Fashola Urges Former Public Officers To Document Their Experience

The Lagos State Governor, Mr Babatunde Fashola (SAN) while unveiling Mallam Nasir El’Rufai’s book titled “The Accidental Public Servant” on Thursday stated that there is a need for public officials to document their activities after public office.

Governor Fashola who spoke as the Chief Presenter of the book during the public presentation held at the Yar’Adua Centre, Abuja added that books such as the one written by Mallam El Rufai are in short supply because with the experience he had when he was seeking office as Governor, he had to look for references abroad apart from the book written by late Chief Obafemi Awolowo which he found very useful.

He described the book as a welcome intellectual contribution and one that talks about the most important sector of peoples’ lives which is the public sector and how it is managed, stressing that it is a book about how projects fail and about how they succeed and about how errors are made and successes recorded.

Noting that the book will shed much needed insights into the process of projects completion through quality leadership, the Governor declared: “I think it is a book that I think will connect us to the compelling necessity to ensure that it is the first eleven amongst us in our nation that we entrust with the largest purse and responsibilities”

“When people talk about dearth of leadership, I openly disagree because we have demonstrated leadership in many small sectors but those sectors are not as impactful and they don’t have the responsibility to build roads, they don’t have the responsibility to generate power”.

“So, our compelling necessity is to find ways to bring those champions in the private sector back to the public sector because that is where the largest impact is felt. Perhaps their absence explains why we haven’t had such intellectual contribution from people after leaving office”, he said.

Governor Fashola admonished Malam Nasir EL-Rufai to further avail the nation of his experience by going back to school not to learn but to teach.

“This is the torch passing and development process that enables those nations to continue to renew their human capital and to prepare the next generation for the challenges ahead by taking direct lessons from those who have walked those hallowed paths before”.