Ex Blair Sec. Jonathan Powell.
Chief of Staff to former British Prime Minister, Mr. Tony Blair, Mr. Jonathan Powell, is billed to train chiefs of staff to Governors of the 36 States in the country and their counterpart in service of the Federal Government.
The training would be done alongside other facilitators including Governors Babatunde Fashola of Lagos State and Theodore Orji of Abia State, who before their election into the government houses were chiefs of staff to former Governors.
Chairman of Brickred Consult, Mr. Dan Okehi, confirmed this in a chat with THISDAY last weekend.
He said the two-day programme is slated for Abuja next week.
According to him, Powell would make presentations on ‘Finance and Economic, Leadership, Politics, Security and Risks’ while Fashola would share his experience with participants on ‘Contemporary Responsibilities of Chiefs of Staff of Governors in the Administration of State Governments in Nigeria’.
Orji, on his part, would be deliberating on ‘Challenges of the Chief of Staff as the Clearing House of Executive Governors’, Okehi added.
Other areas of deliberation during the programme are ‘An Effective Chief of Staff Amid Varying Social, Economic, Cultural and Political Pressures and Interest’ as well as ‘Key Success Factors in State Government Administration’.
Powel was Chief of Staff to Prime Minister Tony Blair from 1997 to 2007. He was responsible for coordinating all political and non-political work in No. 10 Downing Street, London.He became Chief of Staff to Tony Blair when Blair became Leader of the opposition in 1994. He was the only senior member staff to serve with Blair from beginning to end of his time as leader of the labour party and was intimately involved in all the major events of those 13 years including three successive election victories.
Jonathan was the principal negotiator on Northern Ireland from 1997 to 2007 and was instrumental in bringing about a lasting peace in that troubled province after centuries of conflict. He played a key role in the formation of the Blair government’s foreign policy and political strategies.
Fashola sharing his old experience.
Before joining the Blair team, Powell was a British Diplomat for 16 years and played a role in the Zimbabwe independence negotiations, the accession of Portugal to the EU, the negotiations with China on the return of Hong Kong, the CDE arms control negotiations in Stockholm, the CSCE human rights negotiations with Russia in Vienna and the two plus four negotiations on German unification.
He was the political officer at the British Embassy in Washington in 1991 where he followed in Clinton Presidential election campaign and became close to President Clinton and his staff whom he introduced to Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. After Oxford and the University of Pensylvannia, he started his career as a Journalist with the BBC and Granada TV.
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