In a significant celebration of coaching as a key to leadership and personal growth, the International Coaching Federation (ICF) Nigeria Chapter marked its 10th anniversary alongside a well-attended pomp and pageantry Awards/Gala Night for the 2025 International Coaching Week at the Civic Centre, Victoria Island, Lagos, on Saturday, May 16th, 2025.
The Deputy Chief of Staff to the Lagos State Governor, Samuel Egube, who represented the governor, highlighted the state government’s recognition of coaching as a tool to enhance innovation and teamwork in the public service.
The Deputy Chief of Staff also revealed that Lagos State Executive Council members have benefitted from coaching sessions to improve communication and decision-making.
While speaking with journalists, Akanimo Ekong, President of the ICF Nigeria Charter Chapter, described coaching as a calling that requires intentionality, presence, and empathy. He explained that these qualities are essential because coaching goes beyond professional skills; it is about truly connecting with people and transforming lives.
The International Coaching Week began on Monday, 12th and ended with a dinner party on Friday, 17th May 2025, marking the 10th anniversary with a week-long International Coaching Week (ICW) 2025.
ICFN is the first ICF chapter in West Africa, established in January 2015 and formally launched in May 2015. The other two charter chapters are in South Africa and Ghana. A group of passionate coaching professionals founded ICFN to advance professional coaching in Nigeria and the region.
ICFN promotes high standards, ethics, and credibility in coaching, aligning with the ICF’s global mission to make coaching integral to society. It offers resources, networking, and professional development opportunities; hosts events like workshops and pro bono coaching during ICW; and supports coaches in transforming lives through impactful coaching practices.
ICFN, which started with a mere 10 members at its inception, currently has over 100 members, 46 of whom hold a Credential Badge categorised under MCC, PCC, ACC, or ACTC.
ICW is an annual, week-long global celebration of professional coaching, typically held in May. ICW 2025 was scheduled for May 12–18. It was initiated by ICF in 1999 to, among others, educate the public about the value of coaching, highlight its transformative impact, and promote its benefits for individuals and organisations.
During ICW, coaches worldwide host events like webinars, workshops, panel discussions, public coaching demonstrations, and pro bono sessions to showcase how coaching unlocks potential, fosters growth, and inspires positive change. The week encourages participation from coaches, clients, and those curious about coaching, fostering connections and raising awareness of the profession’s role in personal and professional development.
The ICW 2025 was heralded with a conference titled “A Decade of Coaching Impact,” held on Tuesday at the Alliance Francaise, Mike Adenuga Centre, Ikoyi, Lagos.
Dr Tunde Reis, a retired Brigadier-General from the Nigerian Army, was the Keynote Speaker. At the same time, Samson Umurhurhu (PCC), Dr Mirian Kene Kachikwu (PCC), Femi Odelusi (PCC), and Linda Uneze (ACC)—all members of ICFN—were panellists, respectively.
Speaking on “Innovative Leadership: Coaching As A Catalyst For Transformation,” Dr Reis discussed the essence of innovative leadership, noting that innovative leaders are set apart by vision and empowering others, unlock potential by developing team strengths, and create a curiosity culture to foster exploration and learning.
Reis, the Founder and Chairman of First World Communities Limited and First World Ventures Limited (UK), said innovation has become imperative because of rapid change in a Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous (VUCA) world, which is constantly demanding continuous innovation, collapse of the old leadership epitomised by “command” and “control”, new needs engendered by agility, collaboration and diverse perspectives, thus the need for coaching as “a powerful force for innovation.”
He further said cultivating collective intelligence and collaboration entails lessons from innovation stories; facilitating dialogue and valuing diverse viewpoints; helping teams co-create solutions; moving beyond a top-down approach; and fostering a sense of collective responsibility for innovation.
Reis averred that coaching can drive innovation by: creating a safe and supportive space; exploring challenges and identifying strengths; developing solutions through empowerment; asking incisive questions to spark new thinking; moving beyond providing ready-made answers to the higher realm of encouraging discovery; focussing on learning, development, and continuous improvement; seeing setbacks not as failures but as opportunities for growth; and cultivating adaptability and resilience for navigating the uncertainties of innovation.
The retired top military officer was also firmly convinced that innovation is primarily driven by empathy and psychological safety, noting that these two factors influence all other human endeavours.
For Reis, developing innovative leadership requires leading with curiosity and empathy, vis-a-vis leaders reflecting on their own assumptions; actively seeking feedback and continuously learning; becoming more adaptable and visionary; leading with curiosity; empowering with empathy and inspiring collaboration.
Dr Reis described himself as BBC (Born Before Computer) and cited himself as an example of a leader constantly learning technology from his biological children. He concluded that “innovative leadership is a continuous evolution,” adding that “coaching provides a powerful roadmap,” “moving towards leadership that asks incisive questions” and “empowering others to find their own solutions” in a bid to shape “a more innovative and impactful future collectively.”
REPORTERS AT LARGE was on the ground at ICW 2025, seeking answers to the essence of coaching, its imperatives, and its usefulness to individuals, corporate entities, and even public-sector leaders.
Some prominent ICFN members who spoke exclusively answered the questions and offered extensive information about the activities and impacts of the ICF, Nigeria Charter Chapter, a decade after its creation.
The Nigeria Charter Chapter’s ICF President, Akanimo Ekong, stated that the ICFN is doing well ten years after its formation in the nation. “We have fared very well. We are in 2025; in 2015, the founding fathers and women who started were about five coaches who advanced to professional coaching. Today, we are 100+ strong.
“I am very proud of our achievements so far, and for various reasons, including the fact that a lot of people use the word, “coaching”, loosely. Anybody can just attend a one-day training and say, ‘I am a coach’.
“But we belong to ICF, the only standard in coaching. There are 62,000 members in over 140 countries, and they take coaching very seriously. You go through a very rigorous training programme.
“It is not a one-day or one-week programme. You should have used at least 125 hours of training, and, after that, in some cases, you must have put in some 500 hours coaching some individuals, which they are either paying for or pro bono and then do a serious examination. And there are a lot of ethical guidelines around it.
“Initially, like in most other professions, when we started off, many people will say to is, ‘why do I need a coach? I have come this far; mu business is flourishing’. It took a long time for people to realise that what you got here now might not be able to take you to the next level. One of the richest men in the world, Bill Gates, says ‘everyone needs a coach. So, everybody needs a coach – everybody needs to find something out which can help you to think through.
“So, initially, it was not financially rewarding. Then, if I say I want to coach you, you may tell me that I either do it for free or all that. But now, with the growing awareness of ICFN, people are beginning to see the power of coaching. It is now financially rewarding – most of us charge per session or per hour and a client would either pay for six, eight or 10 sessions.
Ugochi Ossai, Vice President, ICFN, also spoke on the journey so far, declaring that “ICFN came at a time when not too many people knew what coaching was all about; they don’t have too many coaches.”
She further said, “But ICFN has grown over the years, with the efforts of the people who started it. Publicity was given; we tried to reach out to corporate organisations to sell the benefits of coaching and how it can fast-track even organisational structural goals and plans.
“So, it has been an interesting 10 years, and we are happy. We believe that, by the 11th year, if not everybody in Nigeria, most people – 80 per cent to 85 per cent – would begin to understand the difference between the basketball coach and the coach.
“This is because of the value we bring to the table; because of how it helps leaders to become a better version of themselves; to become more intentional; more able to inspire trust in their followers and, ultimately, that boils down to the bottom line – how harmony in organisation is effected.”
Femi Odelusi, a Professional Certified Coach (PCC) with ICF, is the Director of Education and Credential Support, ICFN. Speaking about the low level of awareness about ICF and coaching as a profession, he said, Coaching is probably one of the world’s most misunderstood and miscontextualized professions.
Odelusi, however, said, “An event such as today is the opportunity to raise coaching’s awareness among many people and demystify some of the misconceptions about coaching.
“Like you said, when people hear about coaching, the first thing they could think about is that it is sports and sporting activities. But coaching, as a profession, is more about humanity. It is more about enabling or empowering people to achieve personal or professional goals. It requires a lot of ongoing training; not just training to become a coach, but you also have to keep on training to maintain your coaching standard.
“From ICF, we have three distinct levels of coaching professionalising; we have the Associate Certified Coach (ACC); we have the Professional Certified Coach (PCC) and we have the Master Certified Coach (MCC).
“The training takes a lot of time. Once you become a trained credential coach, you must keep working hard. There are the things that all the coaches have in common – we work in service of our coachees (our clients) and their goals are those we get them to achieve.”
Charles Okeibunor, Director of Membership, ICFN, spoke extensively on how receptive Nigerian society is to the idea, vision, and mission of ICF, especially as it related to coaching’s contributions to discovering the human essence in every individual, corporate organisation, and public leader.
“First and foremost, I would not judge the Nigerian public because you cannot really be blamed for what you don’t know. Primarily, I will say the clearer it becomes, the more receptive it is because it is about solution – another approach towards problem solving.
“Brian Tracy says if you spend 30 minutes in absolute solitude, you can distil solutions to problems built over 30 years. So, you will find, radically few people, except when they are sleeping, spend 30 minutes in absolute solitude.
Coaching is like saying, “I want to give you the opportunity to be heard and seen, creating a safe space for a conversation to happen. ‘ In the course of coaching, sometimes there can be silence, and we will give everyone the opportunity to enjoy the silence. Nobody is forcing you; nobody is saying why you are not talking if you decide to be silent.
“Coaching is another approach to problem solving, strategic thinking, resilience, adaptability and adoptability. So, the more society knows about it, the more receptive it will become. Then, the more they [the people] try it, the more the power of coaching thrives,” he said.
Given the growing awareness of ICFN across the country, it is safe to say that coaching is fast gaining acceptance in society—among individuals, corporate organisations, and leaders in all spheres.
Ekhoe Ame-Ogie, ICFN Programme Director, has this to say on the future and possibilities of coaching: “The future is very bright for ICFN, especially as Nigerians are now embracing coaching. Now, there is a deeper understanding of what coaching is. The prospects are enormous because organisations, teams, individuals, and even the country need personal and leadership development coaching to achieve their goals.
“What coaching actually does is to help people to be focused. Not only to be focused but also to be resilient about accomplishing their goals and ensuring accountability. Yes, the prospects are really enormous for us here in Nigeria.
