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The Face Of Nigerian President-The Dawn Of A New Political Order

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At the last count,Independent Electoral Commission has registered 91 Political Parties in Nigeria and 50% of the registered Parties will always field  Presidential Candidates.Outside the two major parties viz APC and PDP ,there is an ‘Izaga’ Masquerade wearing the cloth of an unknown political Party that has entered the dancing arena.The height of  ‘Izaga’ is always conspicuously intimidating and no doubt ,a cynosure of all passerby. BVI Channel 1 Online could not help it but to go to the political arena in search of the new arrival.His name is Professor Kingsley Bosah Chiedu Moghalu.
Who Is Prof Kingsley Moghalu
Kingsley Moghalu is a global leader who has made contributions to the stability, progress and wealth of nations, societies and individuals across such domains as academia, economic policy, banking and finance, entrepreneurship, law, and diplomacy. As Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria from 2009-2014 he led the execution of extensive reforms in the Nigerian banking system after the global financial crisis. He was a member of the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee that brought inflation down into single digits.

As Professor of International Business and Public Policy at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in Massachusetts, USA he has taught, trained and inspired graduate students from more than 40 countries in North America, Europe, Africa and Asia, men and women who will go on to leadership roles in their countries in careers from business to government service, from non-profits to military intelligence.

Kingsley served as the Chairman of the Boards of Directors of the Nigerian-Export-Import Bank (NEXIM) and the Financial Institutions Training Center. He was also a Member of the Boards of Directors of the Central Bank of Nigeria, the Securities and Exchange Commission of Nigeria, the Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria, and the global Alliance for Financial Inclusion (AFI).

He is the Founder & CEO of Sogato Strategies LLC, a global strategy, risk and macroeconomic advisory firm that has helped multinational corporations, global banks, private equity and asset management corporations make successful investments in emerging market countries.

Kingsley previously worked for the United Nations for 17 years, leading successful work in national reconciliation and nation-building in fractured societies, risk management and management reform in the UN, and raising billions of dollars for social investments in developing countries by The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria in Geneva.

A visionary thinker and thought leader, he is the author of several books, an international keynote speaker at industry conferences, and a frequent commentator in the global media including CNN, BBC World TV, Bloomberg, and the Financial Times.

A philanthropist, Kingsley founded the Isaac Moghalu Foundation, a non-profit organization that provides support for literacy, educational institutions, and access to education for underprivileged children in rural communities in Nigeria.

Kingsley was educated at the London School of Economics and Political Science (Ph.D., M.Phil.), The Fletcher School at Tufts University (M.A.), University of Nigeria, Nsukka (LL.B.), and the Institute of Risk Management in London, UK. He has completed executive leadership programs in economic transformation, macroeconomic management, global leadership, corporate governance, and strategy at Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard Business School, Wharton, Chicago Booth School of Business, and the International Monetary Fund Institute.
Bretton Woods Book Cover
Early Life
Professor Kingsley Bosah Chiedu Ayodele Moghalu was born in Lagos on May 7, 1963. He is the first of five children. His father, Isaac Chukwudum Moghalu (now deceased) was a Nigerian Foreign Service Officer, one of a small group of promising young Nigerians inducted into the Ministry of Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs after Nigeria’s independence in 1960. His mother, Lady Vidah Chinelo Moghalu, was a schoolteacher at the Breadfruit School on Lagos Island who later became a professional dietician. Shortly after his birth, his father was posted to Geneva, Switzerland.The Moghalu family spent a year in Switzerland and then moved to Washington, DC in 1964 when Isaac Moghalu was posted to the Nigerian Embassy there. In 1967, the family returned to Nigeria and Isaac Moghalu transferred to the Eastern Region Civil Service as the Nigerian political crisis gathered strength and later snowballed into a full-scale war. Isaac Moghalu joined the Cabinet Office of the Eastern Region, and later the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Biafra. The family remained in Eastern Nigeria after the civil war ended in 1970 and Prof. Moghalu’s father later rose to become a Permanent Secretary with a strong reputation for probity. This background influenced Chiedu Moghalu’s strong value system — a sense of family honor and a family tradition of public service.

Education & Early Career

After his secondary education at Eziama High School, Aba, Government College, Umuahia, and Federal Government College, Enugu, Chiedu obtained a degree in law at theUniversity of Nigeria, Nsukka and was admitted to the Nigerian Bar in 1987. Nation Youth Service under the National Youth Service Corps as a Legal Officer atShell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) Ltd in Lagos followed. So did a subsequent three-year stint that combined law and journalism as General Counsel of Newswatch, the leading newsmagazine in Nigeria at the time, a prolific contributor to the opinion pages of The Guardian newspaper, and a special correspondent in Nigeria for several US and European newspapers including Africa News Service (forerunner of AllAfrica Global Media), South, and the Christian Science Monitor.

Chiedu left Nigeria again in 1991 for his post-graduate education at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, turning down an offer from a friend to remain in Nigeria and become the company secretary of a new generation bank that was being set up in Lagos. His sights were set squarely on a loftier dream, one that called for delayed gratification. That goal was a career in the United Nations. Moghalu was awarded the Joan Gillespie Fellowship at The Fletcher School. He obtained a master’s degree in international relations from there in 1992.Chiedu had deferred his plan to study for a Ph.D. when he was appointed into the UN after his master’s degree in 1992. A decade later, he returned to his quest for knowledge. By now a senior officer in the UN system in Geneva, he enrolled and studied part-time and obtained a Doctor of Philosophy degree in international relations at the London School of Economics (LSE) in 2005. Chiedu completed his 450-page doctoral dissertation in a record-breaking 12 months and his overall degree in 18 months.Immediately after this, he studied for and obtained the International Certificate in Risk Management at the UK Institute of Risk Management in London.Later, he received further education in macroeconomics, financial policy, and corporate governance atHarvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard Business School, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Institute

United Nations

Armed with interdisciplinary knowledge in international economics, international law and diplomacy, and a global network of contacts, Chiedu was ready to play on the world stage. He was appointed into the UN Secretariat in 1992 by then Secretary-General Boutros-Boutros Ghali on the basis of individual merit. In the UN, Moghalu worked hard and rose through the ranks from entry level Associate Officer to the highest career rank of Director. Along the way, he handled legal, strategic planning and executive management assignments at UN Headquarters in New York and in Cambodia, Croatia, Tanzania, and Switzerland.

In 2006, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan appointed Moghalu as one of five members of the high-level Redesign Panel on the UN Internal Justice System that overhauled the regulatory compliance, accountability, and dispute resolution framework that governs the global workforce of the UN.This was a core aspect of UN management reform. This six-month special assignment was at the nominal level of Under-Secretary-General, the highest political rank in the UN below the Secretary-General.

FAMILY

Professor Moghalu is married to Mrs. Maryanne Moghalu, a lawyer and social entrepreneur, who is the Executive Director of the Isaac Moghalu Foundation that the Moghalu family established in 2005 in memory of the family patriarch Isaac Moghalu. IMOF supports educational institutions and disadvantaged children and youth with educational infrastructure such as libraries as well as scholarships. The Foundation was inaugurated at Nnewi in December 2005 by Gen. Yakubu Gowon, a former Head of State of Nigeria. Kingsley and Maryanne Moghalu have four children.

Prof. Moghalu has four siblings: Nancy Ijeoma Ijemere is a Senior Information Technology Specialist and holds a Master of Science in Information Technology from Carnegie Mellon University; Chris Moghalu, educated at Howard University, is a security expert and previously served in the US Army Military Intelligence; Robert Odi Moghalu is a US High School educator who is also an author of three books; and Chikezie Moghalu, a petroleum engineer with Chevron Corporation, and who holds a master’s degree in petroleum engineering from the University of Southern California.

 

Presidential Aspirant & Political Activities
Prof Kingsley Moghalu has chosen to run for president next year on the platform of the Young Progressive Party (YPP).Mr Moghalu said his choice of YPP was borne out of thorough assessment as he did not want a party with moneybags and recycled politicians.

He said he needed a party with an ideology that matches his and a structure across the country that when developed will be a good platform to win as he is in the race to win.

“I joined them (YPP) with a view to becoming their candidate and a flag bearer of the party. I wanted to be a part of a democratic movement not a polity of greed and settlement.

Femi Aribisala has this to say about Prof Kingsley Moghalu

‘ He is our very own Emmanuel Macron,a man destined to change the course of Nigeria’s political landscape.Of those who have expressed interest in seeking our vote, one man stands head and shoulders above the rest.  That man is Professor Kingsley Chiedu Moghalu.Moghalu has what it takes to be Nigeria’s next president.  He is experienced, but not antediluvian.  He is young but not naïve.  He is not a lackey of the old guard but not abhorrent to them.  He has both a national and an international pedigree.  Moreover, he is a visionary, very intelligent and highly driven. With Moghalu’s election as president, certain problems that have bedeviled us of recent will be things of the past.  With President Moghalu, there will be no more apologetics for the murderous onslaughts of Fulani herdsmen.  As a matter of fact, one of his cardinal policies is to increase the Nigeria Police from its measly 350,000 strength to 1.5 million.With President Moghalu, there will be no more agitation for the dismemberment of Nigeria.  Instead, his very election will heal our wounds and calm frayed nerves.  What he proposes is a return to “true federalism.”  Says Moghalu: “The political and constitutional structure of Nigeria affects its economic management, in our case in a very negative manner because the potential productivity of the country’s component regions and states is suppressed by the rent-seeking politics to control absolute power at the center and dispense patronage. This is part of why constitutional restructuring for a true federalism is essential.”With President Moghalu, politics will not overshadow policy.  Quoting John F. Kennedy, Moghalu insists: “Politics is too important to be left to the politicians.”  He says: “It is time to act on the reality that Nigeria will not achieve economic development and transformation on the current trajectory of its politics. The present political leadership class simply does not have the skills and the background that are fit for purpose. Technocratically competent and visionary political leaders are what it will take to reposition the Nigerian economy for sustainable growth and transformation.”

His siren is an African version of Obama’s “yes we can.”  Yes, we can transform our economies within a generation.  Yes, we can do it without undue reliance on foreign aid.  Yes, we can create our own endogenous technology without relying on the pipe-dream of technology transfers.  Yes, we can renovate, innovate, and modernize by forming a nexus between politics and economics.
But now, Moghalu’s focus is firmly trained on Nigeria.  In a new book, launched just this February 2018, entitled: “Build, Innovate and Grow (BIG): My Vision for Nigeria;” Moghalu presents a blueprint for his bid for the presidency.  This new book is quite simply a masterpiece of innovative ideas and policy prescriptions designed to renovate, re-build and grow our economy and polity.
What you get from Moghalu is not politics but policy.  That is why he needs to stay well away from the PDP and the APC; odd-jobbers mired in politics without policy.  Listen very carefully to the cacophonies emerging from these two major national parties at this crunch moment in our history, and you will discover that there is no policy debate whatsoever; just a bitter and vicious struggle for power and patronage that, in the APC especially, even results in killings and assassinations.
We have had enough of this.  The time is long overdue for the likes of Kingsley Moghalu to engineer a hostile takeover of Nigerian politics at the ballot box.  We need to forge a new departure.  What we need are men and women like Kingsley Mogahalu up and down the ballot in order to build a new Nigerian political class, a new Nigerian political culture and a new Nigerian political future.
The Nigerian electorate must come of age.  We cannot continue in the failed tradition of electing leaders who don’t have a clue what government entails in 21st century Nigeria.  We need to admit that the failure of government in democratic Nigeria is a failure of the electorate.  We have failed to put the right people into power.  We have failed to apply wisdom in the voting booth.  Instead, we have opted for the stolen-monied, the charlatan, the snake-oil salesmen, the smooth-talking babalawos, and the wise-cracking ethnic jingoists.
It is past time for something different; something avant-garde; something forward-looking; something innovative and imaginative.  We need something not mired in the age-old ethnic diatribes, something with a new vision and perspective, something that harnesses the latent potentials of Nigeria into our very own Unbound Prometheus.  Says Moghalu: “We must create a rising tide that lifts all boats, not just those of relatives and tribesmen and women.”
Our motto today should be out with the old: in with the young.  Out with the politicians: in with the technocrats.  Out with the primordial: in with the cutting-edge.  Out with the ethnocentric and tribalistic: in with the inclusive and nationalistic.
Look around the world we are in today, the old is making way for the new.  Look at the success-stories of the African continent and you will find men and women like Paul Kagame of Rwanda, and Ameena Gurib-Fakim of Mauritius.  These are the beautiful ones the likes of whom are not yet born on the Nigerian political landscape.  Look farther afield and you find dynamic men like Justin Trudeau of Canada, and Emmanuel Macron of France.  That is the way of the world today that still remains anathema in Nigeria to our detriment.
Not anymore!  Says Moghalu: “An economy cannot be managed to progress that is beyond the vision, capacity and competence of the political leadership, regardless of how many brilliant technical economists abound in a country. If the political leadership lacks vision, is venal and focused on other priorities, sound technocrats can’t achieve very much. Their full potential contribution will be suppressed by political decisions above them, usually taken in caucuses at night in places that are not offices.”
What this means is that Nigeria needs to leap-frog into the 21st century.  Our persistence in recycling old cargoes must come to an end.  We cannot afford to continue to elect abject failures in the hope that somehow, they will one day succeed.  We can no longer afford to elect as president politicians who are sick and ailing.  We don’t need famous men who specialize in doing nothing.  This is the jet age and Nigeria is lagging too far behind.  We must run much faster if we are ever to stand the chance of catching up.  We have no business with “go-slow.”
Since our gerontocratic oligarchs have refused to go into voluntary retirement, let us throw them all a send-off party in the 2019 election.  Let us elect a completely new slate of leadership more in tune with the yearnings of our 200 million population.  With the Asian tigers already on the move, let us release the Nigerian cheetahs and the lions from the reservation.  It is time to renovate, innovate and be motivated.  This giant called Nigeria must be woken up from its 60-year slumber.
With Moghalu, Nigeria will have a president bursting with ideas.  Hear him: “The fundamental solutions to our crisis of economic growth and development lie in leadership. Not the politics-as-usual of the past, but a new kind of politics of ideas. It will take this kind of politics to produce the vision and political will to undertake the necessary economic and institutional reforms.”
“It will take this kind of politics to educate and mobilize ordinary Nigerians to new ways of economic transformation and their enlightened, collective self-interest in supporting the creation of a new economic paradigm that dramatically cuts down joblessness and poverty. It takes knowledge, which is the true wealth of nations, to even know where to begin, how to proceed, and the direction in which we should be headed.”
When was the last time you heard a speech by a Nigerian leader that was inspirational?  My wife heard Moghalu speaking about his vision for Nigeria for the very first time and was mesmerized.  “The man is impressive,” she concluded.  This should come as no surprise.  Moghalu has the pedigree and experience to bring a new dynamism to Nigerian leadership.
They thought George Weah could not win, but he is now the President of Liberia.  They thought Emmanuel Macron did not have a chance, but he wiped the slate clean and became president of France with a brand-new slate of legislators.
If you are one of those doubting Thomases who thinks competent, honest and industrious men like Moghalu don’t stand a chance in Nigerian politics, just wait and see.  As he continues to crisscross the country, holding town hall meetings, engaging the man-in-the-street and laying the foundation for a veritable political revolution, don’t be surprised when in February 2019, after the first run-off election in Nigeria’s political history, Kingsley Moghalu emerges as the new president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria”.
Compiled and Reported by Ndubuisi Anaenugwu

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