Building a strong personality in your career: A focus on the creative industry, By Prince Clem Ikanade Agba

A PAPER PRESENTED BY THE HONOURABLE MINISTER, BUDGET AND NATIONAL PLANNING, PRINCE CLEM IKANADE AGBA ON THE OCCASION OF THE OFFICIAL PRESENTATION OF A BOOK, ENTITLED: “FLYING FIVE FLAGS”

I am delighted to be invited to present a paper as part of the activities of the official book presentation on “Flying Five Flags”.

The only elixir to human resourcefulness rests on creativity which is the engine room to run life stages.The active nature of man is based on how creative he or she is and to live healthily and have peaceful co-existence, there is needfor creativity.

Creativity can be likened to hyper-activeness as hyperactive individuals can be likened to being creative or likely to be creative in the future. Therefore, being a hyperactive child in my formative years gave me an insight into what creativity is all about because creativity represents your talent and skill displayed to a high degree of responsibility. Pertinently, it is expected that once a man is creative he or she should endeavour not to only build a strong personality but to explore some vital components and in addition, make planning and policy makingthe ultimate in every stage of life. Most importantly, these are the key qualities a man needs to fly all the flags of life.

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A closely associated trait is Self-confidence which is an inner attitude that drives your skills and abilities. It means you accept and trust yourself and have a sense of control in your life. You know your strengths and weakness well, have a positive view of yourself and the ability to set realistic expectations and goals as well as communicate assertively and handle criticism.

Many individuals did not attain their positive personality traits at birth. While some people are born with a good sense of humour and a lot of charisma, others lack these features and find it almost impossible to acquire them. However, generally speaking, most positive personality traits can be acquired and developed to help you become a more attractive, charismatic and successful person. Some personalities already well endowed can enhance their qualities to become more outstanding in running through life stages! If you are self-confident you always have an advantage over those who constantly doubt themselves because strong-willed people often inspire others and they handle situations better in their various flags of life. It does not matter where you find yourself, if you are self-confident you are more likely to climb up the career ladder faster than those you met at a certain level. If you are self-confident don’t perceive the reactions of other people as rules that you must follow and you do not have the need to seek out their approval. This is because self-confident people control their lives themselves and they take responsibility for their actions.

Learn to develop a good Sense of Humour. Sometimes laugh at your failure to get inspired to work harder because the story behind those who flew their flags well is humorous. With a good sense of humour, working harder will seem stress-free for you. People like those who have humorous personalities and in most casesthey tend to do better in their careers. Laughter is an element that can help you cope with stress, see positivity, and communicate with others. Witty people are likely to be appreciated more and a lot of people want to be around them because they are easygoing and fun to be with. Endeavour to enhance your associative thinking skills as many jokes are based on a stable mind.

I have always preached that it is good to work hard but it is best to work smart.

Despite a common misconception, based on my experience in the private sector, the highest-performing employees don’t overwork. They only need to work smart. A smart person tend to work with energy, commitment and diligence. Always immerse yourself in the task that you need to complete. Just like appetite comes with eating, inspiration comes with work. When you keep switching between activities, it’s difficult for the brain to get back to the initial task. When we feel the way the brain processes a task to be unpleasant, it means that motivation has disappeared. Moreover, it’s important to follow a healthy daytime schedule so that you don’t find yourself distracted by a lack of sleep.

The Ability to Read other People shouldn’t make you assume what they are not. In other words, many people assume that reading the minds of others is a superpower that only extrasensory people have.

The ability to control the reactions of your body is an important virtue. Self-control is the ability to control one’s emotions and behaviour and it’s what helps people reach their goals. It’s necessary to build rewarding personal relationships and a successful career. With its help, you can remain balanced, restrained, and maintain external and inner peace. To develop this ability, you need to learn to determine and understand your emotions.

The Ability to Plan and Formulate Principles engender progress. If you portray other traits without the ability to plan and formulate principles, you may not be as successful as you have wished to be.

Recently, the world was faced with the COVID-19 pandemic, which started as a health pandemic and later spilled into an economic pandemic. Thus, the challenge was double pronged – health and economic. Governments all over the world were faced with the difficult decision of bringing economic activities to a halt to curb the spread of the virus or of continuing economic activities at the risk to the lives of their citizens. I am happy to let you know that the measures put in place by the government of Nigeria have been very successful as both the health and economic data are on the positive trajectory.

This was made possible by the Economic Sustainability Plan that was developed to mitigate the impact of Covid-19 and to grow the economy. The plan contains three broad strategies: (i) Stimulating the Economy, (ii) Mobilization of External Support and Funding and
(iii) a Strategic Revenue Growth Initiative (SRGI) with a focus on improving our non-oil revenue generation. These strategies were aimed at retaining and creating jobs, increasing productivity, ensuring social stability and addressing long-standing economic vulnerabilities.

The total stimulus package by the Federal Government of Nigeria wasN2.3 trillion aimed at Stimulating the Economy and cushion the effect of the pandemic. These packages consist to a large extent, of a combination of fiscal and monetary policies, sectoral interventions, and social programmes. The fiscal and monetary policies helped to support States, businesses, households and individuals through grants, tax relief, payroll support, tariff reductions, and direct support to the health sector. The real sector interventions focused on Mass Agriculture, Mass Housing, Public Works, Off-grid Solar Power Installations and support to small businesses. A common feature of these interventions is that they helped to create a large number of jobs, empowered farmers and entrepreneurs, used up to 100% of local materials, conserved foreign exchange and provided guaranteed offtake of outputs especially in Agriculture and Housing.

As the impact of COVID-19 peaks in different waves across the world, one thing is clear: there is need for a continuing analysis of the factors and consequences of how societies are impacted and how they will eventually recover. It therefore means that the lesson from the success of the ESP especially as it helped us to recover quickly from recession will be carried into subsequent plans in order to “build back better” after Covid-19.

To consolidate on the gains of ESP and to grow the economy on an inclusive growth and sustainable economic development trajectory, my Ministry initiated the process for the preparation of a Medium-Term National Development Plan 2021-2025 to guide Government policies, programmes and projects as well as private sector operations from now to 2025 while this would be inspired by Nigeria Agenda 2050 which encapsulates our long-term vision for Nigeria.

I like to note that the process for the preparation of the Plans is inclusive and participatory with involvement of critical stakeholders in the process. For this reason, the Executive and Legislative arms of government at the national level, the Private Sector (formal and informal), Civil Society Organisations (CSOs), Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), Opinion Leaders and Public Commentators, Religious Organisations and Traditional Leaders and various pressure groups like Labour, Students, etc., are all involved in the preparation process.

The governance structure for the development of the plan is made up of three layers and some advisory roles. It involved 7 clusters and 26 Technical Working Groups (TWGs), with a coordinating role by the Central Working Group (CWG) and the National Steering Committee (NSC) with the overall responsibility of determining the vision, mission, objectives and taking responsibility for the entire plan. The Presidential Economic Advisory Council provides advisory role, while ministries and agencies were also consulted to provide inputs of their activities and priorities.

The Medium-Term National Development Plan (MTNDP) aims to lift 34 million people out of poverty and generate 25 million jobs by 2025. Nigeria can achieve these goals by expanding economic growth, growing an inclusive economy, leveraging its young workforce and enhancing execution capacity at the national level.

This plan envisions Nigeria being a leading industrializing and reforming nation in Africa, focused on building its state capacity and capabilities, as well as fostering private-sector led growth to help address the critical issues of job creation and poverty reduction. Nigeria creates an enabling investment climate and business environment, underpinned by a motivated, capacitated, and well resourced; world class civil service that drives open, transparent and high performance governance at all levels. The country moves decisively towards the reforms required to unlock local content development, subnational economic diversification, competitiveness, growth, making moderate, incremental progress in poverty reduction and job creation in the medium-term.

Distinguished ladies and gentlemen, we believe that effective implementation of the MTNDP 2021 – 2025 and NA 2050 when finally approved, portends a positive and brighter outlook for Nigerian economy in the medium to long term. In spite of the COVID-19 challenges, Nigeria remained the largest economy and most populous country in Africa with an estimated population of more than 200 million, which is expected to grow to 411 million by 2050 and become the third most populous country in the world after China and India. The country’s middle class of roughly 50 million people is expected to help grow the country into one of the top-twenty global economies by 2050. These statistics shows that Nigeria has enormous potentials and opportunities ahead of it.

The journey of life Cycles surely begins with each of us which can only be realized when we all imbibe the culture of research, reading and writing which the authors of the book under review advocate,

Thank you all for your kind attention.