OAU Campus Leaders Say Patriotic Commitment By Nigerians Will Bring Change

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As Nigeria celebrates its 56th Independence Anniversary, the interchange of blame and faults as well as the role of followership in the Nigerian project became the focus of participants at a leadership conference held for campus leaders at the Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU) in Ile Ife, Osun State.

Speakers at the conference agreed that the current economic challenge facing the nation was due to collective misappropriation of the country’s past by both the leaders and the led.

Leading discussions at the conferences, a member of the Osun State House of Assembly representing Ife North State Constituency, Honourable Babatunde Olatunji, said the age-long fantasy of Nigeria as a country of enormous resources had culminated in the coordinated ripping of the nation’s sovereign wealth by its leaders as encouraged by the greed of the followership.

While calling for patriotic commitment from all Nigerians irrespective of social or political class, Mr Olatunji also advocated a change of attitude and a reappraisal of Nigerians’ lust for pleasures.

‎He said: “We need to know that building the Nigeria of our dream is a collective responsibility. There must be purposeful leadership and of course responsible followership.

“Both the government and the governed must come together and realise that Nigeria belongs to all of us and know that what we get out of our country is a function of what we give to it”.

Change Begins With You

The lawmaker stressed that he had been advocating for ‎patriotism and believed that if Nigerians were patriotic in all that they do, the array of problems facing the nation would be a thing of the past.

“If you are in position of government and you claim to be patriotic, you will no loot the treasury and find it so hard to believe that change begins with you.

“If we are patriotic about Nigeria, we must be willing to do the right thing to make the nation a better place. That is what patriotism is all about.

“Let us stop blaming each other. Let us learn from our past mistakes, ‎be willing to apply the knowledge from our past mistakes to ensure that there is no repeat of such in the future, only then can the Nigeria Project grow,” he emphasised.

“We have all it takes to change what we are experiencing now. We cannot continue to do the same thing we have been doing. Let us change our orientation and our country will be better for us as a people,” Mr Olatunji emphasised.

Participants at the conference, however, sought a bottom up approach to attitudinal change where the change starts from among the followers, since the leadership cadre spring from the followers.

Nigeria’s 56th Independence anniversary is one that Nigerians will live to remember, as the economy has continued to glide south, with the cost of living rising.

The government has promised to address the economic downturn, injecting funds into the economy for capital projects hoping that the economy will bounce back in no time to fulfil promises made to Nigerians during their campaign that saw the All Progressives Congress took power from the Peoples Democratic Party that had ruled the nation for 16 years.

The current government has continued to blame the government of Goodluck Jonathan for the present economic woes of the nation, saying that that administration failed to save for the rainy days.