The only time you can know how to get to where you are going, is if you know where you are going to. When you decide on what to do, the next thing is to act on it. Many have been found wanting in taking action. They wait for the perfect time. A man who wants to lead the orchestra must turn his back on the crowd. It was John C. Maxwell who observed that the man who follows the crowd will never be followed by a crowd.
Sunny Obazu-Ojeagbase (December 1950 – February 2022) was one leader who rather than follow the crowd, discovered new pathways and had the crowd follow him. He started as an apprentice mechanic, dumped it to learn typing and shorthand, which was followed by five-year stint as an apprentice printer. He joined the military, discharged voluntarily from the Nigerian Army and was employed by Daily Times.
He later became the pioneer Sports Editor of The Guardian, from where he resigned and with the support of his wife, floated the very first Nigerian weekly sports newspaper, Sports Souvenir, and a year later, Complete Football, the first Nigerian all-colour monthly football magazine. He added International Soccer Review, a monthly football magazine reporting International football; few years after, Complete Football International was birthed and a weekly soccer newspaper called Complete Football Extra followed after that.
His greatest success in sports publishing came when in 1995, be began Complete Sports, a daily sports newspaper, the first in Nigeria and the largest selling daily sports newspaper in the country. Everyday, tens of thousands of sports loving Nigerians all over the country patiently wait to get their copies.
Also in 1995, he established Success Attitude Development Centre (SADC), a Non-Governmental Organization, whose mission is to “raise and nurture entrepreneurs whose success in business is driven by the fear of God; a burning desire to care for their families and unquenchable thirst to do good in their communities.” Hundreds of thousands of lives nationwide have been affected positively by the activities of the NGO, which has different organs under it, including SuccessDigest, Nigerian’s No 1 life-changing magazine.
It was through SADC platform that Pastor Sunny Obazu-Ojeagbase exposed some of us to International best practices in writing, public speaking and consulting. He invested his time, energy and resources to discover young Nigerians and help them to discover themselves. He was out with train the trainer initiative. He mentored those who went ahead to become great mentors and role models to others.
SuccessDigest magazine helped a lot of people to discover and unleash their potentials to the world. Fresh from school, the publisher appreciated my writing skills by offering me one page as a columnist and within a few years, I became one of the editors of the magazine, it was indeed an experience of a lifetime. One of Sunny’s important task as a leader was eliminating our excuse for failure. He will take none of that.
Investing in people is still the best investment any leader can embark on. It is important for a leader to develop people, but more important for a leader to develop other leaders, it has a multiplier effect. As a leader, Dr. Obazu-Ojeagbase will always remind us that the smartest thing an individual who desires success can do, is to employ people that are smarter than him. It is only leaders who are not sure of themselves that will be afraid of having brilliant subordinates around.
Leaders should make it a point of duty to discover other leaders, help them to discover themselves, teach them leadership skills and offer them what no individual can take away from them. According to James L. Hayes, “Jingsen is the Mandarin word for spirit and vivacity. It is an important word for those who would lead, because above all things, spirit and vivacity set effective organizations apart from those that will decline and die.”
As a mentee, take the habit of self-improvement very serious. Books, articles, seminars, audios, videos and closeness to mentors could be the tonic you need. There is no how you read an article or a book, well written, without learning something new from it. They are packed full with ideas and wisdom. They are shortcuts to attaining your dreams. If it took Napoleon Hill thirty years to write a Think and Grow Rich, and it takes you one month to read it, wouldn’t you have acquired an experience of thirty years in one month?
Forward looking leaders like Sunny make great effort to document their experiences in book form. Some of them are: How to Make it in Nigeria: Building your Wealth from Ground Floor Up, Ideas: The Starting Point of All True Riches, How to Bullet Proof Yourself from Poverty, etc. “Books are not men”, according to Stephen Vincent Bent, “Yet they stay alive.” A good book on your shelf is a friend that turns it’s back on you and remains a friend. Anyone who says they have only one life to live must not know how to read a book.
Mentor Sunny Obazu-Ojeagbase came, saw, conquered and left us with that which no human being can take away from us, and that to us, is true leadership.
Now that you know…
Shalom!
– Onyechere is a motivational speaker and author