# Abubakar Suleiman https://suleimana.com/ Nigerian economist and banker, Chief Executive of Sterling Bank, writing on nation building, context, and the informal economy. Abubakar Suleiman is Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Sterling Bank. All writing on this site is published in a personal capacity and does not represent the views of any board, institution or advisory body. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ## Positions The three standing arguments of this site. They do not change. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ### Nation building https://suleimana.com/positions/nation-building/ Politics is transactional. Nation building is transformational. In the theatre of Nigerian public discourse, we have conflated two distinct concepts: politics and nation building. This conflation has cost us dearly. Politics — the mechanism through which we elect leaders and allocate resources — has consumed our collective energy, while nation building — the voluntary, collaborative process of creating a cohesive society — has been relegated to occasional rhetoric. The distinction is not merely semantic. Politics is transactional; nation building is transformational. Politics divides; nation building unites. Politics operates in electoral cycles; nation building spans generations. We have created a false dichotomy where citizens must choose between supporting the government of the day or opposing it. This binary thinking has robbed us of the middle ground where most solutions actually reside. When a child goes hungry in Sokoto or lacks access to education in Enugu, the impact doesn’t discriminate between PDP, APC, or Labour Party supporters. The elite — those of us privileged with education, resources, and influence — have a particular responsibility that extends beyond our legal and civic obligations. The contract between citizens and government is necessary but insufficient for national development. What’s required is a concurrent and complementary effort: a nation building agenda that operates above the fray of partisan politics. The challenge has never been a lack of generosity but rather a deficit of trusted channels. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ### Altitude and perspective https://suleimana.com/positions/altitude-and-perspective/ The same building is a giant and a dwarf. Only where you stand changes. From the 95th floor of the St. Regis Shenzhen, the world below shrinks. The city sprawls in miniature, and even the most impressive structures seem diminished by the sheer altitude. Among them is the Grand Hyatt, a 42-story tower rising 195 meters into the sky. From this height, it looks almost inconsequential. Yet, if you stand at its base, this same building towers above you with an authority that commands respect. At 42 floors, the Grand Hyatt would dominate the skyline of most cities on Earth. It is taller than any corporate building in Nigeria, a nation of over 220 million people. The Grand Hyatt is, simultaneously, both a giant and a dwarf. The only thing that changes is where you stand when you look at it. Context is not merely useful information — it is the lens through which all information acquires meaning. Without it, we are left with raw data that can mislead as easily as it can inform. This is why an absence of context can be worse than an absence of knowledge. Ignorance can be fixed with a fact. But context is layered, nuanced, and often deeply personal. Some will insist this emphasis on context amounts to settling for mediocrity. But a true architect must build on the soil that exists, not the soil they wish existed. They must consider the weather, integrate the flow of the wind, and account for the materials at hand. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ### Informal productivity https://suleimana.com/positions/informal-productivity/ The informal sector is not a shadow economy. It is the economy. In sub-Saharan Africa, the informal economy is not peripheral. It is dominant. The informal sector accounts for between 50% and 80% of GDP in many African countries, and employs 75% to 95.7% of the non-agricultural workforce in countries such as Mozambique, Sudan and Sierra Leone. This is not a shadow economy. It is the economy. When narrowed to high-skilled professionals — the segment most exposed to displacement — the figure drops to just 5.9%. In other words, Africa does not have a large white-collar class to be disrupted. It has a vast informal sector to be augmented. Consider a vendor in Lagos. A tailor in Nairobi. A farmer in Ghana. These entrepreneurs operate without the specialized functions large corporations take for granted. They cannot afford procurement officers, financial analysts, marketing departments, or customer service teams. Their businesses run on instinct, relationships, and resilience. For the first time in history, white-collar capabilities can be rented on demand — not by corporations, but by street-level entrepreneurs. The risk is not job loss. The risk is a computational divide, where those already at the top are amplified while informal entrepreneurs remain excluded. If infrastructure gaps persist, this could deepen inequality. If bridged, it could compress it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ## Books Longer-form treatises and practical workbooks. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ### From Ideas to Impact: Building Systems of Delivery as the Defining Leadership Capability in the Age of AI https://suleimana.com/books/from-ideas-to-impact/ Published: 1 July 2026 | 42 pages | PDF (includes 10 practical worksheets) Download PDF: https://suleimana.com/books/from-ideas-to-impact.pdf Artificial intelligence has made ideas abundant and inexpensive, but the capacity to turn ideas into tangible results remains scarce. From Ideas to Impact outlines why execution has become the defining challenge of leadership in the AI era, providing a 6-question checklist, a 6-element roadmap, and a practical 10-worksheet delivery workbook to build repeatable systems of execution. #### Part I: The Book Why delivery has become the defining leadership capability — and the system that makes it repeatable. - Chapter 1: The Age of Abundant Ideas - Chapter 2: The New Scarcity — Why Delivery Defines Leadership - Chapter 3: Why Good Ideas Die in Good Institutions - Chapter 4: The Checklist — Six Questions Before Commitment - Chapter 5: The Roadmap — Six Elements of a Delivery System - Chapter 6: The System at a Glance - Chapter 7: Leading with the Engine — Implications in the Age of AI - Chapter 8: Build the Engine Once, Run It Forever #### Part II: The Workbook Ten worksheets that take one real idea — yours — through the delivery system. - Worksheet 1: The Idea Simplification Canvas - Worksheet 2: The Six-Question Gate - Worksheet 3: The Premortem & Opposition Analysis - Worksheet 4: The Communication Fluency Plan - Worksheet 5: The Incentives Map - Worksheet 6: The Team-as-Community Canvas - Worksheet 7: The Context & Stakeholder Matrix - Worksheet 8: The Narrative & Counter-Narrative Architect - Worksheet 9: The Resourcing Plan - Worksheet 10: The 90-Day Delivery Rhythm #### Preview: Chapter 1 — The Age of Abundant Ideas > "The defining challenge of the AI era is no longer invention alone. It is execution — the ability to translate intelligence into durable changes in how a business actually runs." > — Nigel Vaz, Chief Executive of Publicis Sapient For most of modern management history, we believed the scarce resource was the good idea. Strategy retreats, innovation labs, suggestion boxes, and consulting engagements were all built on one assumption. Find the right insight, and value will follow. Artificial intelligence has quietly destroyed that assumption. Ideas are now not only a dime a dozen. With AI, they can be generated on demand. They can be crowd-sourced from the collective knowledge of humanity. They can be stress-tested against precedent and presented in a polished, persuasive document — all before your first cup of coffee goes cold. This abundance is real and measurable. Generative systems can produce dozens of plausible strategic options in hours. Researchers note that this capability both accelerates and paralyzes decision-making. It traps organizations in what has been called the “idea trap” [1]. AI has dramatically reduced the cost of thinking. But organizational execution has not evolved at the same pace. The result is a structural imbalance between what organizations can conceive and what they can deliver [2]. When ideas are abundant, competitive advantage migrates. It moves away from the possession of insight. It moves toward the capacity to act on insight — efficiently, reliably, and repeatably. This is not new in the history of technology. Electricity did not transform economies until factories were physically redesigned around it. The internet did not unlock productivity until businesses rewired their processes around digital workflows, rather than bolting websites onto analog operations [3]. Every general-purpose technology reaches a point where the limiting factor is no longer the technology itself. The limiting factor becomes the system around it. AI has reached that point. The system that now matters most is the system of delivery. The evidence that organizations lack such systems is overwhelming, and it predates AI. Research cited by Harvard Business Review found that 67% of well-formulated strategies fail because of poor execution [4]. Kaplan and Norton estimated that up to 90% of strategies are never executed successfully [5]. In the world of major programs, the picture is bleaker still. Bent Flyvbjerg’s “iron law of megaprojects” — over budget, over time, under benefits, over and over again — describes the fate of the vast majority of large ventures. Only a fraction of one percent deliver on budget, on time, and with the promised benefits [6] [7]. A 2025 global study by the Project Management Institute, covering more than 5,800 professionals, found that only about half of all projects succeed [8]. The failure is rarely one of intelligence. It is a failure of systems. This book begins from a personal observation that many leaders will recognize. Translating ideas into impact is the most powerful capability a leader can focus on today. Most leaders have far too many ideas. The institutions they rely on to deliver those ideas frequently prove inadequate. Crucially, this does not mean the people in those institutions are incompetent. It means there are deeper issues that need a more honest diagnosis — issues of articulation, ownership, timing, resourcing, opposition, and economics. No amount of raw talent can compensate for these if they are left unexamined. The chapters that follow borrow from the fields of leadership, project and program management, and the study of major programs. They build a checklist within a roadmap. The roadmap prioritizes six elements, in deliberate order: simplification of ideas, communication with clarity, incentives amplification, building teams as communities, context and stakeholder engagement, and resourcing upfront. Together, these form what this book calls a system of delivery — the engine that converts abundant intelligence into scarce impact. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ## Essays & Writings ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ### The Great Recalibration 23 February 2026 Published on Medium: https://abubakarsuleiman.medium.com/the-great-recalibration-fcf6f49810ed Africa does not have a large white-collar class to be disrupted. It has a vast informal sector to be augmented, and the risk is a computational divide rather than job loss. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ### The Architecture of Context 5 February 2026 Published on Medium: https://abubakarsuleiman.medium.com/the-architecture-of-context-why-we-misjudge-almost-everything-bcfcf31ad4ac A 42-storey tower is a giant from the street and a dwarf from the 95th floor. On why context is the lens through which information acquires meaning. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ### Life as a Venture 21 January 2026 Published on Medium: https://abubakarsuleiman.medium.com/life-as-a-venture-627275520f8f Live like a venture capitalist, not a merchant bank. On backing character before it is proven, following on when results lag, and expecting power-law outcomes from people. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ### Between Ameen and Amen 18 October 2025 Published on Medium: https://abubakarsuleiman.medium.com/between-ameen-and-amen-fbe8388b1e25 Two words so alike they are nearly indistinguishable, turned into an unbridgeable divide. On who benefits when shared deprivation is recast as sectarian suspicion. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ### A Pilgrimage to the Hither-Land 11 October 2025 Published on Medium: https://abubakarsuleiman.medium.com/a-pilgrimage-to-the-hither-land-four-journeys-across-nigeria-7b54a46ffbd9 Four journeys across Nigeria in five years — a forest, an island, warm springs and a creek — and the discovery that our land is enough. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ### Beyond Politics: The Elite’s Role in Nation Building 4 June 2025 Published on Medium: https://abubakarsuleiman.medium.com/beyond-politics-the-elites-role-in-nation-building-183fa8512400 Politics is transactional and operates in electoral cycles. Nation building is transformational and spans generations. On the three pillars and the elite’s particular responsibility. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ### Message to my president-in-the-making 24 February 2023 Published on Medium: https://abubakarsuleiman-33690.medium.com/message-to-my-president-in-the-making-5f25fac64072 A note to an incoming president: respect those who employ, tax the wealthy, retire the subsidies, and stop mistaking regulation for revenue. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ### Habits maketh a Nation 1 January 2023 Published on Medium: https://abubakarsuleiman-33690.medium.com/habits-maketh-a-nation-b122029f2d83 The habits a country must give up before its circumstances can change, beginning with the attraction to hopelessness. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ### The Limit of Money 6 September 2021 Published on Medium: https://abubakarsuleiman-33690.medium.com/the-limit-of-money-4ede6a291589 Money is a language for communicating economic activity, not an asset. Separated from real things it conveys nothing, because value must be created before it can be represented. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ### This is not a feel-good post 23 May 2021 Published on Medium: https://abubakarsuleiman-33690.medium.com/this-is-not-a-feel-good-post-ceb451a72140 Each generation has handed the next a broken inheritance. On the apology that is not coming, and why the waiting has to end. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ### On becoming a listening TWAT 10 May 2021 Published on Medium: https://abubakarsuleiman-33690.medium.com/on-becoming-a-listening-twat-b1281a457529 Thinking, writing, acting and talking. On the discipline of the empty cup, and why so few of our leaders write down what they believe. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ## Speeches & Interviews ### Invest Lagos 3.0: A Game of Trust 8 June 2026 https://abubakarsuleiman.medium.com/invest-lagos-3-0-a-game-of-trust-c5a3f12600a5 An address on why the next investment breakthrough rests on domestic confidence and price stability. Capital is not emotional, but it has memory. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ### Think Global, Go Global: The Diversity of One 7 September 2025 https://abubakarsuleiman.medium.com/think-global-go-global-the-diversity-of-one-b01a597d357d A talk on the diversity of one: a pickup truck to Otukpo, a BATA shop sign, and how a single person can hold more difference than any label allows. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ## Elsewhere The same person, verified: - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abubakar_Suleiman - https://www.linkedin.com/in/abubakar-suleiman-62141010/ - https://x.com/suleimana - https://www.instagram.com/abubakar.suleiman/ - https://abubakarsuleiman.medium.com - https://abubakarsuleiman-33690.medium.com - https://sterling.ng/executive-staff/abubakar-suleiman/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ## Contact contact@suleimana.com — https://suleimana.com/contact/