Austin Okere launches Ausso Leadership Academy

Austin Okere, the serial entrepreneur, has launched the long-awaited Ausso Leadership Academy (ALA) in Lekki, Lagos.

ALA is an experiential entrepreneurship academy, which mentors and takes care of senior executives in large enterprises, multinationals and conglomerates as well as founders of big businesses.

Speaking at the launch of the academy in Lagos last Thursday, Austin Okere, CEO of ALA, said many of the champions (established entrepreneurs) he had spoken to agreed that they wanted to have an opportunity to mentor people of that calibre all along but had no medium to do so.

Okere said he had three reasons for setting up the leadership and entrepreneurship academy.

“I wanted to advise others the same way I would have advised my younger self. If I had that kind of advice at the time I was starting my business, I would probably have avoided some of my mistakes.

“The second inspiration was that I wanted to be for others, the mentor I wish I had.

“The third reason, which is personal, is to mentor entrepreneurs to scale their businesses geometrically. We need to create something that will bring back our children from abroad. If we all put our hands together, there will be jobs for our children to come back to,” he said.

He said many Nigerians had contacted him, asking to attend the academy free. However, doing this would make people take ALA for granted and the academy would be unsustainable, he said.

Okere is the founder Computer Warehouse Group (CWG), which is today the largest computer security firm in the Nigerian Stock Exchange.

According to him, there was a need for Nigerian entrepreneurs to invest more in human capital as noted by Bill Gates.

Okere said ALA was not a business school but a practical and experiential complement from experiences in business schools.

“A billionaire is not necessarily someone who has amassed a billion dollars, but someone who has touched a billion lives,” he stated.

Ernest Ndukwe, former executive vice chairman of the Nigeria Communication Commission (NCC), who was chairman of the event, pointed out that there was a general agreement that business execution could be taught.

Ndukwe said mentoring was a process, rather than a day’s affair, urging mentors or champions at ALA to make themselves available for the prospective mentees.

He said he was now involved in raising a crop of leaders who would understood the intricacies of governance and global issues in a digital economy.

Leo Stan Eke, chairman of Zinox Technologies Limited, said what made someone a billionaire was not the billions he or she acquired but legacies.

Eke said this was time for old entrepreneurs to go back to entrepreneurship schools and gain knowledge of the modern system.

Tosin Runsewe, chief operating officer of AXA Mansard Insurance Plc, said as Nigeria’s population kept growing, challenges also continued rising. Runsewe said the population could be a gift if properly harnessed, adding that the launch of the ALA would go a long way in enhancing the quality of manpower in the country.

ODINAKA ANUDU