than service and sacrifice.
As a follower of the late sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Amofin Adeoye believes in an evolutionary approach to leadership: a model that often trumps incremental step towards addressing a social and political phenomenon. Firmly and strongly, Amofin Adeoye opines that achievable and sustainable is only possible when people understand and voluntarily buy into various government programs backed by sound policy. He often cites examples of the free education policy implemented by the late sage as a test case particularly in transforming the entire western region into an intellectual landscape. On radio, he has expressed his admiration for the late Premier of the region and has even gone on to identify other prominent leaders on the global scale.
But the grandiose vision of a leader does not stop him/her from distractions and diversions and attacks by those who want to derail and disturb him. This writer noted, just last week that distraction can come in the form of outright invectives, outlandish falsehoods and fictitious fallacies. He added that through speculations, assumptions and rumors, distractions may ultimately serve the whims of the distractors. But he equally warned that an adaptive leader will know that when distractors go low, he and his team must exude confidence, radiate competence and demonstrate character by going higher and higher in all ramifications. In other words, when they go low, leaders on the other side of the spectrum must go high, as Michelle Obama once enthused. Aside distraction, diversion also played a significant role in derailing leaders from getting things done. By diverting or straying a leader from a course, less is done while more challenges piled up on his desk.
From his days as a student at the prestigious University of Ibadan to his time as a corporate legal luminary, Amofin Beulah Adeoye has learned the art of staying on course while cutting down the trees of distractions and diversions for the greater good of the people.
Olajide Hamzat writes about the various prospect and potential of Oyo state while projecting Amofin Beulah Adeoye as a solution provider, problem solver and creative, adaptive and innovative leader and thinker with compassion and empathy.
