Renowned turnaround expert and former Director General of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), Dr Dakuku Peterside, says institutions are not defined by walls or rankings, but by the courage of their questions and the values of their graduates.
Dr Peterside stated this at the First International Conference of the Department of Business Administration at the Ignatius Ajuru University of Education, Port Harcourt. Delivering the keynote address, he challenged participants to move beyond searching for easy answers and instead cultivate the courage to ask the right questions.
He described the conference with the theme, “Business Re-engineering as a Catalyst for Economic Development,” as both urgent and practical for a nation seeking to unlock its unrealised potential.
According to him, “Economic progress is not only about what a country possesses, but how effectively it organises, produces, decides, delivers value, and scales ideas into jobs,” adding that Nigeria’s persistent underperformance is rooted less in lack of resources and more in weak systems and inefficient processes.
Dr Peterside went on to clarify that business re-engineering is far more than L-R: Past President, Association of Women Engineers (APWEN), Engr. Idiat Amusu; Engr. Owolabi Ganiyu; Engr. HOB Lawal; Guest Lecturer, Sheikh Abdulrahman Adangba; Chairman, Nigerian Society of Engineers Ikeja Branch (NSE),
Engr. Nimot Muili, and Engr. GM Osuolale, during the 4th Annual Ramadan Lecture ‘on Global halal Market; Islamic Consumer Behaviour, Organised by The Muslim Engineers Association (TMEA) held Lagos incremental improvement, while arguing that “It is a radical redesign of processes—technology-enabled, outcome-driven, and continuously evolving.”
By asking why systems are slow, expensive, unpredictable, or vulnerable to manipulation, he noted, organisations can rebuild processes fit for today’s realities rather than yesterday’s constraints.
The author of three bestselling books stressed that productivity does not rise through motivation alone but through better systems, and when processes are simplified, responsibilities clarified, delays reduced, and standards enforced, productivity improves naturally
