Governor Adams Oshiomhole of Edo State on Thursday urged Nigerians to engage in collective nation building rather than “wallow in self-pity”.
According to him, the country has had its fair share of problems.
Speaking at an event to mark Nigeria’s 55th Independence Anniversary held at the Samuel Ogbemudia Stadium in Benin City, said as a developing country, Nigeria had experienced challenges of insecurity, violent crimes, unemployment and poverty, all of which he said were not peculiar to the nation.
“I do not know of any country on the planet that does not have its own problems. In fact, when you watch the electronic media, you will realise that we are a lot better than many other countries”, Gov. Oshiomhole said.
While acknowledging that such problems could slow down continuous development, the determination of a country and its citizens to surmount them and move forward was of great importance, he adds.
Oshiomhole also reiterated the need to support President Muhammadu Buhari as part of efforts to sustain the fight against corruption, saying the cankerworm had hampered the objectives set by Nigeria’s founding fathers.
He said, “We now have a President we can proudly say, ‘That is my President’. Our president has rightly identified the fact that we need to stand in unity to confront corruption and any of those vices that explain the gap between the promise and today’s reality.
“Those who want to chicken out will soon find that what they watch in the electronic media is not all that there is Europe. Across the world, we have people who are homeless. Across the world, we have people who are unemployed. Across the world, there are nations with all sorts of problems, including civil war.
“Today, we celebrate 55, not because we have overgrown hunger, not because we cannot see those who deserve jobs but cannot find them, not because we are happy with the level of poverty and the level of insecurity but because we are confident that, having learnt from our mistakes of the past, we now have a national leadership that is ready to provide an inspiring leadership to address all of those problems”.
In the area of socio-economic development in the state, Oshiomhole assured that his administration would continue to sustain its efforts in rural infrastructure programmes aimed at improving lives and forestalling unnecessary migration to urban areas.
“I ask all of us to support the President, have faith in our country, and together, we will build Nigeria to a level and put in place the right socio-economic policy framework that will ensure that the wealth of our nation is reflected in the quality of lives of our people”, Governor Oshiomhole added.
