A PATHWAY TO PUBLIC SERVICE - THISDAYLIVE
For many young Nigerians, public service remains an institution they admire from a distance but struggle to enter. Despite possessing academic qualifications, professional experience and a genuine desire to serve, many young people often find government offices difficult to penetrate, leaving them to pursue opportunities elsewhere. That reality is what makes the latest initiative of the Lagos State Government particularly significant.
Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu’s announcement that qualified and high-performing fellows of the Lateef Jakande Leadership Academy will have a pathway into the Lagos State civil service has introduced a new possibility for a generation of young people who want to make public service their vocation.
At the graduation ceremony of the Academy’s third cohort and the induction of the 2026/2027 fellows at the Balmoral Convention Centre, Ikeja GRA, Sanwo-Olu unveiled what the state calls the Excellence Pathway, a mechanism designed to bridge the often wide gap between leadership training and actual participation in government.
It is a deceptively simple idea with potentially profound consequences. Train young people for leadership, identify those who distinguish themselves, and create a structured route through which they can enter the public service.
For years, one of the frustrations surrounding leadership programmes has been the disconnect between training and opportunity. Young people are taught leadership, policy, innovation, ethics and public management, only to return to an environment where the institutions they have been prepared to serve appear inaccessible.
Sanwo-Olu appears determined to change that equation. “For too long, the best of our young people have looked at public service and seen a closed door,” the governor said. “If we train leaders and then give them no way in, we have trained them for somebody else.”
That statement captures the importance of the new policy. The Lateef Jakande Leadership Academy was never supposed to be merely another prestigious programme where young people acquire certificates, attend lectures, visit institutions and add another impressive line to their CVs. Its larger ambition is to develop a pool of young Nigerians who understand governance and are capable of assuming responsibility for the future of Lagos.
The excellence pathway gives that ambition an institutional destination. It tells the fellows that leadership development can lead somewhere. More importantly, it tells thousands of young Nigerians watching from outside the Academy that there is a place for merit, excellence and public-spirited ambition within government.
That message matters in a country where young people frequently express frustration about the accessibility of public institutions and the opportunities available to them.
Lagos, with its enormous population, complex economy and demanding governance environment, needs a civil service capable of matching the sophistication of the society it serves. Such a civil service cannot be built entirely by relying on conventional recruitment patterns. It requires fresh thinking, technological competence, policy understanding and a new generation of professionals prepared to work within government and improve it from within.
This is where the Academy could become strategically important. Sanwo-Olu described the excellence pathway as the point at which the fellowship ceases to be merely “a year of experiences” and becomes “a pipeline into the machinery of government itself.”
That is perhaps the most consequential part of the announcement. A pipeline means continuity. It means that leadership development is connected to institutional renewal. It means the state can deliberately identify talented young people, expose them to governance, assess their capabilities and, where they meet the applicable requirements, give them an opportunity to contribute directly to public administration.
The governor’s emphasis on institutionalising the Academy is equally important. Sanwo-Olu noted that this would be the last graduation of the Academy he would attend as governor, acknowledging that by the following year another person would occupy the office.
That admission could easily have been treated as a farewell remark. Instead, it became an argument for institutional continuity. The Academy, he stressed, was established for Lagos, not for one governor.
It has been written into law, ensuring that its future is not dependent on the personality, goodwill or political preferences of whoever occupies the Government House. That is a critical distinction. Governments come and go. Institutions should endure.
A leadership academy that depends entirely on its founder or political sponsor is vulnerable to the changing priorities of successive administrations. But an institution anchored in law has a stronger chance of surviving political transitions and continuing to serve its original purpose.
Sanwo-Olu’s words, “We did not build this Academy for a Governor. We built it for a State”, therefore going beyond the Academy itself. They speak to the broader question of how Lagos can continuously renew its leadership.
Who will manage its public institutions in 10, 20 or 30 years? Who will oversee its transport systems, healthcare institutions, education policies and infrastructure projects?
Who will negotiate complex public-private partnerships and major concessions? Who will manage public assets and make difficult decisions when the interests of millions of residents are at stake?
The answer cannot always be the same generation of public officials. There must be succession. And succession must be prepared for.
That is why the governor’s description of leadership as “infrastructure” deserves attention. Roads, bridges, rail lines, hospitals and other physical assets may define the visible face of development, but the people managing those assets ultimately determine how effectively they serve the public.
A badly managed institution can undermine the value of even the most expensive infrastructure. Conversely, competent, ethical and innovative public servants can transform limited resources into meaningful public value.
The Academy is therefore potentially investing in Lagos’s most important long-term infrastructure: its people.
The scale of interest in the programme also demonstrates the appetite among young Nigerians for such opportunities. More than 16,000 people reportedly applied for the incoming cohort.
Yet Sanwo-Olu’s response was telling: “Bigger is not the goal. Better is.” That philosophy should remain at the heart of the initiative.
Leadership development cannot become a numbers game. The objective should not be to produce the largest possible army of fellows, but to identify and develop people with competence, character, intellectual curiosity and a genuine commitment to public service.
And that is where the governor’s strongest challenge to the fellows comes in. “Lagos has enough certificates,” he said. “What Lagos is short of is people who will do the right thing at the moment it costs them something.” That is the real test.
A civil service filled with brilliant graduates but weakened by poor ethics will not transform society. Neither will a government populated by technically competent people who lack the courage to defend institutions, challenge wrongdoing or make difficult decisions in the public interest.
The excellence pathway will therefore succeed only if excellence means more than academic performance. It must reward competence. It must demand integrity. It must value innovation. It must encourage institutional loyalty over personal gratification.
And it must prepare young professionals to understand that public service is fundamentally about responsibility.
For the young fellows entering the Academy, Sanwo-Olu’s announcement offers something that many leadership programmes cannot offer: a tangible bridge between preparation and opportunity.
For Lagos, it offers something potentially even more valuable—a mechanism for building the next generation of public servants before the need for them becomes urgent.
The ultimate measure of the Lateef Jakande Leadership Academy may therefore not be how many fellows graduate from it. It will be how many of those fellows eventually help to make Lagos better.
For a generation often told that the future belongs to them, Lagos is now offering a more practical message: The future is not merely something to inherit. It is something to help govern.
And for the young fellows of the Lateef Jakande Leadership Academy, the door to that future may finally be opening.
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