Culture Is Whatever Sticks Around

What the “fake DG” saga should make every Nigerian leader ask about the organization they are building

By Arome Omachoko, Program Manager, The Leader Team

For days, Nigerians have been gripped by the story of a man who allegedly operated, for years, as the Director-General of a government agency that never legally existed. He reportedly had a title, an office, official correspondence, and dozens of bank accounts. He held meetings. He was recognised. Then a whistleblower spoke, and the illusion collapsed.

The public reaction has followed a familiar script: outrage, ridicule, and - within hours - a political blame game. Who knew? Who failed? Whose party does this embarrass?

Investigations should be allowed to establish the facts, and those found culpable should face the law. But long after this story fades from the headlines, a harder question will remain - and it is not a question for government alone. It is a question for every bank, school, startup, religious organizations, NGO, and family business in this country:

What kind of culture allows something like this to happen?

Organizations Don't Collapse. They Drift.

No institution wakes up one morning and decides to fail. Failure is almost never a single dramatic event. It is a slow accumulation of small compromises that nobody challenged.

A verification step skipped because “we know him.” A red flag ignored because raising it would be awkward. A questionable payment approved because the last three were approved. A talented employee’s misconduct excused because he delivers results. Each compromise, on its own, feels minor. But exceptions repeated become habits. Habits unchallenged become norms. And norms, over time, become culture.

At The Leader Team, we define culture in one sentence: Culture is whatever sticks around.

This definition matters because it removes the comfortable fiction that culture is what’s written in the employee handbook or framed on the reception wall. Culture is not what an organization says. It is what an organization repeatedly permits. Every time something unacceptable goes unaddressed, it sticks around - and whatever sticks around long enough stops being an incident and becomes “the way we do things here.”

This Is Not a Government Problem. It Is a Leadership Problem.

It is tempting to read the current saga as proof that public institutions are uniquely broken. But look closely at organizations across every sector, and the same pattern of allowance appears.

The bank branch where staff quietly shortcut customer verification to hit account-opening targets. The school where examination malpractice is an open secret because results attract enrolment.  The religious house where financial records are nobody’s business because questioning them feels like questioning God. The family business where a relative’s unexplained shortages are absorbed year after year because confrontation would divide the family.

None of these organizations chose dysfunction. They allowed it - one tolerated behaviour at a time. Systems do not enforce themselves. Policies do not protect themselves. Technology does not hold itself accountable. People do. And people take their cues from culture.

This is why leaders communicate their real values in only two ways: by what they celebrate, and by what they tolerate. When dishonesty carries no consequence, dishonesty spreads. When mediocrity is repeatedly rewarded, excellence quietly leaves. When accountability depends on who you know rather than what you did, trust dies - and with it, performance.

The Three People in Every Organization

As leaders work to build a winning culture, they will encounter three groups of people:

• Culture Raisers create and elevate the culture. They raise standards, model integrity, solve problems, and strengthen everyone around them.

• Culture Keepers protect it. They reinforce expectations and refuse to compromise standards, even when compromise would be convenient.

• Culture Killers crush it. They resist accountability, spread cynicism, ignore values, and - if left alone - gradually make dysfunction feel normal.

The future of any organization depends on which of these three groups its leadership empowers. Culture Raisers should be celebrated. Culture Keepers should be developed. Culture Killers must never be ignored - because ignoring them is not compassion. It is negligence. One unaddressed Culture Killer teaches the entire organization that the stated values are optional.

Building Culture on Purpose: Clarify, Integrate, Sustain

If culture is created through allowance, then healthy culture must be created through intention. At The Leader Team, we guide organizations through a three-part framework we call Intentional Culture.

1. Clarify the culture. People cannot live out expectations that were never articulated. Clarity begins with three declarations: your core vision (what you want to see in the world), your core focus (why your organization exists), and your core values (how your people behave in the world). Values should be few - three to seven - and they must be both aspirational, describing who your people must become, and instructive, telling them how to act when the pressure is high. Ambiguity creates inconsistency; clarity creates alignment.

2. Integrate the culture. Values only become culture when they shape real decisions - who you hire, how you onboard, what standards are non-negotiable, and how people grow. This is where most organizations fail. They recruit for competence alone and then act surprised when character problems emerge. They write rules when they should be setting standards - because rules merely control people, while standards empower them. Once values are defined, an organization must be willing to hire, review, reward, recognise - and yes, part ways with people - based on those values.

3. Sustain the culture. Culture is not a launch event; it is a maintenance discipline. It survives through consistent rhythms: genuine connection among team members, honest performance reviews, rewards that reinforce the right behaviours, and the courage to remove those who persistently crush the culture. What leaders repeatedly reinforce becomes organizational identity. What they stop reinforcing quietly disappears.

Values Mean Nothing Until They Cost Something

Walk into almost any Nigerian organization and you will find beautiful words on the wall: Integrity. Excellence. Accountability. Innovation. The current saga is a reminder that words on a wall protect no one.

Values become culture only at the moment they become expensive - when you refuse revenue that requires compromise, when you discipline a high performer whom everyone else fears to confront, when you promote the person with character over the person with connections. If your values have never cost you anything, they are not values yet. They are decoration.

The Mirror

The most useful response to this national moment is not louder outrage. It is honest reflection. Every CEO, founder, executive director, pastor, school head, team lead - every one of us who leads anything - should hold up the mirror and ask:

What behaviours am I rewarding? What behaviours am I tolerating? What have I allowed to stick around?

Because the headlines will change. The saga of the moment always gives way to the next one. But one truth will remain constant: every organization eventually becomes a reflection of what its leaders consistently allow.

The question is no longer whether your organization has a culture. It already does.

The real question is: is it the culture you intended to build?

P/S: The Leader Team helps organizations design and build intentional cultures - clarifying values, integrating them into hiring and accountability, and sustaining them through leadership practice. To start a conversation about your organization’s culture, reach out to The Leader Team.