This was just as the group led by Mrs Foluso Makanjuola-Oyenuga, with membership, including Prof Ishaq Akintola of MURIC, an Islamic scholar; Pa Solomon Adegbolagun, Hon Adamu Magaji Bauchi, among others drawn from across the country, said it had planned a 45-day long walk from Lagos to Abuja to mobilise Nigerians to change the current narrative, chart a new way forward for a new Nigeria in areas of education, politics and governance, economy, healthcare system, agriculture, power, among others.
According to NNN, all these would be “be condensed into a National Development Plan” and published and publicized as developmental plans and visions for Nigeria and the entire people of the country.
Addressing news conference at the Bola Memorial Hall along Mobolaji Bank- Anthony Way, Ikeja, a member, Board of Trustees of NNN, Mr Paul Erinne, lamented that, “The best we have been getting from leadership over the years are loads of excuses and reasons why things can’t work in the country.
“But unfortunately, the best cannot and has not been good enough for us. We are, therefore, sending a very clear signal to all concerned now and in the future, that henceforth, Nigerians are tired of this cheap trend, and will no longer tolerate or condone excuses from those whose primary and only duty it is to remove those excuses.
Erinne, while lamenting the rot in all structures in the country, said there was need to put in place a new national orientation, a movement he opined should be led by a National redemptive Movement, consisted of super patriotic Nigerians from all spheres of life and were committed to one common goal of nation building devoid of bigotry and self-interest.
Besides, he decried the current political system of governance, “which is a copy of and paste of the American system of governance,” saying it was tantamount to “hallucination” and would produce nothing.
“We need to design our home-grown system (with real representation at the grassroots) which is suitable for our country and in all sincerity, take the country to the next level in positive development, ” he said, even as he declared that, “Stealing and vices of impunity is not a norm and must be eschewed from our society, from our populace, and the up and coming generations.”
The NNN coordinator, Mrs Makanjuola-Oyenuga, while raising a poser, “Should we celebrate with the way things are in this country?, said celebrating the country’s 57th Independence Anniversary last October 1 to an average Nigeria was a “rogue celebration.”
“While some of us may feel offended by this sentimentality, this right of divergence is one of the beauties of a pluralistic society- which empowers the majority to have their way, and permits the minority to have their say.
“While there was no census or poll to confirm which side was actually greater in number, it really seemed in truth that there was not too many reason to celebrate. Even the seeming ease that there is, is under serious threat and it is apparently unstable. Things are indeed fallen apart,” she lamented.
The NNN national coordinator, however, said the celebration for the group would start when the lives of Nigerian people began to have meaning and the government and society began to place the necessary and ultimate premium on the life and well-being of the nation.
“Celebration would start when the resources of the country are adequately and effectively deployed to provide meaningful living for every Nigerian without any form of discrimination.
“We shall celebrate when food is made available to all of us after appropriately harnessing the abundant agricultural potentials of the country. For us celebration would start when there are good medical services for all the citizens. Celebration should only start when every child and adult is rescued from the shameful grip of illiteracy. Our own celebration shall only begin when the economy is redesigned to comfortably serve and sustain every individual that cares to take positive and productive advantage of it,” she said.
“For us, the celebratory Nigeria must essentially be a victorious Nigerian in all spheres of life; it must be the New Nigeria and this is the Nigeria that we are irrevocably committed to,” she declared.
and then