At this time, we have fun a statesman whose management blends imaginative and prescient with verifiable impression, humility with excessive requirements, and public service with measurable outcomes for residents. Your Excellency, as a proud TEXEM alumnus, you exemplify the perfect we champion: a values-driven chief who converts technique into service and aspiration into inclusive, sustainable progress. On this big day, we honour not solely your character but in addition a document of achievements that continues to strengthen Lagos and encourage a brand new technology of leaders throughout Nigeria and past.
Throughout the years, you have got constantly demonstrated that know-how isn’t a luxurious in public administration—it’s the spine of effectivity, transparency, and belief. Your early stewardship of Lagos’s digital transformation was catalytic: underneath your watch as Commissioner for Science and Expertise, Lagos turned the primary authorities establishment in Africa to implement eleven Oracle ERP modules throughout the general public service, integrating knowledge, tightening controls, and curbing waste. This was not a headline; it was a basis—one which modernised workflows, improved accountability, and set Lagos on a sturdy path to sensible governance.
Your dedication to a future-ready economic system is equally clear in the best way Lagos has positioned itself as West Africa’s digital capital. In a single yr, the state attracted a couple of billion {dollars} in data-centre funding—capital that anchors platforms domestically, boosts reliability for companies, creates expert jobs, and accelerates the expansion of the tech ecosystem. By championing the enabling setting for such investments and spotlighting expertise acceleration, you have got helped Lagos transfer from potential to proof, from ambition to belongings on the bottom.
Safety and order are stipulations for prosperity, and you’ve got handled them as such—insisting that the women and men who uphold the legislation be educated, skilled, and community-centred. Your management on the Passing-Out Parade of over 5 thousand newly educated officers on the Lagos State Regulation Enforcement Coaching Institute underscored the next customary for public security: competence married to emotional intelligence; authority balanced by restraint; and repair grounded within the belief of the communities being protected. That is how cities develop safer and extra cohesive—by investing in folks as severely as we spend money on infrastructure.
You’ve got additionally championed the deep work of renewing the general public service from inside. The Lagos Public Service Accelerator Programme is greater than a coaching course—it’s a mindset undertaking that equips rising leaders with the instruments, agility, and ethics to unravel complicated issues in actual time. By inserting innovation, management, and accountability on the centre of public-sector functionality constructing, you’re serving to to make sure that Lagos’s progress is resilient, citizen-centred, and transferable throughout administrations.
And since funding follows readability, you have got given buyers and residents alike a window into Lagos’s pipeline by way of the state’s Funding Deal E book—framing bankable alternatives, signalling institutional maturity, and alluring partnership on a scale worthy of Africa’s most dynamic megacity. That is the quiet structure of confidence: aligning stakeholders round credible initiatives and a shared imaginative and prescient for a Twenty first-century economic system that creates jobs, expands alternative, and compounds public worth.
These milestones—digital transformation, anchor investments, professionalised legislation enforcement, accelerated expertise within the public service, and clear deal-flow for progress—inform a single story: management that listens, learns, and delivers. They exemplify a philosophy you mannequin each day: that humility is disciplined power; that data-driven decision-making is an ethical obligation when lives and livelihoods are at stake; and that true nation-building is the artwork of changing potential into shared prosperity whereas safeguarding dignity and belief.
Your Excellency, Lagos is an emblem of African risk exactly as a result of leaders such as you translate imaginative and prescient into velocity with out dropping sight of individuals. You have interaction communities at eye stage, convene the non-public sector with objective, and empower civil servants to change into intrapreneurs. You’ve got proven that respect and outcomes usually are not competing currencies—when correctly invested, they compound collectively, yielding stability, innovation, and hope.
For the TEXEM household and all rising leaders, your journey is a residing curriculum. It teaches that perception should change into infrastructure; that coverage should meet folks the place they’re; that one of the best plans are these sturdy sufficient to be measured and humble sufficient to be tailored. It reminds us that inclusive progress isn’t a slogan however a self-discipline—one which calls for long-term excited about abilities, security, sustainability, and social cohesion. Your instance rebukes cynicism and invitations braveness: to recruit smarter, to collaborate wider, to credit score others extra typically, and to decide on what is correct over what is straightforward.
As we mark your birthday, we additionally difficulty a name to those that aspire to steer—throughout boardrooms, ministries, and communities—to review each the milestones and the mindset behind them. Lagos’s transformation didn’t occur accidentally; it’s fuelled by conviction, competence, and constant execution. Let this yr be a renewed invitation to serve past self, to construct coalitions throughout distinction, and to create techniques that outlast any single tenure.
Within the phrases of Dr Alim Abubakre, Founding father of TEXEM, UK:
“His Excellency embodies the quiet energy of humble, high-impact management—principled, prudent, and purpose-driven. He listens deeply, executes decisively, and measures success by lives uplifted. Might his instance problem all of us to emulate his sterling dedication to service, to nation-building, and to stimulating sustainable, inclusive progress.”
From all of us at TEXEM, we have fun you, Your Excellency—an alumnus who personifies our highest beliefs: assume deeply, act decisively, serve selflessly. Might this new yr convey larger grace, renewed vitality, and ever-widening circles of impression as you proceed to form a Lagos that’s affluent, inclusive, and resilient—for in the present day’s residents and tomorrow’s generations.
