by Adetoye Oremosu

The US Chapter of the Goodluck Jonathan Leadership Center (GJLC) held its interactive session on Saturday, September 13, 2014. This is its second event after the one it organized during the President’s visit to Washington DC to attend the US Africa Leaders Summit. The event which took place in the large meeting room of the beautiful South Bowie Branch Library, 15301 Hall Rd, Bowie, Maryland, was sparingly attended. The meeting was anything but beautiful as the tardiness of attendees including key executives left much to desired. In the usual Nigerian fashion, we started over an hour later than scheduled. This inspired even less confidence in a dubiously named organization whose vision is to “raise great leaders within the Nigerian Society through leadership training and re-education initiatives that develop effective capacity in government offices beginning at the local Government Council level”.

“The organizational purpose of the Goodluck Jonathan Leadership Center, Inc. is to establish training programs designed to improve the leadership skills and effectiveness of government officials from third world and developing countries.

This program will focus on individuals who are currently serving in local government or will be taking positions within local governments. We intend to persuade our government to partner with us to invest in building human capacity within our country as a long term and ongoing effort to liberate intellect within our borders.” With annual board membership dues at $1000 and regular membership at $500, it will be interesting to see how many members join up.

It was obvious to me that there was no real understanding of the problem(s) they were planning to solve nor did they have clear training objectives. They also did not have a clear training curricula and neither did they have facilitators for the said unprepared training. From the direction of discussions, I would later discover that the true purpose of this interactive session was to drive membership growth. The meeting with a prayer by a pastor for God’s guidance after our motley crew of journalists, IT specialist, accountant and business people (a grand total of 8 of us) was called to order by the Chairman, Mr. Samuel S Iyapo. I doubt that God was in attendance but that’s just my opinion. The Chairman gave his opening address and we were introduced to an incomplete organization chart which they hoped to fill with people in attendance and others we would recruit. And as an afterthought the Secretary, Ms O. V. Davis, asked us to introduce ourselves in order to ascertain the roles we would naturally fit in. When asked about training experience, only an accountant raised his hands and after some querying, someone suggested that he could train because accountants are naturally trainers. Really?!

As I sat in this meeting, I could further see that there was no altruistic purpose to this organization. Not that I was in the least bit surprised but it would be pleasant to be surprised sometimes. Neither did they really care about the state of the different local governments or their problems. The first thing to do before starting any training program is to interview/research and find out skills gap(s) and based on these offer training to bridge the identified gap(s). I say this as a former head of training for a leading software company in West Africa and someone who has prepared training curricula and conducted training for Staffs of several multinationals and some Nigerian Federal Government parastatals. It is presumptuous to think that even two local governments in the same State have the same problems/issues or that the solution to their problems is some half-thought-out training program located in the US. Generic trainings in these instances rarely achieve any significant or meaningful results.

The GJLC claims to be non-partisan. After some reflection, I had to conclude that the name of this organization has been strategically chosen not to reflect an endorsement or admiration of the Goodluck Jonathan government but to align with the government in power since their target audience is the Nigerian government. Its ilk reeks of another opportunist organization seeking to milk the government of resources that would otherwise go to similar other wasteful and meaningless projects. An executive even let it leak that the name of the organization would probably change if Goodluck Jonathan were to lose the 2015 elections.

As they wrote in their mediocre designed membership form, “The goal of the Center in USA is to sponsor initiatives that develop effective capacity in government offices beginning at the local Government Councils. Such a tall order! not [sic] an impossible task!!” I agree that it is a tall order and it is not impossible task but I have serious reservations about this being the group that will point the sails of Nigeria’s ship away from the disastrous rocks its currently heading for. Futhermore, in my opinion, it is an oxymoron to put Goodluck Jonathan and leadership in the same sentence although he occupies the office of President. This may be as a result of perception more than fact, even if so, but what really is the game of politics about, if not perception. Like many Nigerians, I am yet to be impressed by his Excellency’s presidency, hopefully we’ll be sometime soon.

The Goodluck Jonathan Leadership Center was started in Nigeria in 2011 by Prof. F. A. Durosinmi-Etti (OFR) and is the current chairman of its Board of Trustees. The organization currently has chapters in Nigeria, UK, Canada and the US. In its bylaws, the Goodluck Jonathan Leadership Center USA is to be incorporated under the laws of the District of Columbia as a nonprofit organization. The Center will be organizing a media dinner to host His Excellency, President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan in New York, on September 23rd when he will be attending the UN General Assembly. The charade continues.

Emmanuel Chidiogo