NGF Approves 10-Year Leadership Academy to Strengthen Governance

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

The initiative, which will run from 2026 to 2036, will operate as a flagship directorate within the NGF Secretariat, providing executive training, research, governance advisory services, digital innovation and peer-learning opportunities for political and administrative leaders.

The NGF Director-General, Abdullateef Shittu, disclosed this in a statement on Monday, saying the academy was designed to develop competent, reform-minded and future-ready leaders capable of addressing emerging governance and development challenges at the subnational level.

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According to the forum, the academy will cater to three categories of state leadership: governors and their deputies; cabinet officials, including commissioners, special advisers and local government chairmen; and institutional leaders such as permanent secretaries, directors-general and heads of government agencies.

The academy will also introduce specialised programmes for serving, incoming and outgoing governors and their deputies, including executive training, policy retreats and structured induction programmes to strengthen governance, ensure smooth transitions and promote sustainable institutional legacies.

The NGF said its programmes would cover strategic leadership, public-sector ethics, negotiation, change management and sector-specific governance challenges across 12 sector hubs, including public finance, health, agriculture, infrastructure, trade and investment, security, digital innovation and climate.

It added that the academy would establish innovation and foresight laboratories to develop practical governance solutions through research, data analysis, case studies and policy briefs, while participants’ progress would be monitored through individual action plans under its Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability, Learning and Feedback framework.