Acting President Yemi Osinbajo has made it clear that the great challenge and the wonderful opportunity for this generation of the Nigerian elite is to build a new Nigeria out of the rubble of cynicism, division and suspicions.
He said that it is possible for the elite to build a new nation based on trust, consensus, love for one another and love for the country.
Speaking today, Friday, at the graduation of Senior Course 39 of the Nigerian Armed Forces Command and Staff College, Jaji in Kaduna state, the acting President insisted that the new generation of elite must resolve to build a nation where the rulers do not steal the commonwealth, “where every Nigerian is safe to live and work, where the State takes responsibility for the security of each and every Nigerian, where the state knows every Nigerian by name and can find and locate each one of us, a Nigeria where the Ibo or Ijaw man can live peacefully in Sokoto, and the Fulani man can live peacefully in the Niger Delta.”
Professor Osinbajo admitted that building is an act of the human will as well as a practical, routine, sometimes dirty, sometimes frustrating enterprise.
“This is why no great nation was ever built overnight or without the sacrifice of group compromise, the pain of not getting all you want, the feeling that your ethnic or religious persuasion could be treated better, that is the sacrifice of nation- building, give and take; a little here, a little there. No one group can have it all.
“Our leadership must be courageous. Courage means willingness to be abused and insulted by our own people. The humiliation of being heckled for making concessions is the price of the privilege of leadership. “The greatest leaders are those prepared to take unpopular decisions or make compromises unpopular with their constituencies but crucial for long term goals.
“Yes, they may be unpopular in the short run but their greatness eternally is guaranteed. Nelson Mandela after years in prison and decades of the inhumanity and oppression of apartheid, to the shock and amazement of his black constituency preached reconciliation. An unpopular move in the short term but no contemporary political figure is as revered as he is even in death.
“The opportunity to go down in history as builders of the new Nigeria, now beckons. I trust that you will heed its call.”
