Governor Sanwo-Olu & Rotimi Bankole: A tale of two dynamic government and business leaders
Effective leadership in governance and business requires a cadre of skilled and experienced personality that can work with the technology of the human mind. In modern organizational structures, to unleash new strategies and innovation needed to achieve efficiency, every underlying mindset has to be shifted. Mindsets are mental lenses; they drive what leaders do and how much they achieve with their teams across the professional and personal spheres.
Leadership doesn’t get better than two men who have remained passionate in their respective roles as public and private leaders in Lagos State. While one is a dynamic player in governance, the other is a formidable player in business.
Here are the two gentlemen leading the Lagos public and private sectors: Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu and Mr. Rotimi Bankole.
Mr. Babajide Sanwo-Olu, the Executive Governor of Lagos State, holds a B.Sc in Surveying and an MBA from the University of Lagos. He is an alumnus of the John F. Kennedy School of government, the London Business School and the Lagos Business School.
Mr. Sanwo-Olu became an associate member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel Management (CIPM) and a fellow of the Nigeria Institute of Training and Development (NITAD).
What’s more, He was the treasurer at the former Lead Merchant Bank from 1994 to 1997 after which he moved to the United Bank for Africa as the head of foreign money market. He then proceeded to First Inland Bank, Plc (now First City Monument Bank) as deputy general manager and divisional head.
He was the chairman of Baywatch Group Limited and First Class Group Limited and a board member of the Department for International Development (DFID/DEEPEN) Fund and Audit committee of Caverton Offshore Service Group, Plc.
Mr. Sanwo-Olu began his political career in 2003 when he was appointed a Special Adviser on Corporate Matters to the then deputy governor of Lagos State, Femi Pedro. He was later appointed acting commissioner for Economic Planning and Budget until 2007 when he became the commissioner for commerce and industry under then Governor, Bola Tinubu.
Mr. Babajide Sanwo-Olu was elected governor of Lagos State on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the governorship election held on March 9, 2019.
He has obtained a variety of awards in his career, some of which include: Platinum Award from the Lagos State Public Service Club. 2009 Best in Human Capital Development Award from the Industrial Training Fund (ITF). Merit Award from the Association of National Accountants of Nigeria. Merit Award from the Chartered Institute of Personnel Management in Nigeria (CIPMN). Merit Award from the Association of Personnel Women Engineers of Nigeria (APWEN). LSDPC Impact Leadership and Recognition Award. And most recently, the prestigious MARKETING EDGE “Outstanding Political Brand Icon of the Year”.
Mr. Sanwo-Olu is happily married to Dr Ibijoke Sanwo-Olu and they are blessed with children.
Rotimi Bankole is a Nigerian media and communications professional, founder and Chairman of SBI Media, a strategic media buying agency and a member of Masscom Global Network. He founded SBI Media in 2013 after quitting his Junior Executive role at All Seasons Meadiacom (since renamed Seasons Zenith) where he ran media campaigns for Etisalat and Pepsi. In 2020, Bankole launched SBI Media Workshop, a free training for Nigerian youths in digital media production and monetization. In 2019, MARKETING EDGE Brands and Advertising Awards of Excellence named Bankole Media Advertising Personality of the year along with his company, SBI Media and its subsidiary, Streams Network named Outstanding Young Creative Agency of the Year and Outstanding Media Agency of the Year.
Bankole began his media and communications career when he had a stint at All Seasons Mediacom where he served as a Junior Executive running media across TV, press, radio and out-of-home for clients such as Etisalat Nigeria and Pepsi. He left All Seasons Mediacom in 2013 to establish his own media agency
After registering SBI Media, he began searching for clients in Nigeria’s largest commercial city of Lagos boarding Okada (commercial motorcycle taxis) to potential clients’ offices submitting proposals. Not long, he sealed a deal with his first client Konga, an e-Commerce start-up at the time that would later retain the services of SBI Media and became one of its biggest clients. After adding more clients to his portfolio, he established Streams Network, an ad agency on the request of his clients to start offering creative services. In 2018, SBI media entered into an affiliation with Masscom Global Network, a group of about 40 agencies across Asia, the Middle East and the Asia Pacific region. The Guardian (Nigeria) wrote in 2019 that SBI Media had an annual turnover of over a billion naira as of 2018, five years after it was founded. SBI Media was named Outstanding Young Creative Agency of the Year 2019 by MARKETING EDGE Brands and Advertising Awards of Excellence. At the MARKETING EDGE 2021 annual awards, SBI Media received the awards of Most Innovative Media Agency of the Year, Outstanding Smartphone Campaign of the Year, Outstanding Performing Media Agency of the Year for the Banking Sector; Outstanding Performing Media Agency of the Year; Outstanding Tech Industry Media Agency of the Year, Outstanding Media Agency for Start-ups, Outstanding Covid-19 Campaign (Smartphone Category).
The duo of Mr. Sanwo-Olu and Mr. Bankole, charismatic visionary leadership archetypes, have over the years, helped to shift mindset, cultivate new habits and behaviours among Lagosians for the greater good. They thus serve as north stars to align on, a well-spring of motivation to perform, and an anchor of resilience.
Apart from accelerating impact metrics, their methods can be referred to as leadership by results approach. Weathering the storms, Mr. Sanwo-Olu and Mr. Bankole have led both in the private and public sectors to the prestigious positions they have attained to enviable standard and relevance.
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