By Uchechukwu Nnaike
A former Attorney General and Minister of Justice of Nigeria, Chief Bayo Ojo (SAN) has said for Nigeria to forge ahead on the path of sustainable growth and development, there is need to focus more on exterminating illiteracy and investing more on human capital development.
He stated this recently at the second Chief Arthur Mbanefo blended lecture series, at the Arthur Mbanefo Digital Research Centre, University of Lagos. The lecture was titled ‘Nigeria: Reinforcing and Safeguarding a Sustainable Union’.
Ojo, also a former President of the Nigerian Bar Association, advised that this must be done in an even manner to ensure no part of the country is left behind.
According to him, a nation whose citizens are not educated will certainly face daunting challenges of survival. ”We need to get serious with compulsory mass literacy and having the over 30 million children of school age that are yet to be absorbed into the school system, into the classrooms, instead of leaving them out there at the mercy and vagaries of elements.
”We need to scale up our national budgets on education. When we succeed in educating our people, we will certainly have less security worries. It is only the protection of our territorial integrity that will be left to contend with,” he said.
He stated that the school is the most fertile ground for sowing and nurturing the seed of national integration, adding that as impressionable youngsters, students will always have engrained in their subconscious minds, all through their lives, the fine memories and friendships they forged in their early years and formative stages in school, particularly post-primary.
The former NBA boss therefore urged all patriots, young and old to continue to work towards safeguarding project Nigeria.
He regretted that one of the major challenges which the country had been confronted with since the beginning of the pre and post-union is that every constituent part wants the country at its own terms.
The guest lecturer noted that there was no doubt that the elite consensus to make Nigeria a united and great country that worked for all, had sadly eluded the citizenry, particularly from 1966. He added that building a nation us about building a common sense of purpose, a sense of shared destiny and a collective imagination of belonging.
”Our fault lines have been enlarged and intensified and the country has been negatively impacted in a manner that the divisions that such actions engendered have become a collective burden for all.
”We need to find a way to do away prejudices and forge a common passion for the sustenance of the Nigeria union, by forging a congruence of thoughts and positive actions towards building the country into the land of our dream.
”For our country to be strongly positioned to face the challenges of the future with assured chances of achieving greatness, we must resolve and commit to building a united great country. We must radically change our attitude of imbibing negative values and principles and rather, imbibe passionate acts of patriotism.
”What we need to do is to embark on a rigorous national campaign that will engender a re-orientation of the mind frame of the citizens and a deliberate shift of paradigm in the management of our national life by those saddled with the sacred responsibility.
”As a people, we have to engineer positive change into our value system, such that will propel the kind of sustainable development that we all desire for our nation,” he said.
Ojo also stressed the need to shift the present dependence on the sharing and distribution of “national cake” and work towards designing a startegy-led development generation of wealth and inclusive growth which would in turn help in sustaining the country.
The high point of the event was the cutting of the birthday cake by the celebrant, Chief Mbanefo, who turned 91.
Mbanefo, a Chartered Accountant was a former Pro-Chancellor of the University of Lagos, Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU) Ile-Ife and Ahmadu Bello University Zaria.
