Speeches

LBS Alumni Association EMBA 1 Conference – Nigeria: The Next 50 Years – Pathway To A New Nigeria

Jan 20, 2011 - Distinguished ladies and gentlemen, I must start by expressing my profound appreciation to the Lagos Business School and in particular, the pioneer Executive MBA Class, the EMBA 1 Class, for considering me worthy to speak at such a forum and in respect of a most topical issue; the pathway to the New Nigeria in the next 50 years.

Apart from the honour, it is for me a fortuitous coincidence that yet again, like in 2007, when I was a gubernatorial candidate, fortune has brought me in contact with the LBS again. I re-call that the result of the election that followed first contact was an overwhelming mandate from the people of Lagos.

I believe that lightening can strike twice and I am optimistic that this interaction will yield an even bigger electoral mandate.

I must express regret that there may not be a lot that I can say about the path to the Nigeria of our dreams in the next 50 years that has not already been said many years before.

If you have read Chief Obafemi Awolowo's "Path to Nigerian Freedom"; and Chinua Achebe's "The Problem with Nigeria" you will readily but concur that the problems they saw many decades ago are still largely with us, and many of the solutions they proffered remain not only relevant, but are yet to be implemented.

In your letter of invitation to me dated December 20, 2010, you stated in my view, very correctly that " we believe we should cease lamenting the failures of the past, and instead concentrate energies on strategies, policies and actions that will transform this nation over the next 50 years"

I could not agree more.

That is why the content of my presentation may not necessarily contain anything you have not heard before; and you will permit me for repeating some of the things you already know, because they will in my view be relevant to demonstrate or reinforce the opportunities that exist, and what I think are the practical examples of change and the "can do" spirit that we need to embrace.

The first thing I think we must do is to make a simple resolution that we want the change and transformation that we daily talk about.

It is important to do this because I learnt very early in life that every action has consequences. Therefore, once we make this resolution as a people, it will become easier to engage with the consequences, manage them and adjust to them.

It will therefore no longer be acceptable for anybody to say "it is not my fault". If something goes wrong, I must be able to stand up and take responsibility for it; and understand that failure is not a disease but something from which success can be built.

In Lagos, we have walked our talk. Our message was simple – everything is possible.

We made realistic and practical promises of what our party will do if elected in 2007. I stand here very proud to say that with the privilege of having led a team of public officers and with the support of a population of Lagosians who resolved to change what they did not accept, we have fulfilled our mandate, we have delivered on our promises.

We have demonstrated that good governance is possible and that Nigeria is not a lost cause.

Ladies and gentlemen, I think it is instructive, in order to re-inforce my case that what is needed is a resolution for change, that I remind all of us, that we did not change the public officers we met. We did not change the Police officers.

It is the same men and women who have been there before who simply resolved that enough was enough. It is the same Police officers that were there who delivered the radical transformation in security that led to an almost 80% drop in violent crime in under twelve (12) months.

It is the same public servants that mid wived the BRT; they were the ones that cleaned up Oshodi, they are the ones leading the construction of the first intra-city rail in West Africa from Eric Moore to Okokomaiko, they are the same persons who have transformed our dear State from what was once described as a "concrete jungle", to the cleanest capital city in Nigeria.

They have done a lot more than time and space cannot allow me mention.

I must quickly move on to some of the other things that I respectfully think we must do.

In addressing those other things, I must crave your indulgence to permit me to repeat myself; because, I believe that whilst these things are simple, they are important milestones that we must overcome on our journey to greatness.

In my address delivered on the 1st October 2010 to commemorate our 50th Independence Anniversary I said:

"I have listened and followed across our country the debate about how well we have done and how better we could have done and I say to you all that as useful as those reflections may be, the adverse comments or judgments may amount at the worst, to no more than lamentations of missed opportunities and at best, to useful lessons of what we must never do again as we head into the future.

It is my firm belief that there are more opportunities ahead of us than those that we have left behind us and it is now our responsibility as a people, the leaders and the led, to begin to seek out those opportunities and to work hard to make them count.

Although we have become free of imperialists, we have not freed ourselves from under development and its challenges; there are many battles yet ahead to be fought and won. The battle for security, economic prosperity and the security of our people's future lies ahead and remains to be won.

It requires all of us, to live in peace, in religious harmony and unity, dictated by tolerance and mutual respect to achieve this.

It is only on the foundation of peace and harmony that we can build political stability starting from free and fair election, as the precursor to our quest for a brighter and rewarding future."

Because I am convinced that peace and political stability are pre-conditions to social and economic development, I have spent some time to address what I think will promote peace, at this year's edition of our Annual Thanksgiving Service on January 2, 2011 where I said in my welcome address that:

"I wish to renew the appeal I made last year at the 2010 Thanksgiving Service of the need to promote peaceful co-existence and our common bond of humanity that is based on mutual respect for choices of religion, faith and mode of worship.

I wish to emphasize that while our choices of faith, religion and mode of worship distinguish us; they should not in any way divide us or sever our common bond of humanity that is represented by the fact that we share the same water, same hospitals, same markets, same buses and so much more.

Our consumption of meat, the giving and taking of money, transfusion of blood for medical emergencies are not distinguished by our religious distinctions. Our drinking water is blind to our religion.

I see therefore that our distinctions of religious preferences are matters of choice and freewill which our creator gave to us without condition.

That is why Muslims and Christians are gathered today in these premises to thank one God."

Perhaps most importantly, we must in my humble view, renew and re-define our value system.

Again, with respect I can do no better than repeating part of what I said on the 24th December, 2010 in my speech at the Island Club on the occasion of the Christmas Eve Dance. This is what I had to say:-

"In this year that our country turned 50, I am concerned to raise issues that concern all of us and how we knowingly or unknowingly contributed to the circumstances that challenge all of us.

Truly, we are not short of prayers and spiritual upliftment and capacity. But most respectfully, ladies and gentlemen, our society and her institutions have been eroded of the critical values that are required to propel it to greatness.

First and foremost, we have not submitted ourselves equally to the rule of law, which is the most potent invention of the human race that has helped to keep the moral fabric of society together and equalized the rich and poor.

We have ignored the lessons of history as if history has ever been wrong and as if we are capable of re-writing it.

We have refused to do simple things while hoping that wishes and prayers will invest us with the capacity to do complex things.

The evidence of our inability to do simple things stares us in the face in cases such as our census results, election results and countless petitions and court cases, inadequate and unreliable electricity, prevention of smuggling at our ports, and accounting for our oil and even refining it.

How then can we take stock of Nigeria's biggest asset, her people, and deploy them effectively if we continue to play pranks with census figures?

How can we plan jobs, schools for their children, water supply and electricity, if we do not know how many they are?

As we prepare to hold a most defining election, we have slipped at the first try of importing Direct Data Capture machines that we did not have to manufacture… and I ask if we are not setting the stage for electoral problems and petitions that will last for many years as we have seen recently, while the main objective of holding elections, which is governance and development of people remain on the back burner as we seek to recover stolen mandates?

As if all these were not enough, our Federal Government announces that we should allow vehicles of over 15 years, textiles, furniture, and tooth picks into our country because the Government cannot stop them from being smuggled into the country.

Yet that same Government wants to keep jobs in the automobile industry, and professes that it wants to create employment for young people.

Indeed as we open our ports to more imports, including second hand goods and those we can manufacture, that Government has the gall to mouth the rhetoric of aspiring to become of the first twenty economies in the world and we are not asking questions about how this pipe dream is possible in the face of retrogressive and inconsistent policies.

In the same vein that we are confounded with resolving simple issues, we approach very serious issues with worrisome triviality.

In three and half years, we have tampered twice with the Constitution, the most sacred instrument that regulates our corporate existence, as if it was an ordinary law.

We have sought to fix dates of elections into the Constitution when it would probably have been rightly situated in the electoral law.

The truth therefore is that the momentous opportunity of a Constitutional amendment that ought to have given enormous dividends to the federation was trivialized and flittered away.

We missed the opportunity in the areas of improved governance such as a more equitable revenue allocation principle that gives more funds to the States and therefore the ordinary people, a more participatory process in security that allows the States to recruit young unemployed graduates into their own Police Forces, a freer electricity distribution process that allows the States set up and operate their power distribution facilities and an independent Local Government system that is free of Federal interference and therefore enables Local Governments discharge some of their responsibilities of Primary Health and Primary education more efficiently.

It seems very clear to me and any person who pauses to reflect on our history that it will not profit us, as we move into the fifty-first year of our nationhood to continue in the way we have carried on.

We must resolve to demonstrate the highest values of mutual respect, restraint, dialogue, compromise, sacrifice and so much more, rather than just making them daily rhetorics.

If other countries that have transformed are as rich or richer than us, Ghana is not as rich as us. I was a teenager when the economy of Ghana was destroyed. We are all witnesses to what a leader and a people who had not lost their innocence, transformed Ghana into, in about a decade.

Instead of envying Ghana or using their success story to deride ourselves when we think we are deriding our leaders, I think we should humble ourselves, retrace our steps and search for our innocence and look again at Ghana for what we can learn from them and begin to do those things from tonight.

I have taken a look at Ghana and her people, and what I see are people who truly fear God, who are largely innocent, who subject themselves to law and who are humble, and modest in their thoughts and actions.

I believe that this country has no business with poverty or unemployment if we do the right things.

I believe that Africa, and in particular Nigeria, because of its size, its population and its assets, is so opportuned to be a global leader at this time that the traditional global empires of the west and crumbling or struggling.

I believe that the opportunity and the moment are too momentous for us to miss."

Distinguished ladies and gentlemen, the Nigeria will be 100 (One Hundred) years in 18,139 days from today. That is about 435,336 hours. It is more than enough time to achieve our dreams and surpass ourselves.

Apart from Ghana, Brazil and Israel are examples we must look at and learn from.

Israel transformed in barely 5 decades from a hopeless experiment in the desert surrounded by enemies into an oasis of possibilities.

They did it by finding a new spirit and burst of creative energy; a can do spirit that we already have when we organize elaborate parties that are unmatched anywhere else; which shows that we do not lack organizational ability, but which we must now re-direct to breaking new grounds of business creation and socio-economic development through innovation and technology.

They transformed themselves by disengaging from a stubborn attachment to existing beliefs. Nothing less will be acceptable here.

It is entirely in our hands, to transform all the papers, seminars and theories of greatness into practical developmental initiatives.

Ladies and gentlemen, it is possible.

Thank you for listening.

Babatunde Raji Fashola, SAN
Governor of Lagos State