By Hamza Ibrahim Chinade.

The Inspiring Leadership Reflection Interactive Series (ILERIS), a monthly youths mentorship and inspiration lecture usually organize by Center for Information Technology and Development (CITAD) is an experience sharing ground between successful people of different backgrounds and professions and staff, volunteers, interns of CITAD, peace club members of secondary schools, Students for Peace of Universities, Polytechnics, Colleges of Education, and members of Kano civil society and is meant to serve as a symposium that shapes the lives of the participants through learning from success, failure, challenge and obstacles of the invited guest speakers so that they succeed by imitating or developing style of handling failure, challenge or obstacle while exploring the secrets of success in their different endeavors. Every month, the organization invites a prolific guest to have an interaction with the participants, this month CITAD hosts Malam Salihu Lukman, the Director General of Progressive Governors Forum as the guest speaker.

Giving an opening remark, the Executive Director of the organization Dr. Yunusa Zakari Ya’u thanked the guest for gracing the event and advised the participants to listen to the guest with interest and attention in order to gain from his wealth of experience emphasizing that the objective of the interactive session is for the participants to directly learn one or two lessons that will inspire them to think about their dreams, think about aspiring to become successful people and to think about the strategies to adopt in order to also succeed.

In his presentation, the guest, Malam Salihu Lukman toured the participants into his vast profile beginning with his student days to unionism, activism, advocacy for social justice, human rights, and labour struggles while at the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) and how he landed into politics, in all these endeavors Lukman highlighted problems, challenges as well as opportunities that he hinted sacrifice and commitment are the bedrock of excelling in everything one does. Lamenting on the unemployment issue, Lukman said “I have come to realize through my community work even the search for job many people don’t know how to approach it, it’s about packaging yourself through your CV, but what I found out is that many graduates don’t know how to write their CVs”, recalling his Textile Union days and pointing out the significance of sacrifice and commitment, the guest speaker noted “once you make an effort there will always be a reward and the reward can come from unfamiliar quarters”. Malam Salihu Lukman challenged the participants to explore their potentials saying potentials are noticed in people who wake up and make efforts. The lecture ended with a presentation of some publications of the Center for Information Technology and Development (CITAD) to the guest by Senior Programmes Officer, Kabiru Sa’idu Dakata.