PUTTING OUR BEST FOOT FORWARD

Being the Text of the Public Sector Keynote Speech Presented by Governor Alex C. Otti, OFR at the 2026 Leadership Conference Organised by the Oxford Global Think Tank on Tuesday, November 3, 2026, in Abuja

Protocol

1. Economic growth, social prosperity and the attainment of other critical development parameters rest largely on the quality and disposition of public sector governance. Poverty, institutional collapse and the unfortunate chain of events that inevitably lead to the erosion of sovereign authority have a common foundation in weak and dysfunctional leadership. Development has never been accidental; it is the primary function of leadership — the result of deliberate planning, dynamic execution, and the cultivation of long-term partnerships that expand the frontiers of opportunities for sustained prosperity. History, scientific research, and social observation all point to one enduring truth: development is driven by the conscious resolve of forward-looking individuals to hold the ladder for others to escape the indignity of poverty and servitude.
2. The principal role of the elites in every civilisation, whatever the individual political alliances of the members, is to guide the rhythm of events by minimising channels of discontent, stimulating economic opportunities and ultimately, creating an incentive system that encourages appetite for enterprise and faith in the possibilities of the future. As leaders in different frontlines of endeavours, those who enjoy the privilege of public trust are duty-bound to be attentive to the lessons of history and the associated dangers of indifference. The essence of power, be it of the economic or social variety, is not the preservation of self-interest but life-long service to the community. When, however, those who enjoy the blessings of access to opportunities lose sight of the social and economic realities around them, what follows is alienation and widespread acts of desperation. The elites are effectively the principal architects of a society’s destiny; their actions and inaction determine the ebb and flow of activities; when they make the right decisions, prosperity follows, opportunities multiply, and optimism grows. When, however, they fail to incentivise productivity, the consequences most times are far-reaching for everyone. Evidently, it is more prudent for those who pull the levers of power to show more than a passing interest in the order of events, for they know better than most the path that leads to prosperity and the road to hell.
3. Let me, on this note, distinguished ladies and gentlemen, bring my profound gratitude to my dear sister, Prof Arunma Oteh, OON, the founder of the Oxford Global Think Tank (OGTT), for the sacrifice and efforts to host this conference for the second year running. Thank you especially for assembling some of the best minds in public service, private sector, frontier institutions and the community of change drivers to lead the conversations and direct our attention to the fundamental benchmarks for calibrating development. I want to thank the distinguished professor for her abiding faith in the promise of our land. I am particularly impressed with the focus on leadership, for that is at the heart of our frustrations. I am glad that this year, just like last year, the conversation remains on the importance of knowledge in guiding leadership consciousness. It is fulfilling to note that many of us appreciate the magnitude of challenges that we face and the window of opportunities that have been opened by the rapid shift in technological possibilities, geopolitical rebalancing, economic reconfiguration, and demographic changes around the world. Our job, going forward, will be to identify how to reposition our institutions to optimise these advantages for enduring and widespread prosperity; clearly, this is something only an informed and patriotic elite community can understand and take steps to actualise. May I also express my delight with the focus on artificial intelligence (AI) and the prospects it holds for the realisation of outcomes that are aligned to the long-term socioeconomic interests of our nation(s).
4. I would like to structure my intervention today around ways of strengthening public sector leadership for sustained impact on critical development frontlines. Recall that I had begun this address by making a direct reference to the role of the elites in shaping the destiny of society. This is especially true in public sector leadership where policy decisions, institutional management and investment choices drive incentive systems and behavioural patterns of the population. It is for this reason that the torchbearers of every civilisation are obliged to insist that those who aspire to positions of public importance must possess the intellectual acuity to consistently make informed decisions, the restraint to guard against the perils of recklessness and the courage to make tough calls, even at the risk of their jobs. While it is beyond dispute that we have several individuals who have achieved remarkable success in the service of our national community, it is also unsettling that others are yet to come to a full awareness of our debt to society; a responsibility to define the character of leadership. Either for reasons of ignorance or plain indifference or perhaps fear of the unknown, many persons of influence are no longer interested in what happens in the public governance space. The inescapable truth, however, is that a bad system, one orchestrated and sustained by ignorant, corrupt, or insensitive leadership, hurts everyone. Consider the financial misery that arises from private provision of goods and services that the public sector is best suited to offer, say water supply and electricity. A regular person may struggle to appreciate why they should waste their time voting in an election, study the manifesto of candidates, or perhaps attend a town hall meeting,g but the privilege of absence is removed from those who ought to know better. To help your decision-making, quickly compare the cost of running a private autonomous infrastructure network where everything is self-provided with the efficiency of having a robust public utilities and infrastructure system.
5. The prevalence of corruption, institutional decay, policy implementation failures, skills deficits in the civil service, resistance to reform, insecurity, and chronic infrastructure dysfunction cannot be interpreted as isolated challenges; they are symptoms of a deeper crisis in the public sector governance ecosystem. To address these age-old and evergreen problems, one must appreciate their origin and the eventual dominance in the service delivery architecture. My theory is that our failures began with the elites losing sight of their role as guardians and gatekeepers. Consider the civil service, for instance. How did an institution founded as the engine of policy implementation, service delivery, and objective advisory support to government gradually decline into a vehicle for political compensation, patronage, and administrative redundancy? The answer lies in the quality of people attracted to the service and the fact that many who really know their onions left the system long ago. One can also ask the same questions of the vehicles that once carried our national pride and how suddenly they disappeared and never returned, say the national shipping line and the Nigerian Airways? Think about the losses in terms of job numbers, household income, and public sector revenue. It gets more unsettling when one realises that across the world, similar institutions and vehicles are still active, serving the population and stirring a sense of national pride. Shall we talk about hundreds of abandoned economic assets littered across the country, aborted reforms, and a plethora of policies that are inconsistent with urgent national development priorities? How about the blind stealing of our collective patrimony, the conspiracy to cheat and milk the system for private gains, and the development setbacks that follow such a tragedy of decision-making? Here, my diagnosis is that these unfortunate events come down to the elites losing sight of what really matters.
6. We may have derailed, but the advantage of conferences like this is the platform it provides for the reassessment of priorities and the opportunity to turn over a new leaf. Our assignment at the end of today’s event is to return home, chew on what we have learnt, and identify how technology can help us in our role as elders in the African community square setting. How can we leverage the marvel of artificial intelligence to track corruption and punish actors for bad judgment? How can the tools of AI be applied in the training and operational effectiveness of civil servants, drive institutional efficiency, expand the generation and management of public revenue, and eventually build the confidence of our people in the foundational idea of government as a force for good? This event, as I understand it, has been set up to awaken us to the opportunities we are currently missing for reasons of inattentiveness. The impact of this conference would therefore be measured by what we do with the awareness we have acquired within this period.
7. To be clear, I appreciate that we have in this room real changemakers striving to lift their communities and expand the sea of opportunities for everyone. A few of you are patriotically driving the campaign for mass participation in the democratic process, raising questions about the management of public sector revenue and seeking to bring millions of excluded individuals and households into the network of technology services highway. I congratulate you individually and collectively for appreciating the intersection of privileges and responsibility, and for the generosity of sharing the footprints of your journey with all of us. I would, however, respectfully invite anyone yet to make the connection between the quality of public sector governance and the lived reality of the population to pay more attention. Those of us in the private sector are encouraged to recognise that the fortunes of the private and public sectors are inextricably linked. When governance falters, everyone pays the price. When institutions weaken, no enterprise remains untouched. We must therefore resist the temptation to retreat into the comfort of apathy and instead embrace the responsibilities of active citizenship, for no society can prosper when its most capable voices choose silence. Get involved, ask questions, and identify what support you can lend to strengthen public sector capabilities, perhaps software that tracks project execution pace, independently aggregate public sentiment, or perhaps a system of incentives to encourage participation in civic activities, especially voting by young and educated demographics. This, I believe, is what the Oxford Global Think Tank is all about: bringing all hands on deck to unlock the opportunities for prosperity.
8. The central point of this year’s event is about building a resilient institutional culture, especially amidst the sea of changes happening on multiple fronts; the task for us as change agents is to build the capacity to follow through on reforms in the institutions and organisations that we lead. The second conference pillar, innovation, is particularly relevant for the public sector, and that has been the foundation of what we do in Abia State. As a government, we are very conscious of tradition; even then, we are also aware that there are instances when traditions and conventions can become hindrances to institutional performance, so what do we do? Stick with tradition and sustain a culture of inefficiency or create a new tradition, one that recognises the realities of the times? The third pillar, dynamism, has enabled us to appreciate that the institutional service delivery framework must evolve in order to meet changing public expectations and stay relevant over the long haul. This is true for education as it is for health, transportation, performance evaluation, and information management. I am glad to announce that we are quietly transitioning to smart schools in Abia, investing in renewable energy infrastructure for our health and public institutions, procuring electric vehicles for inter- and intra-city mass transit, adopting computer-based testing for recruitment and promotion in the civil service, and activating digital systems for our land administration and document management protocols.
9. The implementation of these initiatives has not happened without pushbacks, but we are happy that we soldiered on and the results agree with us. The quality of education in our public schools is steadily improving, as our students’ performance in the Senior Secondary Certificate Examinations indicates; we are also seeing a jump in the productivity of civil servants as turnaround time for document processing continues to move south; in land administration, we have signed more certificates of occupancy in the last 3 years than were done in more than 10 years before we arrived. In essence, the dynamic disposition of the administration has offered us the leverage to improve service efficiency as well as institutions’ responsiveness.
10. Let me quickly return to where we started: the role of the elites in setting a society’s trajectory. We have definitely done well for ourselves as individuals, but we have unfortunately failed to hit the mark when it comes to the affairs of the collective, and the evidence is all over the place: from subpar service delivery standards to the worsening crisis of brain drain, especially in the critical sectors of health and academia; poverty and a general sense of helplessness amongst many. Agreed that these crises have a long origin, the time has now come for all of us, everyone in this room, and others who are not here, to rise to the demands of resolving the paradox of a nation blessed with extraordinary achievers yet burdened by social conditions that diminish our collective dignity and pride. As I noted not too long ago, extraordinary individual accomplishments cannot erase the shame of communal failure. We must therefore climb down from the fence of indifference and step into the arena of democratic engagement. That is the only path to solving the riddle of persistent poverty in a land abundantly endowed with the potential for prosperity.
11. Thank you for listening, and may God bless you.