The Akwa Ibom Governor, Chief Godswill Akpabio, has been voted NewsAfrica Leader of the Year 2014.
Akpabio is the second person to be so voted in the 14-year history of the magazine.
Kofi Anan, a one-time Secretary-General of United Nations, was the first person to have won the award in 2002.
A press release issued on Tuesday in London by the publisher of magazine, Moffat Ekoriko, said Akpabio was voted “for showing uncommon leadership in a country where leaders see their success in office in terms of personal wealth; for taking initiatives others are shy of, and for giving hope of a greater future for Nigeria, a key country in Africa.”
Ekoriko noted that Akpabio’s feat in transforming Akwa Ibom State, which was once a backwater, into Nigeria’s fastest developing state, has made him the “the poster boy of the Nigerian political class, so much so that the performance of other office holders is measured in relation to his.”
To emerge as NewsAfrica Leader of the Year, the publisher hinted that Akpabio scored higher than presidents, business leaders and even religious leaders with multi-million congregations.
As NewsAfrica Leader of the Year 2014, Chief Akpabio is expected to deliver this year’s NewsAfrica Global Lecture on: “Delivering the Dividends of Governance: An African Experience.”
The lecture, which holds in London in May 2014, will be attended by political, business and civil society leaders from all over Africa and the Caribbean as well as selected European ministers.
NewsAfrica’s Leader of the Year is an African on the continent or in the Diaspora who has demonstrated unique leadership capabilities in tackling the problems of development, inequality, poor leadership or crisis bedeviling the continent.
Such a person must have the strength of character and courage to challenge the status quo of the vicious circle of poverty, deprivation and crisis that has badly branded Africa and its people.
The person’s leadership credentials must have the capacity to challenge others to offer better service to their societies.
Above all, he or she must be an African of exemplary character, free of the taint of corruption and abuse of power, of which most African leaders often come afflicted.
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