Beyond Individual Success: Epiphany at Boston

OUTSIDE THE BOX BY ALEX OTTI, Email: alex.otti@thisdaylive.com

I would like to begin on a note of sincere gratitude to the decision-makers at the Harvard Business School Association of Nigeria (HBSAN) for the great honour of inviting me to take the podium as the keynote speaker for this special event. Permit me to respectfully thank the chairman of the Association, Mr. Collins Onuegbu, and members of his team, and everyone else involved in putting together the 2025 Dinner and Award ceremony of this great body of thinkers, visionaries and torchbearers. I am pleased that you have continued the longstanding tradition of consistently setting up fora for regular leadership interactions to shape opinions, provide clarity on seemingly complex issues and to guide decision-making. The beauty of events like this is the opportunity it provides for the broadening of perspectives and widening of the scope of knowledge. We may not all agree on any particular issue and never will our reading of events be uniform considering our diverse backgrounds but when we come together in a warm atmosphere like this to speak and listen to each other, we ventilate opinions and gain new understanding into matters of importance to us and the society we live in. Thank you for inviting me to share in the joy and lessons of this great evening.

I have spent the last 2 days speaking at convocation ceremonies, engaging with fresh graduates and sharing hopes of a brighter future. Starting at the Federal University of Technology, Owerri where I was the guest lecturer at the 37th Convocation ceremony of the Institution on Thursday, I returned to Aba to attend the 22nd Convocation ceremony  of the Ogbonnaya Onu Polytechnic. My message was the same in both institutions although the roles were different. In Owerri and Aba, I spoke to thousands of young people who had anxiety written all over their faces as majority of them were unsure of what to do with the certificates that had been acquired at great cost in time, material resources and opportunities forgone. After rightly acknowledging their fears about what lay in store for them, I invited them to rise in hope and fight for the dreams that originally fuelled their pursuit of higher education. I pointed them to the dangers of defeatism and eternal shame of quiet surrender. While I treasured the opportunity to offer hope, I was also glad that I found the courage to acknowledge that we are in a difficult place, for the true essence of optimism is not in denying reality but in acknowledging it and pushing harder still because our destiny is the silent echo of our thoughts.

This evening, I have come to Lagos to interact with another group of Nigerians whose realities are in sharp contrast with the suppressed and expressed doubts many of the young people in our university campuses, at workshops and across the streets where they wander in search of the road and vehicle to take them to the destination of their dreams. Unfortunately, we all share in a common destiny so it does not matter what you ride to work or if you have a job at all for in the eyes of the world, we are all Nigerians. The 1% of the population who can afford everything money can buy are actually not superior to the majority who are unable to tell where their next meal will come from. To our friends in Boston, London, New York and across major centres of influence around the world, we are a community of poor people. The few outliers who managed to beat the prevailing odds of poverty and material wretchedness do not take away from the facts of our reality.

Our responsibility as leaders, members of an elite class who have had the benefit of sound education at different levels, built successful businesses and achieved fame in other frontlines of human enterprises, is to now extend our outlook to think, not of self but of the wider community. This evening distinguished ladies and gentlemen, I have come to invite us to turn our development orientation to a community-centred worldview in the light of our common heritage as Nigerians. I once had an interesting conversation that redirected the course of my life and career in 2009 during my participation at the Advanced Management Programme (AMP 177) at Harvard Business School. An American course mate of Indian decent, Samvit Raina, had asked me an interesting question thus: why is it that many Nigerians I have met are very successful individually, brilliant and hardworking, but a look at where they come from leaves one with confusion and reconciliation challenges. He was curious to know how a country with a critical mass of bright people remains stuck in a persistent cycle of underdevelopment. I did not respond promptly in order not to be seen as endorsing an uncomplimentary remark against my country by a foreigner but within me, I knew that he may not be the only one asking the question. I spent the rest of my time at Boston reflecting on the poser raised by my course mate: how do you explain the paradox of very successful people operating from a country that is everything but successful? Then I thought about my place of birth, Abia, and its development reality at the time. The more deeply I thought, the more worried I became. Nigeria is a nation of multiple constituencies and wherever you go, there are no shortage of intelligent, hardworking and passionate individuals. The question then is: why are we failing at even the most basic matters of civilisation? Why are elementary concerns like waste disposal, access to potable water, electricity, roads, primary healthcare and basic education still a challenge here?

After considering all the foundational structures that propelled other nations to greatness, I realised that our problem was never about the size of the treasury box nor the appetite for progress but in the fact that those who ought to have taken the lead were often absent in the decision-making room. Like myself, they were busy chasing after career success, looking to hit the next million dollar or to publish their paper in a reputable journal. To these incredibly-smart people, government is treated as a minor irritation. Ultimately, while we were at Harvard, Cambridge, MIT, Oxford and in other elite universities topping the result charts and winning all the laurels, barely-educated individuals were taking decisions that influence how the world sees Nigeria in our various local government headquarters, state capitals and in Abuja.

For obvious reasons, our friends in the USA and across Europe never saw Nigeria from the brilliance of our performance in the classrooms; they found economic statistics and social reports coming from this place as a more reliable measure of the development realities of the country. Now to be clear, I am not by any means suggesting that there were no spaces for highflyers in the public sector because that would be untrue. The question is: where are you most likely to find a superior number of ethical and result-driven leaders: at the board meeting of an NSE-listed company or at a gathering of political stakeholders in our states? You can probe further to ask: where would a First-Class graduate from an elite university be keener to start his professional life: at a regular government agency in Umuahia or in a blue-chip company?

Again, it would be unfair to suggest that we do not have brilliant young people who would voluntarily elect to teach in a public primary school over the attractions of hard currency overseas but the concern is: how many are they? How many of our children, relatives and friends can we encourage to choose a job opportunity in a rural hospital over the prestige of working overseas? The summary of it is that our disinterest in public affairs offered an extended invitation to persons of questionable development orientation to step in and produce outcomes that are generally unsatisfactory.

After carefully evaluating the intriguing paradox of dominantly-successful people coming from a largely-unsuccessful country, it occurred to me that I would be putting my conscience through interminable misery if I refused to do something, at least in my home State knowing how bad things had become at the time. I appreciate that I am not perfect but I was also certain that at the very least, I could lead the charge in the restoration of collapsed public infrastructure, human capital development and the resuscitation of the education and health sectors which lay in ruins. Again, nothing is ever certain but I knew that it would be impossible for me to be the governor of a state where salaries are left unpaid— where refuse heaps accumulate until entire roads are blocked as was the case at the time. As a matter of fact, I found it quite disturbing that it took a foreigner to point me to something I should have paid closer attention to. At any rate, I was grateful that the conversation stirred something in me and my life never remained the same.

When I returned to Nigeria at the end of my programme at Boston, I paid a visit to a confidant, someone with great influence in the politics of the nation at the time, to share my resolve to get more involved in the politics of my State. The big man listened and agreed that indeed, I would make a difference in the public sector but advised that I spend some more time in banking to reach the top and then make a smooth transition into the political arena. His advice was logical so I went back to my regular job, became the Group Managing Director (GMD) and when the window for the 2015 gubernatorial campaign opened, I quietly informed my board that the time had come for me to move on to something else. It was not something they were expecting but I was only following through on a decision I made about 5 years earlier. Weeks after leaving my job as the GMD of a fast-growing bank, I publicly announced my interest to run for the governorship position in Abia. I went ahead to set up a team of grassroots mobilisers and opinion influencers and we all went to work. After about 15 months of gruelling campaigns that took us to hundreds of communities where we interacted with individuals and groups, the election Saturday arrived and overwhelmingly, we won as the Court of Appeal in Owerri affirmed. Sadly, part of the challenges in our political system is the dearth of courage in the verdict room. Well, our opponent who had forced the electoral officers to announce them victors against the expressed wish of the people finally had their way on appeal. Staying true to our conviction, we refused to give up. 4 years later, we returned to the field once again but this time, with a more compelling message following the multiplication of miseries. Unfortunately, the old system won again but we refused to be defeated. We rose again in 2023, determined to fight harder and more strategically. Eventually, we were declared winner almost one week after the close of polls as entrenched interests attempted to scuttle and steal our victory like they had consistently done. Unfortunately for them, the vigilance of the electorates, the courage of the electoral officers and drastic changes in the electoral law made their plots difficult to execute.

In the last 30 months, we have done nothing but try to resolve intractable problems because in our book, the only reason government exists is to solve the problems affecting the community —make the environment safe and conducive for individuals to chase their dreams. It does not matter the nature and dimension of the problem; a government begins to lose legitimacy once certain problems continue to fester. Years before we came to power, a few local government areas were in the firm control of criminal elements, refuse heaps littered the streets and clearly, nothing worked. Again, those were not my assessment but the assessment of almost everyone who visited the State at the time. Today, much of those problems are significantly addressed — Abia now ranks as one of the most secure destinations in the country and the road network, once in the league of the worst, is now rated by independent development researchers as amongst the best. Across critical development frontiers — education, health, land administration, public transportation and procurement systems — we are setting new standards that would open the doors of social prosperity across communities. The evidence of Abia’s ascent can be found in the streets of Aba where order has replaced chaos, in public schools where students and pupils know with certainty that if they work hard, they will make something out of their lives and in the civil service where inefficiency is quietly being replaced with the growing appetite to be part of the New Abia story.

Recall that I announced last week that we shall, beginning from this month, start defraying gratuity arrears accumulated from 2001 amounting to more than N60 billion. Just yesterday at the Convocation Ceremony of Ogbonnaya Onu Polytechnic Aba, I formally institutionalised the enterprise support initiative for young graduates. Under the scheme, the government would offer business grants to outstanding graduates of the State-owned tertiary institution who submit feasible, bankable and scalable business plans. This is coming on the heels of the recent disbursement of N150 million to graduates of the Polytechnic to enable the beneficiaries set up their businesses and create employment for others. In Abia, the days of sending off graduates of higher institutions to wander into the streets without support or guidance are gone forever. At this point, it may be necessary to inform us that these achievements are recorded, not because we have access to limitless supply of funds because if you check all the revenue charts, even after we had raised the State IGR profile — from around N20 billion per annum only a few years ago to about N100 billion in the 2025 fiscal year — you will still not find Abia in the list of top 18 revenue earners. Our modest success comes in large part from a conscious decision to commit every penny that comes into the treasury to programmes and projects that are connected to our development objectives.

I had gone to great length to tell the story of our journey thus far for 2 reasons: one, to let us appreciate that the entry path to the decision-making room in the public sector is challenging even as nothing is guaranteed. We could tell this story because we succeeded, unfortunately, many other good-intentioned individuals who sought to serve their communities through the political system were sabotaged and their dreams cut short, many lost their lives and others simply disappeared. Our own journey could have also ended in the same way but for God’s direct interventions at several occasion when assassins came knocking or when they attempted to take me out through poisoning and other heinous plots. One must, therefore, appreciate that this is not for the fainthearted and I’m yet to find out what is. Even crime has not been described as being for the fainthearted! You have to be prepared to fight very tough battles to stand a chance. But again, if we could do it, who says you can’t? The second reason is to point us to the fulfilment that comes from serving the people, applying public resources to investments that yield development returns and of course, giving hope to those who otherwise could have been stuck in misery. Again, while having not done a perfect job, it is beyond dispute that much of the matters that troubled my heart at Boston in 2009 regarding the state of our State have continued to receive attention and it is still early days.

Our modest efforts cannot be isolated from a few important insights I picked from my time at Harvard. The first is the courage to get it right with team selection. In Abia, we developed a robust template for selecting individuals who will occupy key positions in the government. We started by giving responsibilities to those who showed their mettle while we fought in the trenches for the soul of the State for about a decade. They already knew our development agenda so it was easy for them to run with it. Secondly, we looked farther across the world to find outstanding individuals with the competence to support the actualisation of the multiple layers of our development agenda. We never cared about the syntax of their names or where they were born. We went to several Fortune500 companies around Europe and North America to headhunt some of the people helping us deliver important outcomes on energy, finance and general administration. The number one criterion is competence — the capacity to deliver which must show in what you had done in previous jobs. Another box prospective hires are required to tick is character for without it, no genuine progress can be made — even if the individual is a technical genius. Above all, such persons must share in our vision of community-above-self. They are required to possess a clear picture of the changes they want to make and a realistic roadmap because ours is not a lifetime office, so everything has to happen within the frame of time available to us.

I had mentioned earlier that our modest contributions did not happen for reasons of abundance of resources but rather on account of our prudence in the management of public resources. In a private study I did before we assumed office, I realised that high cost of governance is a major reason why development projects stall or are abandoned in different parts of the country. On assumption of office, I decided that we shall keep cost of governance at minimal levels. We made the decision to spend less on official and project vehicles, overheads and travels. We also began to execute several important projects through direct labour. As at the last count, more than 40% of the 600 kilometres of roads that had been fixed in the last 30 months were done by engineers and technical officers from the State Ministry of Works. The same is happening with public housing, power and public utilities and in several other project areas. We have empowered civil servants who ordinarily would have been restricted to clerical duties to jump into the field to deliver value and through their involvement, we have been able to save tens of billions in project costs.

If I had remained in the banking industry, maybe I could have made more money, had more freedom and perhaps less political enemies but forsaking all of those to work for the common man in remote communities gives me more fulfilment than any material privilege ever would. We have been able to modestly change the narrative of Abia because many of us looked beyond individual success and put the State first. It took great sacrifice on our part but what I can tell you is that the fruits of our labour are well worth every sweat that accompanied it. My dear friends, my message to you today is a simple one: let us begin to redirect our interpretation of success for the best cars are useless without good road networks, a functional primary health centre in the neighbourhood could be of greater use in the event of an emergency than the biggest mansion just like a functional public school would yield greater return to the community in the long run than a private jet owned by one individual. Again, let us think beyond self and focus more on the community for the community defines all of us. Like I had argued in my March 30, 2020, Backpage column in Thisday Newspapers titled, “Coronavirus: The Global Democratic Pandemic” and yet another on April 13, 2020, titled “Between Covid 1.9 and Hunger 2.0” some of the wealth we are accumulating will become irritants when we are faced with existential threats. You would recall that airports were shut so private jets could neither take off nor land. Hospitals were attending to local emergencies only such that medical tourism disappeared. People could not receive visitors to their mansions. As my epiphany at Boston taught me, individual successes, as desirable and admirable as they may be, do not insulate us from the shame of collective failure.

To those who hate to associate with politics, I will leave you with the words of Plato thus “the penalty of refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.” Fredrick Bertolt Brecht put it more succinctly thus “The worst illiterate is the political illiterate, he doesn’t hear, doesn’t speak, nor participate in political events. He doesn’t know the cost of life, the price of beans, of fish, of flour, of rent, of shoes and of medicine, all depends on political decisions. The political illiterate is so stupid that he is proud and swells his chest saying that he hates politics. The imbecile doesn’t know that, from his political ignorance is born the prostitute, the abandoned child, and the worst thieves of all, the bad politician, corrupted and flunky of the national and multinational companies.” Need I say more?

Being a keynote address delivered by Dr. Alex Otti, OFR, the Governor of Abia State at the Harvard Business School Association of Nigeria dinner and Awards Night in Lagos on December 6, 2025.