ABUJA – Former Senate President, Ken Nnamani was insightful during his reign as the Senate President. From that pedestal he saw everything about Nigeria: the good, bad and ugly. It is quite possible that he took stock and then took a decision on the way forward for Nigeria. May be he did ask himself, “What do I do to push the country forward? Is ‘pushing’ actually the right word here? It could have been ‘moving’ forward, but sometimes, some things could refuse to be moved and obviously they need to be pushed. This is what Nnamani seems to be doing as he starts and develops, the “Ken Nnamani Centre for Leadership and Good Governance.”

But the question is, what is this Centre all about? NTA website news tries to find out. The Executive Director of the Centre, Brian Brown takes us into the inner recesses of the Centre, which he said is instituted to play a pivotal role in intellectual development and capacity building of Nigeria and Africa as a whole. According to Brown, the core mission of the organization is to develop leadership skills, ethics and values in upcoming young and diverse leaders; develop their ability in terms of strategic thinking and planning.

Brown encapsulated that generally the effort of the Centre would be to conduct researches’ on issues of the day, analyze findings, evaluate them and then present them to key stakeholders, and hopefully these findings could be capitalized upon for developmental purposes. In fact, it is a “think tank” for development in persons and the nation as a whole.

The Centre recently conducted a Youth Academy, which lasted for 8 weeks and had 25 young people in attendance. The programme looked into areas like; small businesses and entrepreneurship, globalization and economic development; and climate change. The Centre is also looking seriously at working with government, communities and youth leaders in the northern States to help in developing skills and managing conflicts. The educational system is an area the Centre feels much concerned about and as such is planning to have strategic partnerships with the universities to contribute to skills development that will actually empower the students “on a more systematic and orderly basis that we currently do not have” Brown explained.

On whether the Centre is targeted at partisan politics as many people are thinking, Brown did not waste time in clearing the air on that. He vehemently said, “This is a non-partisan and non-political organization. It is a public policy institution that is non-profit…as we go along, maybe there will be some projects that we will do that will be looking at how the country can further democratize, electoral reforms etc. That can be part of what is going on, but it is not the sole activity of the institute. The greatest emphasis is the development of young leaders and some of the socio-economic issues that those young leaders have to face. If you are looking out for any partisan political activity, you are looking in the wrong direction. ”

On Nigeria’s journey into democracy, Brown noted that while the country is doing well along this line but “You have to keep on striving to develop democratize. It is a perpetual journey. You move and you make improvements. After 200 years, U.S. is still trying to perfect democracy. But on the whole there is great future for Nigeria. If I did not see any hope in Nigeria I would not be here” he said.