New Year Message: Fashola, Okogie Task Nigerian Leaders

By Kazeem Ugbodaga

Governor Babatunde Fashola of Lagos State and the Catholic Archbishop of Lagos, Anthony Cardinal Olubunmi Okogie, have tasked the nation’s leaders on the need to be more patriotic, serious and disciplined in order to deliver the dividends of democracy to the citizens of this country in the new year.

In his New Year message, Fashola said the progress of the nation depended substantially on the seriousness, focus, vision and discipline of those in leadership positions.

“But then, equally critical is the need for each one of us, no matter our stations in life, to discover the leader within us and exercise a positive influence in our own little sphere of existence,” he said.

Fashola, however, assured Lagosians that his administration would sustain and even accelerate the pace of infrastructure and environmental renewal programme in the New Year.

He stated that the New Year was one of great expectations for the nation, saying that the whole world was waiting to see if the nation could begin to actualise her immense potentials.

“Year 2009 is a very crucial one for us in Nigeria. It is just eleven years to 2020 and six years to 2015, our set target for meeting the millennium development goals.

To make any reasonable progress towards meeting these objectives, we must fundamentally alter the way we think. Too often, we have allowed ourselves to be branded negatively, we have allowed others to define and pigeonhole us unfairly as a people,” he stated.

The governor urged the nation to learn a lesson form the last United States presidential election, whose campaign focused largely on the problems of America and how to solve them.

“Why should it be any different with us? Why should we allow ourselves to be branded and defined by the challenge of corruption, insecurity, poverty and other challenges confronted in varying degrees by virtually every nation on earth, including some of the most powerful and prosperous?

“Let us learn to define ourselves by those strengths that will enable us to overcome our weakness, by those virtues in the vast majority of our people that will ultimately enable us to overcome the vices of a negligible percentage of our population,” he said.

In his message, Okogie called on the power that be to resolve to be more patriotic in their affairs of the nation.

“There are other areas of life that we need to take in hand, areas that this time next year, we would like to imagine we will somehow have straightened out or accounted for,” he said.

Okogie called for a national day of prayers for this country to ask the Lord for forgiveness and national restoration.

“Our nation, Nigeria, has been talking about national restoration, are we really serious about it? When the people of Israel, for example, sinned against the Lord, they asked for national restoration of fasting, prayers and meditation and the good Lord forgave them.

“We too must as individuals and as a nation ask the Lord for forgiveness and restoration. We have called for a day of national prayers for this country, but the Federal Government seems to ignore it. We call on the powers that be to actualise this in 2009 and see if the face of God will not shine on our nation,” he stated.

Okogie added that the soul of the Nigerian nation was bleeding, saying that “we are people without compass all because our leaders have no focus.

“Now is the time, therefore for us to correct past mistakes and move on. We must be focused and move in the right direction. Sluggishness and moping should not longer be in our dictionary. We must henceforth be active because our citizens have suffered a lot and borne everything with equanimity. The time to act right is therefore now.”