Akwa Ibom News Online Commentary

The Nation Newspaper of January 8, 2011 quoted one of the South - South governors of saying that being a governor is the toughest job in the world.

Succeeding as a governor has to do with leadership. It is a known fact that once you step into an office for the first time, there is bound to be challenges. Most of times, people getting into office for the time fail to understand the big differences between their role in the office as opposed to the people that work for them.

The first challenge a new leader will face is that of being a formal leader and not informal one. A formal leader is someone who coworkers will recognize as someone they can go to with a problem while informal leader is someone who is recognized as being the leader in title. As a governor, he should see himself as a formal leader.

The formal leader needs to remember that just because they have the authority to give orders that does not mean that they are going to stick to the spirit of the order. This can make it very difficult for a leader to be able to accomplish any of his or her goals.

Leadership is a paramount process for effective governance. The success and failure of any leader is attributed to its leadership. The style of leadership adopted by a governor has positive influence on his subordinates and the development of his state. The essence of leadership style is to influence people to become followers. Style here refers to what the leader does and how he behaves at a particular time. Leadership is the process of influencing people to strive willingly for the achievement of group or organization goal in the most effective and efficient manner. It is the ability to direct people through effective communication to achieve group objective(s).

Leadership is a relationship between those who aspire to lead and those who chose to follow. Sometimes the relationship is one-to-one. Sometimes it’s one-to-many. But regardless of whether the number is one or one thousand, leadership is a relationship.

The question now is, what do followers look for and admire in a leader, someone whose direction they would willingly follow?

They want leaders who are honest, forward-looking, competent and inspiring. What this adds up to is personal credibility. Credibility is still the foundation of leadership. The question now is, does the person representing you have the required credibility? See the just concluded primaries, delegates want and voted for a person has credibility and worth trusting.

People want to have faith and confidence in their leaders. They want to believe that a leader’s word can be trusted, that a leader is personally excited and enthusiastic about the direction in which we are headed, and that a leader has the knowledge and skill to lead. If people don’t believe in the messenger, they won’t believe the message. This is the problem we are having in Nigeria. Most of our elected and appointed officers do not possess these qualities, hence they disappointed us.

Certainly the context of leadership has changed, but given what we have all experienced, we have come to see how necessary it is to be reminded of some fundamentals that do not change. Leadership is the process of influencing followers to perform their duties willingly, competently and enthusiastically for the attainment of group objective in the most effective manner. This definition implies that the leader does not stand behind a group to push and to produce; rather, he places himself before the group as he facilitates progress, and inspires the group to achieve group goals.

Leadership is concerned with influence emanating from power and authority derived either from the individuals position in the organization or from his personal characteristics. If subordinates lose faith in the leadership’s capacity, or if the leader’s powers fail, then the leader may fall. If that were the case, then the organization has also failed in attaining its goals and there will be no effective relationship between the leader and the subordinates.

Regardless of how a leader or governor rises to power, the strength of their leadership or governance plays a huge role in their success. The personality of the new leader will influence how he or she wields their new found authority. Many times, you will hear the phrase "the power has gone to his head". This is because The Boss often feels that they have much more at stake and therefore a lot more to lose. Stress levels will increase dramatically when there is more at stake, and stress will change the personality style of many people, which in turn can have an adverse effect on a management style. Often times, people will go with what has worked in the past, be it a technique they had used as an informal leader, or when they had a lesser position as they currently hold, but these techniques are often ineffective.

The authentic leader makes it clear as to what he or she wants and asks for it up front. This leader may have a strong or weak personality, but makes their expectations very clear. The benefit to this style is that everyone knows exactly where they stand, and situations will rarely spiral out of control. There are many obstacles that a new leader will face as he or she step into the role of a spearhead. But as long as he or she has a good understanding of interpersonal dynamics, as well as their own leadership styles and follow their own personal strengths, he or she can become a very successful leader in no time at all.

I think to over come these challenges, the governor must: look at the art of governance as a collective responsibility, he must be reasonably flexible, adopt situational leadership style most of the time, delegation of authority is highly requires. Somewhere along the way we collectively seemed to understand that more things can be done when we split the work amongst a team of people. greediness should be avoided, see some critics as a tool to strengthen himself, should not limit his consultation to only people he has influence upon, choose the person he can trust and relies on as his deputy, don’t accept deputy from the party hence you will not trust the person. With all these tools in his hands, he will leadership as having to do with service to the people and being a governor will turn to be some thing of leisure.

The Nigerian Governors’ Forum should provide some outstanding Governors like Chief Dr. Godswill Akpabio the opportunity of letting their follow governors know their secret of success.

What a mighty Governor we have? Ibibio nation endorsed him, Annang nation endorsed him, Eket nation endorsed him, Oron nation endorsed him, Opposition bow before him, every body want him, Heaven and Earth blessed him; tribes in Nigeria honoured him, A man with foresight, lover of development, experience in governance, grassroots’ politician, promise keeper, man with forgiven heart. What a mighty Governor we have? - Chief Godswill Akpabio

Ekerete John Ekerete

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