Stepping outside your comfort zone is one of the biggest challenges of leadership

Ayo Akinfe

(1) President-elect Joe Biden has been forced to make radical changes in the way he appoints people due to the fact that his core base is made up of ethnic minorities and women. He has found out that they are just as capable as middle aged Caucasian men

(2) When you look around the world and see how hard it is for leaders to break with their historical pasts, you can see why change is sometimes evolutionary rather than revolutionary. In both politics and commerce, your average European would rather appoint a less competent Caucasian male than a better qualified Black woman because she is taking them outside their comfort zone

(3) In Nigeria, we can all see how President Buhari cannot bring himself to appoint a southerner to head a security agency. I do not think he means to be mean, it is just asking too much of him given his military background and experience of the Nigerian Civil War

(4) When people make these choices, they always use the excuse of merit but I guess they have no option. No one is going to tell you: “I cannot appoint you because you scare me.”

(5) When I look at President-elect Biden’s cosmopolitan all female communications team, I expect them to actually have an impact on the way America views the rest of the world. In the past, the US has seen the rest of the world as its colonies

(6) I am sure that if President Buhari had say a few southern females in key security positions, his government would not be shooting defenceless protesting kids, recruiting Boko Haram terrorists into the army and turning a blind eye to armed Macban Fulani herdsmen

(7) With the way Covid-19 has changed our world forever, we are getting to a stage now whereby we need enforcement of diversity. The global economy will not survive a continued blinkered approach to appointments

(8) When I look at the selfish xenophobia and narrowness that Trumpism, Brexit, Biafra, Oduduwa Republic and Fulani supremacy stand for, I ask myself why some people cannot abandon their past. They are going to have to if humanity wants to overcome the setbacks of the coronavirus

(9) With the global economy contracting by about a quarter, this is not the time to be afraid of leaving your comfort zone. I am glad that President-elect Biden has taken the lead on this matter and I hope others will follow suit

(10) In the case of Nigeria, I would like the APC and PDP to agree to making at least a third of all governors female come 2023. They should also reach a gentleman’s agreement zoning the vice presidency to a woman