By Giwa Murtala Omotola-Moore*
Borrowing from the word of Peter Drucker, “Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results not attributes.” This leadership excerpt is a true reflection of Senator Adetokunbo Mukhail Abiru, who is celebrating his dazzling 59 years today. It is that time of the year again to celebrate a hard thinker. A man of substance. A man of vision. A man on a mission to impact his environment positively. A man of purpose who lives but not by happenstance or impulse.
It is common in our clime to eulogize and for those who believes in one’s leadership to be at their best performances, increasing the tempo of their art to culminate on a day like this for leaders and people of high political positions. One can’t blame them. It is their way of validation and attestation.
Since 3:00am that I wake up have read numerous prismatic nugget written about Senator Tokunbo Abiru, the Senator representing Lagos East Senatorial District from those who vividly believe in his leadership style. Most of them have channelled their energy on how well he has committed and performed as Senator representing the good people of Lagos East.
Senator Tokunbo Abiru known with the moniker “DoingGood”. His birthday always presents some of us a chance to reflect on his past, juxtapose his present in an attempt to peep into a future that promises to be more glorious if his antecedents, providence and the workings of his mind are anything to go by. Without any iota of doubt, the 59th birthday of Senator Tokunbo Abiru worth celebrating considering his personal achievements as well as meaningful impacts in private and public sectors.
There are two significant qualities that citizens often seek in their leaders, namely, competence and integrity. The ability to deliver change and promise, in terms of potential excellence and campaign pledge, is both the stuff of good leadership and people’s expectations.
From his current performance at the wheel of legislstive power, to the eminence of his previous role as MD/CEO of Polaris Bank, to the shrewdness of his judgments on national issues, and his ability to change the narrative in Lagos East Senatorial District, Senator Tokunbo Abiru is certainly a compassionate and a dynamo leader. There are plenty of reasons to support this assessment.
The DoingGood Senator was born on March 25, 1964. An indigene of Ikorodu, he attended Government College Lagos, Baptist Academy Lagos for advanced level studies and Lagos State University graduating in economics in 1988. He holds a B. Sc Economics and is a fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN) and Honourary Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria (CIBN). He is an alumnus of Harvard Business School and Lagos Business School executive education programmes and is happily married to Mrs Feyisola Abiru, CEO of H & Y Ltd, an industrialist with a thriving furniture industry in Ikorodu.
His working career took him through several institutions including Deloitte (formerly Akintola Williams and Co), Guaranty Trust Bank Plc, First Atlantic Trust Bank and First Bank of Nigeria Plc before his appointment as Lagos State Commissioner for Finance in 2011 under the administration of Governor Babatunde Raji Fashola SAN.
As Commissioner for Finance, he led the state’s floating of an N80billion bond earning it the EMEA Finance Best Local Currency Bond Award for 2012. His efforts led to a significant increase in Land Use Charge generated by the state government and the widening of the tax net to improve revenue generation by 2013.
He returned to First Bank of Nigeria Plc in 2013 as Executive Director after a very successful two-year period in the Lagos State Cabinet. Abiru, who has more than three decades of experience in the financial sector was appointed in July 2016 by the CBN as Group Managing Director to lead the turnaround of Skye Bank in a bid to preserve the stability of the Nigerian Financial System, a critical assignment which he successfully accomplished leading to the birth of the new and transformed Polaris Bank Ltd. He has successfully positioned Polaris Bank as a leading, profitable, digitally enabled and systemically important Tier 2 bank in Nigeria.
At the time of Abiru’s appointment, the bank’s ratings were abysmally low in all ramifications. Its non-performing loans were already 80%, which according to analysts, was far above the regulatory standard. Other prudential and adequacy ratios of the defunct bank abysmally performed much below the thresholds of the apex bank.
Under his leadership, the financial institution, now named Polaris Bank, has been successfully restructured. In the first quarter of 2020, the bank posted a profit after tax of over N18 billion despite the difficult conditions imposed by COVID-19, a deadly virus that forced the federal government to lock down economies of the most affected states for about two months. In the 2019 financial year, the bank posted N27.35 billion profit after tax, which rivalled what banks that are not in crisis made.
He’s simply a man of substance. The DoingGood Senator enduring power is his ability and willpower to allow those around him to imagine themselves as better individuals. His capacity to propel people to a fresh interpretation and perspective on how things can be done better stands out as one of his trademarks and imprints. His birthday therefore provides an opportunity to reflect on the seemingly vast distance between the history we have seen in Lagos East Senatorial District.
What the DoingGood Senator brings to the table, his personal biography, the ambitious and tenacious ways of doing things can serve as a bridge between past and contemporary reality in Lagos East. This becomes more apt within the purview that providence, destiny and God’s design seems to have positioned him as a leader whose rhetoric, vision and mission framed his immediate environment as a patchwork of diverse communities that grow as they recognize the common ground of citizenship and dignity that should unite them.
He remains one of the most brilliant, fertile minded, smart and incisive political actors around. Robustly exposed, diligently educated with a global and contemporary viewpoint to tackle any kind of intellectual intricacies associated with a modern society. He is meticulous, intelligent, passionate and workaholic, a man of balanced cognate experience in both the private and public sectors and a thoroughbred technocrat. He is so consistent in his drive, yet you will find him as humble as they come.
DoingGood Senator is a man of focus, drive, zeal and determination. He does not court cheap popularity or mass revalidation neither does he fancy unnecessary garrulous presence. Showmanship of appearances is not part of his lifestyle. For him, exhibitionism as a way of spinning public acceptability is a sign of weakness that is akin to covering personal inadequacies.
Shortly after his inauguration as the Senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria on the 15th December, 2020, Abiru commissioned an extensive NEEDS ASSESSMENTS to gather empirical data on the needs of the people in order of urgency and priorities.
The Human-Centred Design Approach he engaged brought the people into the decision-making mix and further endeared him to the people at the grassroots. The starling findings of the NEEDS ASSESSMENTS formed the basis of his interventions across the 98 wards in the 16 Local Governments and Local Council Development Areas in the last 15 months in the saddle.
In response to the agony of many households especially the vulnerable members of the Lagos East who were badly hit by the devastating impacts of the Corona-Virus pandemic, Abiru launched COVID-19 Financial Assistance Scheme for widows, aged, unemployed youth, Persons with Physical disabilities and women in the district.Not fewer than 2500 vulnerable people are getting direct credit transfers on a monthly basis.
He also set up liaison offices in Epe, Kosofe, Ibeju-Lekki and Somolu to complement the main constituency in Ikorodu. This was done to make access to constituency services easier.
In the area of education, the #DoingGood Senator has done well. Abiru facilitated 24 classrooms with furniture and modern instructional materials with 16 toilets and solar-powered borehole at Aga Primary School in Ikorodu.
In Ibeju-Lekki, RCM Primary School, Iwerekun also got blocks of classrooms courtesy of the Senator . Ditto for Ajelogo Primary School in Kosofe and Igbobi Junior High School, where an ICT center was facilitated.
Six hundred brilliant but indigent students in tertiary institutions also benefited from a bursary scheme set up under the Senator’s Foundation, Tokunbo Abiru Constituency Team (TACT) Foundation.
In Epe, Senator Abiru facilitated a 960-spectator capacity mini stadium equipped with basketball and volleyball courts and rehabilitated the entire popular Oluwo market and increased the number of shops from 259 to 319 comprising lock-up shops, open sheds and 48 toilets.
The performing Senator also facilitated the construction of a 40-bed Health facility and Dental Centre at the Ikorodu Campus of the Lagos State Polytechnic (LASPOTECH), now known as the Lagos State University of Science and Technology. A 200-solar-powered street lights were attracted to the institution.
In the same manner, another 30-Bed Health facility at Mascara HealthCentre in Agboiyi Ketu LCDA was also provided to the people. Likewise, another 40-bed is under construction at Isiu, Ikorodu North LCDA.
The Senator also facilitated the supply and installation of transformers in several locations across the Lagos East Senatorial District.
To further spread prosperity across the district, in April, the Senator will unveil N300Million Constituency Intervention Revolving Loan Scheme at a very concessional Interest rate of 6 percent per annum for the benefit of MSMEs, Artisans and tradesmen in Lagos East.
The legislator has also set-up the Senator Abiru Innovation Lab (SAIL) in partnership with a renowned technology and Social Enterprise company, The Co-creation Hub (Cc-HUB) in Lagos to train youths in the senatorial district on relevant digital and innovation skills, and build the best entrepreneurs that can compete in the ever-dynamic global economy.
The audacity of the DoingGood Senator perseverance is something to behold. His character in pursuit of worthy goals is always steady and steely. He’s emotionally and mentally stable. No matter the challenges, Senator Abiru is always determined to surmount it all. You don’t usually see him buckle under pressure. To him, the difficulty of a task is not a viable excuse to avoid it. This is the kind of mindset and spirit leaders need to set the society on a strong footing. Abiru is a very principled minded individual. He is astute, sanguine and with a very discerning spirit properly warehoused in a tender minded heart. He is pleasant to be with. Very affable, even-tempered, mild-mannered and highly cosmopolitan but value cultures and traditions, he is loved by traditional leaders, they call him in Yoruba “Omo Agba” meaning Son of an elderly.
He has a very strong austere quality that makes for firmness of purpose and solidness of commitment. He has specious cognition with impeccable reasoning. He is extremely witty and mercurial. He combines brilliant exceptional skills at achieving success in all aspects of his endeavors with resilience of spirit. He is a non-conformist and an interruptor of unhealthy status-quo. Rarely do we find men willingly engage in hard, solid thinking for the betterment of self and humanity. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing hurts much more than having to do critical thinking. That’s why many are big in quantity but very small in quality, with plans that move on the horizontal plane of time rather than on the vertical plane of eternity. Resultant of which many are just Lilliputian in substance.
The DoingGood Senator is different from the pack. He’s a thinker, a doer and a man of substance. He is not a periphery thinker and neither is he of low mentality stock. His foray into the political arena is for a just cause of uplifting humanity. He was and has always been very comfortable in his private undertakings before venturing to the public sector.
In the DoingGood Senator, I see a man who is not satisfied with his level of yesterday and wants to do more today. He always desires to do more. And these burning desires drive him to deliver more for the people. He often says to us that “you must do good today, tomorrow and always”. Maybe thats where the DoingGood name came from. He dislikes you giving excuses for failures even though he believes no one is perfect, he love team work. He is not just an asset to the people of Ikorodu, Lagos East or State. He is an asset to humanity that is still getting better and unraveling at 59.
I hope he takes a short break from service today in other to celebrate his birthday. I wish him peace, good health, and happiness. Congratulations and happy birthday my leader, mentor and father.
Giwa Murtala Omotola-Moore, a Political Scientist, a trained Public Policy expert, writes from Epe Lagos State
