Sanwo-Olu charges LJLA graduates to build institutions

Lagos State Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, has said the Lateef Jakande Leadership Academy (LJLA) was established not as a project of his administration, but as an enduring institution designed to prepare the next generation of leaders for the state.

Sanwo-Olu stated this on Friday at the graduation ceremony of the third cohort of the academy and the induction of the 2026/2027 fellows at the Balmoral Convention Centre, Ikeja GRA, Lagos.

The Governor, who described the occasion as the last graduation ceremony of the academy he would attend as governor, said the institution had been deliberately backed by law to ensure its survival beyond his tenure.

“This is the last graduation of the Lateef Jakande Leadership Academy that I will attend as Governor of Lagos State. By this time next year, someone else will hold this office, and someone else will stand at this lectern,” he said.

According to him, the continuity of the academy beyond his administration was one of the achievements he considered most important.

“We did not build this Academy for a Governor. We built it for a State. We wrote it into law so that it would not depend on my goodwill, or my successor’s, or on anyone’s mood in a budget season.

“An initiative belongs to an administration. An institution belongs to the people. The Lateef Jakande Leadership Academy is now the second kind of thing, and of everything we have done in these years, that is among the achievements I hold closest.”

Sanwo-Olu said the academy was conceived around a fundamental question: “Who will run Lagos after us?”

He explained that the question went beyond electoral succession to encompass the people who would manage the state’s public institutions, negotiate concessions, run hospitals, administer budgets and engage communities in the years ahead.

“A city can survive a bad year. A city cannot survive a generation of leaders it did not prepare,” the Governor said.

Reflecting on his administration’s infrastructure projects, Sanwo-Olu said physical infrastructure alone could not guarantee sustainable development without capable people to manage it.

“I have spent seven years building things you can see. Roads. Rail. Hospitals. Schools. Bridges. I am proud of every one of them. But I learned early in this office that concrete does not lead itself,” he said.

“Every asset we commission is handed, on the day of commissioning, to a human being. Whether it serves this city for fifty years or falls apart in five depends far more on the quality of that person than on the quality of the cement.”

The Governor said this was why his administration had embraced the philosophy that “leadership is infrastructure”, stressing that the academy represented a deliberate investment in human capital and institutional continuity.

He also invoked the legacy of former Lagos State Governor, the late Alhaji Lateef Kayode Jakande, after whom the academy was named.

Sanwo-Olu noted that although Jakande governed Lagos for only four years, his policies and projects continued to impact residents more than four decades after his tenure.

“Baba Kekere proved that what a leader leaves behind is measured not by the length of his stay, but by how long the work outlasts him,” he said.

Addressing the graduating fellows, whom he described as the “Class of Catalysts”, Sanwo-Olu urged them to become agents of positive change while retaining their integrity and resilience.

He challenged them to apply the lessons acquired during their fellowship to real-life public service situations, particularly when confronted with pressure to compromise their principles.

“Lagos has enough certificates. What Lagos is short of is people who will do the right thing at the moment it costs them something,” he said.

He asked the graduates what they would do when faced with opportunities to take shortcuts, wield power over others or inherit weak institutions.

“That is the only examination that matters now. It has no invigilator. It lasts the rest of your life. And I expect every one of you to pass it,” he said.

The Governor also welcomed the 2026/2027 cohort, revealing that more than 16,000 Nigerians had applied for places in the programme.

He urged the new fellows to justify the opportunity given to them, warning that the expansion of the programme must not result in a dilution of its standards.

“We will grow this Fellowship, but we will not dilute it. Bigger is not the goal. Better is,” he said.

Sanwo-Olu disclosed that the academy would also expand its leadership initiatives beyond the fellowship programme to reach young people in schools, communities and other platforms.

He said the state could not build the future of Lagos by investing in only a few hundred people annually, stressing the need to create “many doors” through which young people could access leadership development opportunities.

The Governor also announced the institutionalisation of the LJLA Excellence Pathway, which he described as one of the most important developments in the academy’s future.

Under the initiative, he said, fellows who choose to serve in the Lagos State Civil Service and meet applicable requirements would have a clear and recognised route for their talents to be brought into the public service and retained.

“For too long, the best of our young people have looked at public service and seen a closed door, a place where merit waits in line behind everything else. If we train leaders and then give them no way in, we have trained them for somebody else,” he said.

Sanwo-Olu said the pathway would transform the fellowship from a one-year leadership experience into a talent pipeline for government.

“It is how a Fellowship stops being a year of experiences and becomes a pipeline into the machinery of government itself. It is how an idea becomes a system. And a system is the only thing that survives its founder,” he said.

The Governor commended the Executive Secretary and staff of the academy, as well as its mentors, facilitators, partners and the various ministries, departments and agencies that provided opportunities for the fellows to gain practical experience.

He also acknowledged the support of parents, spouses, families and friends of the graduating fellows.

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Sanwo-Olu concluded by charging both the graduating and incoming fellows to uphold the legacy of Lateef Jakande through ethical leadership and service.

“The true measure of an institution is not what it does while its founder is in the room. It is what it does the day after he leaves,” he said.

He added: “Baba Kekere had four years, and Lagos still lives in his work. You have the whole of your lives. Use them.”

Addressing the incoming fellows, the Governor said: “You have the seat. Now earn it. Carry the name of Lateef Jakande with pride. Carry his standard with even greater care. And wherever you find yourselves, leave it better than you found it.”