Former Envoy Advises Nigerians to Join Hands with Buhari

Hammed Shittu in Ilorin

Against the backdrop of the dwindling economic problems facing the country in the last one year, former Nigerian permanent representative to the United Nations, Prof Ibrahim Gambari on Saturday advised Nigerians to join hands with president Muhammad Buhari led federal government on its efforts to correct the mistakes made by the past administration in the country.

This, he said, would open a new ‎agenda in the socio economic life of the Nigerians. Gambari disclosed this yesterday during the fourth convocation ceremony of the Kwara state University (KWASU), Malete in Moro local government area of the state.

The former envoy added that opening of the new gateway into the future of the country could depend on one person. He recommended a wholesale attitudinal change combined with new codes of leadership and followership across different segments of the society.

“Institutions of governance, many of them playing dual but complementary roles in nation-building, will need to be reinvigorated so as to serve as the bedrocks they were meant to be in the administration of public affairs.

“Personalities, however, well-meaning, must be made to learn to subordinate themselves to institutions. A new compact will need to be established between rulers and citizens that will serve as a basis for our collective audit of the performance of those to whom we entrust our national destiny.

“In the 17 years since the emergence of the fourth republic, Nigerians have strived to build their country into Africa’s and one of the world’s largest democracies. However, there has been a deficit of delivery, which in popular parlance, is referred to as the absence of democratic dividends.

“In the pursuit of the contemporary agenda of change, close attention will need to be paid to the measures and steps that would need to be taken to overcome grinding poverty and want among Nigerians, narrow the growing inequality that is increasingly defining the national landscape, invest in the public provisioning of accessible and quality educational and health services, build an integrated social policy that feeds back into economic development, grow national economy to generate jobs for a teeming population of young Nigerians, revive and expand the real sector of the economy with particular attention to manufacturing and agriculture, and renew the national infrastructure across board,” he said