Service delivery: Foundation trains 52 public servants in AIG Public Leaders Programme

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Service delivery: Foundation trains 52 public servants in AIG Public Leaders Programme

In its determination to improve the lives of Nigerians in particular and Africans in general, through transformed public-service delivery, the AIG- Imoukhuede Foundation has successfully trained 52 public servants from ministries, departments and agencies of the federal government.

The public servants, who were admitted into the foundation’s 2022 programme otherwise known as AIG Public Leaders Programme, PLP, graduated after they successfully completed their six-month-old programme.

The 2022 PLP class included its first international participant from South Africa.

The programme offered by the Aig-Imoukhuede Foundation and the University of Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government is a unique executive education programme held both online and in Lagos to afford high-potential African public servants an opportunity to strengthen the skills they need to build cultures of excellence, effectiveness and integrity throughout the institutions they lead.

Speaking at the Closing Ceremony of the AIG Public Leaders Programme Class of 2022 in Abuja, yesterday, Chairman of Aig-Imoukhuede Foundation, Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede, said his desire was to see a reformed public service through the public servants that have graduated from the programme.

According to him,”Public sector executives ascending the ranks of government departments, ministries or multilateral organisation must maintain exemplary performance in their current role while developing the new skills and perspective they will need to take on a top leadership role.”

“The programme aims to broaden participants’ public leadership skills and provide them with the conceptual framework and practical tools needed to meet the challenges of leading in the in the public service in an increasingly complex and rapidly changing world.

“The programme offers insights from the world’s leading scholars and practitioners,and a peer learning from participants ‘ counterparts. The learning experience is intense and demanding, engaging participants through a mixture of classroom discussion, simulationd,practical exercises and project work,over a total period of six months.

Programme graduates will go on to apply their learning in order to effect positive change in their departments, agencies and ministries,and contribute to the overall improvement of Africa’s public service,”he said.

He spoke further:”It’s a six-month programme that involves residential teaching and virtual teachings. They ( participants) have been through case studies and they went on what we call capstone projects. Capstone projects are projects that are meant to solve problems either in their places of work or any sphere of public sector activity, taught by a world-class faculty from the University of Oxford’s Blavasnik School of Government.

“They have interacted with leaders in the public sector and in the private sector in class. I don’t think it gets any better than that.

“My desire is that after 20 years, we have a thousand or two thousand people that have benefited from this programme. Imagine two thousand well-equip public servants across Nigeria! Now, what happens when they graduate is that it doesn’t just end there, first of all, their capstone projects are those projects that they taught and conceived here in school that they must implement one way or the other. And we follow through because we have a very strong alumni group. They meet online, they meet physically and then we also continue to meet with them. And for the very best projects, after every cohort has finished their courses, one or two are selected for specific support by the foundation and other private sectors or organisations.

On her part,Mrs Ofovwe Aig-Imoukhuede explained that the AIG Public Leaders Programme was one of the ways the foundation builds the capacity of the public sector workers.

“One of the ways we do this is to build the capacity of the public sector workers. We develop a public lecture programme in collaboration with the Blavasnik School of Government at the University of Oxford and it’s basically aimed at high-potential public sector leaders and it provides free scholarship by training.

“The goal is to build a new generation of public sector workers who can drive sustained reform efforts.

“We all recognize that the public sector is the engine room of government and the public sector is essential to national development,so it’s very important that we support the government by helping to build the capacity of the people who are actually going to be doing the work.

“That is the only way in which the government can provide the goods and services that it suppose to provide to the Nigerian populace.

“So, basically,this is our second cohort, our second class. We started in 2022 with 52 graduates and this is our second class. The very important thing about this programme is that we are not just teaching them theory,we are actually equipping them with everything they need to go back to their organisations to drive change.

“The last part of the programme is the captone projects where they have to go and deliver and implement a change programme within their organisations,”she explained.