Akinwumi Adesina @ 65: A Revolutionary Strategist For Africa’s Imperative Sociopolitical Zeitgeist, By Mark Adebayo

“The quality of a leader is reflected in the standards they set for themselves”. – Ray Kroc

He exudes grace and confidence. The kind of grace that emanates from a pristine destiny of divine assignment. His life, his background, his education, his intelligence, his inimitable integrity, and his disciplined commitment to excellence stand him out as a unique enigma in the constellation of Africa’s best.

Imagine him as the leader of any country in Africa!

His trademark ever-present smiles belly his stout intellectual stature. Imbued with a sharp academic mind, Professor Akinwumi Ayodeji Adesina exemplifies awesomesauce image of a go-getter with no room for excuses or failure. He always gets the job done even under the most austere circumstances.

As Mark Antony said of Julius Caesar that “He hath brought many captives home to Rome”, so has Akinwumi brought many laurels home to Africa, Nigeria and his esteemed family.

His never-say-die spirit has been his personal precept since his younger days when he had developed a studious academic discipline that made him the most brilliant student of his generation. At the University of Ife, later Obafemi Awolowo University, which, incidentally, is my almamater too, he beat the historic mystery of first class degree by becoming the first student to attain that feat at his economics department. His life is always about first class delivery wherever fate directs him. He proceeded to Purdue University, USA, for his PhD where he won the Outstanding PhD thesis award in Agricultural Economics in 1988. His life has always been about the pursuit of excellence. Only the best is good enough for Akinwumi Adesina.

An administrator par excellence, he works with ingenious capacity to solve the knottiest of challenges. His integrity is unassailable. It is neither faked nor embellished. Akinwumi does not just work for governments and institutions – he works for humanity. He serves humanity. His revolutionary mindset enables him to achieve the seemingly impossible wherever he serves, and to reach heights hitherto considered unattainable by many.

Imagine him as a leader of a country in Africa!

Peter Drucker once wrote that “Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things”. Professor Akinwumi Adesina exemplifies these two qualities geometric quantities. As a matter of fact, Africa has not been lucky to have good managers as leaders presiding in most African countries which is why the continent continually suffers from systemic anarchy and complex components of aggravated crises. A bad manager at the helm of a country as leader would automatically kill the potential of that country to develop. Our major bane in Africa!

Akinwumi has consistently demonstrated exceptional managerial and leadership excellence everywhere he has had the opportunity to serve. From 2011 to 2015 that he was Nigeria’s agriculture minister, he revolutionized the country’s agriculture sector with unprecedented reforms. He ingeniously developed and religiously implemented the electronic wallet system that significantly decimated the corruption regime that reigned supreme in the fertilizer value chain and he made sure that agricultural equipment at highly subsidized rates reached the deserving farmers who were the real end-users including dedicated mobile phone system to track distribution, inter alia. The result was astounding! Close to twenty million farmers were positively impacted with life changing transformations. It was the first time that Nigerian farmers experienced direct intervention by government to ease their burden. It was the first time ever that Nigerian consumers of farm produce became aware of a ministry of agriculture and what its mandate was. Never had there been such a direct impact on Nigeria’s agricultural potential that tremendously benefitted farmers and the general citizenry.

Imagine, for one moment, if he was the President!

He carries himself with a finesse of character that all great leaders in history possessed – a midas touch of leadership prestidigitation that brings to life what is dead in the care of others. Akinwumi Adesina raises leadership bars exponentially and then goes ahead to break that bar, raises it again and breaks it again and again. This is the reason why Akin, as he is fondly called by his friends and seniors, remains unbeatable in the quest for excellence wherever he is in action. He is a superlative administrator par excellence.

Imagine Akin as the leader of your country!

His leadership as President of the African Development Bank almost ten years ago has skyrocketed that Bank’s capital base thereby bumping up shareholders’ confidence in the Bank as never since its establishment 61 years ago.

Akinwumi Adesina rallied the 80-member countries of the Bank to boost the Bank’s general capital in 2019 from $93 billion to a whopping $208 billion. The African Development Bank, under Akinwumi’s presidency was particularly instrumental to preventing an unprecedented catastrophe hitting Africa through a direct intervention to the tune of $3 billion Covid-19 Social Bond, followed by a Crisis Response Facility of $10 billion! This critical and timely intervention was fundamentally responsible for saving Africa from the devastating effects of the ravaging Covid-19 pandemic. This was a major factor in how Africa managed the Covid-19 crises much better than the so-called first world countries who were caught napping when the pandemic imploded globally. All of these happened under the capable leadership of Akinwumi Adesina.

Imagine Africa as a country and he as the President!

A few years ago, I met a Zambian friend of mine in Madrid. Being of the same academics discipline of political anthropology, we always discussed a lot about Africa with regard to its politics and leadership. During a casual conversation, he said “Mark, Africa has snatched Prof from you guys”. I asked “Which Prof?” He replied “Akinwomy(sic) of course! I can’t understand why Nigeria is underutilizing that man.” I replied that “Africa only borrowed him, and when you borrow something you have to return it, isn’t it? We’ll get our Akinwumi back and put him to better use back home in due course.”

Akinwumi Adesina is an academic and administrative genius, a giant in the arena of creative leadership. A patriot of inimitable integrity and unblemished records of service. A visionary of gargantuan dimensions. He is a cross-generational hope harbinger for the Africa of our dreams that the old, the gen-Z and the coming generations can relate with because he represents all that there aspirations entail.

Akinwumi Ayodeji Adesina is a Promethean leadership revolutionary that every country in Africa requires in order to experience the ultrarapid socioeconomic and technological revolutions that can kickstart Africa on the march to stupendous all-round development. He is incorruptible, disciplined, consistent, patriotic, focused, competent, and committed to everything excellent and noble. He is as modest as they come, unlike many ostentatious African leaders who are only in power to mismanage their countries’ resources to satisfy their insatiable appetite for avarice and autocratic mentality.

His integrity is so spotless that Akin doesn’t require any detergents or ‘kongi’ soap and water to lauder his image. His noble persona is self-evident – a product of decades of disciplined commitment to the highest ideals of justice, equity, decency, selflessness, and humanity.

He is devoid of any baggage of self-contradictory image. He needs no mendacious publicity gimmick to become relevant to the most sacred aspirations of the regular African who has been denied the opportunity to experience sterling leadership over the years.

Just imagine if this guy was your country’s leader!

Professor Akinwumi Ayodeji Adesina is his parents’ biggest gift to Nigeria, Nigeria’s greatest gift to Africa, and Africa’s most treasured gift to the world. As he clocks 65 next month February 6th and completes his second tenure as AfDB’s President later in the year, we cannot afford to lose the opportunity to commit him to more work before age permanently retires him.

Peter Block once wrote that “Change from the top down happens at the will and whim of those below.” We, the people, Africans generally, have an onerous duty to discover the Akinwumi Adesina in each of our countries and commit them to doing what they know how to do best – outstanding leadership!

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Mark Adebayo is a published author, newspaper columnist, media practitioner, and strategy consultant. He is the current national Spokesperson for the Coalition of United Political Parties, CUPP, in Nigeria.