Ekiti State Governor, Dr. Kayode Fayemi has said that Nigerians need to build a consensus around major issues of concerns and develop a national template for irreducible behavior in leadership position.
Fayemi gave the advice on Saturday in Abuja, at the 35th birthday symposium in honor of Mallam Hamzat Lawal, the Chief Executive Officer Connected Development (CODE), ahead of the 2023 general elections.
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The governor said at the event themed, ‘Hamzat Lawal at 35: The Man, The Journey, The Transition’, that nation building is an unfinished business before every generation and it is always a pressing business of the day that must be done urgently.
“These challenges that ale our country today, provide us with the opportunity to take a position and take a stand and walk for the resolution of such challenges. Nigeria will belong to those who are prepared to stand up, stand firm and take control of their destinies as the late Senator Robert Kennedy once said, ‘it is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped’.
“We can all do a bit in our little ways to cause a beautiful change that will lead us to make our country and indeed the world a better place. I am personally uncomfortable with the practice of our politics and our political conversation; we should have outgrown bigotry, tribalism and ethno-religious biases,” Fayemi said.
He also urged Nigerians to love the country and imagine it as a major world power in no distant time.
According to him, leaders are made from the crucible of experience of passion and courage and the readiness to sacrifice because nothing ventured nothing gained.
He said, “If we trace Hamzat’s history very well from who he was and the focused dedicated and inspirational young man he has become we will see he has taken strongly from these lessons. He is the founder of Follow the Money, a civic tech advocacy platform that has helped in tracking government expenditure and service delivery.”
He urged youths to value competence, courage, generosity of spirit, a sense of giving than receiving, being solution providers than complainants, perseverance and delayed gratification to succeed.
Also speaking, via zoom, at the event, the founder of Stanbic IBTC Bank and President of the Anap Foundation, Mr. Atedo Peterside, said he shared similarities with Hamzat, when he founded the bank 33 years ago as a youth.
He said that older experts were not willing to join the bank thus he was the oldest because those who join him then in 1989 were younger than him and were ready to take a risk that the older and more experiences personnel were not willing to take.
“However, after five years of success stories of the bank, the older people started applying and we employed them and last February the bank is 33 years,” Peterside said.
He urged Nigerian youths to shun sentiments and cooperate with each other across the board to achieve successes in their endeavours.
“The youths should know their weaknesses and strengths, works on their weaknesses by engaging those that can cover that area of weakness and also to build on the strength. They should also be bold to be truthful to earn trust of the people, especially those they work with,” he said.
He also painted a gloomy picture of the nation’s economy, saying that the rising debt profile of the country is an ill wind that must be reversed in the interest of the nation and the citizenry.
The celebrant Hamzat Lawal, said his working in the civic space has impacted lives and built people’s capacity the same way he was influenced by Ewa Ileri of Afikpo, in Ebonyi State.
Lawal also formally launched a mentorship initiative called the Ewa Illeri Leadership School, which he said would select 20 young people to go to Ebonyi State for learning.
According to him, as he clocked 35, he would use the new face of his life to contribute his quota to change Nigeria through politics and that Nigeria is where it is today because youth allowed it to be for that too long.
He added that Nigerians have been agonising and complaining on Twitter, Facebook and other social media platform but there was a renewed opportunity and hope for young people to take their place in Nigeria’s political history.
“There is a political movement called the Green Nigerian Movement has been launched to mobilise youths, persons with disabilities in the 774 local governments to build alliances to change the political narrative.
“With empathy, humility, vision, focus and interest of collective Nigerians, we will play politics for a better and prosperous future for All. We should and must inform our political history. Staying on the sidelines will not bring the needed changes. It is time for young people.
“I think that that saying that politics is dirty should be an old order. If we choose to remain on the sidelines, then we should not complain and I from today would play partisan politics,” Lawal said.
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