Jonathan, Buhari Others Win Leadership Awards

President Muhammadu Buhari, former President, Goodluck Ebele Jonathan and former National Chairman, Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof Attahiru Jega, were yesterday in Abuja, honoured as LEADERSHIP Persons of the Year 2015.
Others honoured at the annual event as LEADERSHIP Politician and Governor of the Year, are Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, and Gombe State Governor, Ibrahim Hassan Dankwambo, respectively.
The LEADERSHIP conference and awards is an annual event where the LEADERSHIP Group celebrates those who have distinguished themselves in the public and private sectors in the preceding year.
This year’s event is significant as it brought together the major actors in the 2015 general elections; Buhari, his predecessor, Jonathan, and former head of the electoral umpire who conducted the 2015 elections, Jega.
While Buhari was honoured for making history by being the first opposition candidate to defeat a sitting president after three attempts, Jonathan was recognised for achieving the improbable and for conceding defeat in an election in which he was a contestant – a first for Nigeria.
Similarly, Jega was honoured for his courage, doggedness and fairness, even in the face of threats to his life in the conduct of the 2015 elections, a feat he achieved to global acclaim.
Dogara, on the other hand was chosen as Politician of the Year 2015 for emerging from behind, galvanising House members from different political tendencies to win the speakership of the House of Representatives in a clean and transparent contest without the support of any of the party’s power centres and for being politically adroit enough to win back the confidence of his party’s leadership after the contest, to the extent of becoming the bridge and influencer of the rapprochement between the National Assembly and the Presidency.
Dankwambo also emerged LEADERSHIP Governor of the Year 2015 for being the surviving soul of the PDP in northern Nigeria, without which the party would have been buried in the North.
“For his unrelenting modernisation of Gombe State, his record of performance in maintaining peace, good governance and exemplary leadership, and for a feat of political engineering that has made him the last PDP governor standing in the entire North, Governor Ibrahim Dankwambo is the LEADERSHIP Governor of the Year 2015,” the management said.
It is equally significant that former Head of State, General Abdulsalami Abubakar, was chosen to chair the occasion and present the Persons of the Year awards because of his role before, during and after the 2015 general elections, particularly in the National Peace Committee, where he, together with other statesmen, got the presidential candidates of the major political parties in the election to sign peace accords.
It would be recalled that Abdulsalami was largely instrumental to the peaceful conduct of the candidates, a role he played using his experience in 1999, when he nurtured the peaceful transition of power from the military regime to a democratically elected government.
Thirteen other individuals and organisations also received awards at the event.
They include the former Managing Director/CEO of Bank of Industry (BOI), Rasheed Adejare Olaoluwa; and Chairman of Honeywell Group, Oba Otudeko, the Corp Marshal/CEO of Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC), Boboye Oyeyemi, Managing Director of Intelsat Nigeria Limited, Simone Volpi and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
Others are Dangote Cement, Heritage Bank, Access Bank, SystemSpecs, Zenith Bank, Chibok Girls, the Golden Eagles, and the rave of the moment artiste, Mr Korede Bello.