Governors Approve 10-Year Plan For Leadership Academy To Strengthen Governance

The Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) has approved a 10-year plan, covering 2026 to 2036, to establish a leadership academy aimed at strengthening governance, policy implementation and administrative capacity across the 36 states.

The NGF Academy and Leadership Centre will operate as a flagship directorate within the forum’s secretariat, offering executive training, applied research, governance advisory services, digital innovation and structured peer-learning opportunities for political and administrative leaders at the state level.

The forum disclosed this in a statement on Monday, signed by its Director-General, Abdullateef Shittu.

According to the statement, the academy is designed to develop competent, reform-oriented and future-ready leaders capable of addressing emerging governance and development challenges at the subnational level.

It will serve as a leadership development centre, think-tank and international platform for governance and innovation, with a focus on improving institutional performance rather than treating leadership training as a stand-alone activity.

The academy will cater to three categories of state leadership: executive and strategic leaders, cabinet officials and institutional leaders.

The executive and strategic leadership programme will cover governors and their deputies, while the cabinet category will include secretaries to state governments, chiefs of staff, commissioners, special advisers, senior special assistants and local government chairmen.

The institutional leadership programme will target heads of service, permanent secretaries, directors-general, heads of government agencies and departments, board chairmen and senior technical officers.

The NGF said specialised programmes would also be introduced for serving, incoming and outgoing governors and their deputies, including executive training, policy retreats and structured induction to strengthen governance, support smooth transitions and promote sustainable institutional legacies.

The cabinet leadership programme will focus on strengthening state executive councils in policy design and implementation, while the institutional governance programme will support senior civil servants in promoting administrative continuity, integrity and efficiency.

The academy’s training areas will include strategic leadership, public-sector ethics, negotiation, adaptive management, change implementation and sector-specific governance challenges.

These programmes will be delivered through 12 sector hubs covering areas such as public finance, health, agriculture, infrastructure, trade and investment, security, digital innovation and climate.

The forum said its faculty and resource persons would be drawn from Nigeria and other countries, bringing practical and comparative governance experience into the programmes.

Participants will work with a shared competency framework, with their progress assessed through personal action plans under the academy’s Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability, Learning and Feedback framework.

The initiative will also establish innovation and foresight laboratories to develop practical governance solutions through research, data analysis, case studies, policy briefs and design thinking.

According to the NGF, the academy will support state governments in institutional reforms, fiscal sustainability, investment promotion and performance management, while creating opportunities for states to share successful governance practices.

Its programmes will combine online learning with physical training sessions, incorporating gender inclusion, digital innovation and sustainability.

The statement said the academy would deploy an electronic Learning Management System to provide virtual classrooms, mobile and offline access, artificial intelligence-enabled learning tools, data analytics, performance-tracking dashboards and digital certification across the 36 states.

The platform will also be integrated with the NGF Repository, the NGF e-Library and the forum’s website.

The academy will operate under a two-tier governance structure comprising a Governing Council and the NGF Academy and Leadership Directorate.

The Governing Council, made up of NGF Secretariat leaders, development partners and sectoral experts, will oversee programme quality, approve work plans and budgets, and ensure institutional accountability.

The directorate will coordinate programme implementation, stakeholder engagement, monitoring and evaluation.

The implementation plan covers four phases between 2026 and 2036.

The first phase, scheduled for April to September 2026, focuses on strategic planning, institutional arrangements, curriculum development, pilot programmes and partnership building.

The second phase, from October 2026 to June 2027, will involve strengthening operational structures, developing the digital learning platform, engaging faculty and technical personnel, and formalising strategic partnerships.

Shittu said the academy would expand its leadership training, research and governance advisory services between 2027 and 2030, before extending its operations nationwide and establishing regional learning hubs and an endowment fund by 2036.

The initiative is expected to partner with national, continental and international institutions, including the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies, Mo Ibrahim Foundation, World Bank Institute, United Nations Development Programme and UNICEF.

The NGF said its long-term ambition was to extend the academy’s reach beyond Nigeria into West Africa, sub-Saharan Africa and the wider continent, positioning it as a leading institution for subnational governance.

It added that the academy would initially operate within the forum’s existing institutional structures, with plans to become a full-fledged subsidiary of the NGF in the long term.

The forum said the initiative would provide a common platform for developing public-sector leadership, improving policy implementation and promoting more effective governance across Nigeria’s state governments.