Governance is often confused with leadership but the two are poles apart. Governance is routine and predictable but leadership is innovative and dynamic. Governance is maintaining the status quo but leadership is about extending the frontiers.
Governance is a structure that provides a framework for running a system; it identifies roles, establishes orders, stipulates sanctions and postulates the reward system. Governance facilitates the smooth running of a state.
So, good governance is about doing the expected; it is about following the procedure; it is about keeping the hands off the till and ensuring the effective management of available resources. But leadership is much more than that.
Leadership is about bursting out of routine, it is about challenging the status quo, it is about changing the course of history, it is about shaping and reshaping geography, it is about unleashing the power of a people to have new dreams, new hopes and new expectations. Leadership is bridging the gap between possibilities and realities. It is unlocking a people’s innate abilities to actualise their potential.
The defining difference between governance and leadership is the size of the vision behind each; while governance’s focus is the moment, leadership’s vision encompasses both the present and the future. Leadership weighs the impact of every action by its effect on the future.
Leadership dreams big. Leadership aims high. Leadership is audacious. Leadership is ambitious. Leadership is intentional. Leadership knocks off the limit. Leadership is neither deterred by difficulties nor dissuaded by impossibilities. Where leadership reigns, impossibility is crushed.
While governance concentrates on the mundane, leadership dwells on the sublime. Leadership considers the desirable that is unavailable, travels to the future, conceives the desirable, moulds it, walks back to the present and begins to work towards its realization.
Hence, leadership is able to see the invisible and births the impossible. Therefore, every legacy-minded person in government subjugates governance to leadership.
Right from his first day in office, Governor Seyi Makinde has shown that he is not a run of the mill politician who seeks office for personal aggrandizement or vainglory; instead he has proved that his mission is to shatter the status quo and change the reality of the state by creating abiding prosperity for the people now and put the state on the path of sustainable growth.
The governor has not spared any effort to ensure the development of the state. Rather than subjecting himself to the constraints of inherited governance structure, he has revolutionized the system by taking steps which ensure that the system benefits the people.
They also state that the presence of an international airport in the state would boost tourism-related ventures, real estate development, and other business opportunities. They add that the international airport will lead to the creation of job opportunities and boost regional and international trade in the state.
Explaining the rationale behind the upgrade, Makinde, while speaking at the inauguration of the Bimbo Adekanmbi-led committee which was constituted to midwife the airport upgrade, said upgrading the Ladoke Akintola Airport to international standard would support his administration’s drive to expand the economy of the state through agribusiness.
Leaders see farther than others because while others concentrate on the next election, they think about the next generation. Leaders intentionally choose to see opportunities where others see crises; they also deliberately choose to see prosperity while others focus on adversity.
That is why they are able to bridge the gap between possibilities and realities. Hence, history is weaved around their strides.
Dr Olanrewaju is the Chief Press Secretary to Oyo State Governor.
