By Ali Elias
Life offers us priceless insights or secrets into how to run or redeem our lives. Unfortunately most times we are emotionally trapped or involved in the popular chant gooal, the obvious objective or aim, as in AFCON, obscuring the hidden lesson that should be the game changer.
The Ivory Coast team, the ultimate winner of the just concluded AFCON 2023 football competition, offers us one such not-so-hidden insight: Change the leadership.
The ivorian team had struggled and fumbled all through the group stage that “by the final whistle of that disastrous outing against Equatorial Guinea they required a series of results in the groups to go their way in other for the hosts, host with three points and a minus three gold difference, to advance to the round of 16 as one of the three lucky losers” reports ESPN.
At this point the Ivory Coast Football Federation could not see how they would move ahead with this kind of outcome in the group stage except at the cost of really fooling themselves not just as the Hosts but as one of Africa’s football powerhouse. There and then, in the middle of the competition, they took a decisive step, which was to part ways- sack, their head coach, Frenchman Jean Louis Gasset.
That’s it. They bundled out their leader, the head coach. He was not taking them in the direction of their desired goal and vision as a nation. Their decision was prompt, it was decisive, it was smooth; whatever the outcome may be.
As ESPN further reported, ” It’s at this point that Gasset’s erstwhile assistant Emerse Faé, a 40-cap utility man for the national side during his playing career, steps firmly into centre-stage, as the Ivorian Football Federation turned to him to hold the tiller to see out the rest of the campaign. Now, the Ivorians are referring to Faé as the “Special One,” even though he’d never managed a full senior competitive game before Jan. 29”
This decisive change, this prompt action, miraculously unfolded the wings, the potentials, and the fire power of the Ivorian team; and they took flight into the air soaring to their ultimate height, the AFCON glory!
In the course of their flight they dropped Sadio Mané’s Senegal in the quarter finals and left them to wonder, What happened? It was then that it became clear to all that a new and fearful spirit had entered the camp of the Ivorian Elephants. Next to feel their hard shove, even with 10 men, was the Democratic Republic of Congo in the semi-final.
The Ivorians were charging forward, and their wings, much like the extinct dinosaurs, had become so emboldened, regardless of who might be standing in their way. In that unstoppable run, they made the almighty Super Eagles of Nigeria bite the dust.
The magic of an incisive leadership. There is no other way to deal with a non-performing team: Change the leadership
Now let’s turn to another case in point that advises us through a priceless insight. This time it’s to do with UBA (United Bank for Africa) and Tony Elumelu, or the merger between UBA and Standard Trust Bank (STB).
As an insider then, I can say, from all the happenings, that the so called merger of UBA with STB was rather a case of negative takeover, where a small entity STB acquires the bigger entity UBA. In this case, UBAs name was retained in consideration of its brand equity.
UBA then, contrary to what is held in public space as one of the three big commercial banks in Nigeria, others are First bank and Union bank, was anything but big, an empty shell of itself, except judging by its highbrow highrise headquarter and extensive branch network. Other than that the bank seemed surely for the rocks. The leadership were lacking in ideas what to do to move this emasculated banking octopus forward. Bereft of idea, they were just managing all the parameters used to know whether a bank is healthy or not, unknown to the banking public.
It was begging for a change of leadership, a bold and incisive leadership. Just like Nigeria
Then came in Tony Elumelu with his STB bank team. In a short while the tired sleeping banking elephant was roused from its comatose position. It shook itself vigorously off the dust of mismanagement and charged forward.
Today the hitherto comatose bank who’s destiny seemed headed for a dire and unpalatable end is standing like a giant, a giant oak tree who’s root and branches are far reaching and still spreading all over the nooks and crannies of the country, with strong presence in many African countries and Europe.
What changed? The magic of a focused and transformative leadership. Simply, change the leadership.
Many more examples about where a change in management or leadership is the magic wand that breathed life into, and resuscitated otherwise dead or dying entities and organizations
Is Nigeria any less in the position?
Nigeria has the potentials, an awesome one at that. Like the Ivorian AFCON team. Like the old emasculated UBA. The capacity of our country, both within and outside, is not in question but it has been bedeviled by incompetent and unfocussed leadership.
What to do?
Change the leadership. Even if it calls for going the way the Ivorians did it; after giving the coach sufficient time to prove that his tactics and direction are worthwhile if it proves obvious that it’s not producing or going to produce the desired result, change the leadership.