…we do not need to be a perfect union before we can be a great country – Osinbajo

Speech at the Graduation Ceremony of Senior
course 39, The Armed Forces, Command and
Staff College, Jaji
SPEECH DELIVERED BY HIS EXCELLENCY, PROF.
YEMI OSINBAJO, SAN, GCON, THE ACTING
PRESIDENT OF THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF
NIGERIA AT THE GRADUATION CEREMONY OF
SENIOR COURSE 39, THE ARMED FORCES,
COMMAND AND STAFF COLLEGE, JAJI, KADUNA
STATE ON FRIDAY JUNE 23, 2017
I am especially pleased and indeed privileged to
share this special day with you the staff,
graduands and proud family members of the
graduands of Senior Course 39.
We must give glory and thanks to the Almighty
God by whose mercy and grace we are able to
witness this celebration of achievement.
You have made a success of this course after 48
grueling weeks. Congratulations. Of course we
must specially commend all the spouses of our
graduands here, but for whose sacrifices and
personal deprivations there would have been no
celebrations for many here today.
It is also gratifying to note that amongst the 187
graduating students are 10 students from sister
African countries, and 5 senior members of Staff
from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Defence
Intelligence Agency, Nigerian Defence Academy,
Nigeria Police Force and the Federal Road Safety
Commission.
I must commend the governments of Cameroun,
Ghana, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Rwanda, The Gambia
and Togo who nominated their officers to attend
this course. By so doing they have strengthened
the brotherhood we share as Africans but more
so they have shown great foresight on the issue
of our common security concerns on the
continent.
The occasion of the graduation of the elite corps
of our Military, armed services, intelligence and
Foreign Service members is one that offers an
opportunity for reflection on national issues.
We are the identifiable public service elite of our
nation, paid for with taxpayers money, and so
we must be its foremost think-thank. So, permit
me to address you for a short while on the
subject — We can build a new Nigeria.
The last two decades in Nigeria have witnessed
the quickened retreat of the Nigerian elite to their
ethnic and religious camps.
I would like to emphasize the fact that this was
essentially an elite phenomenon — unity and
disunity are promoted by the elite to which the
vast majority of the Nigerian people were only
later conscripted.
In these past few years, more and more, we
began to hear expressions such as Nigeria’s
ethnic nationalities; we began to see more
identification by race and geopolitical zones,
Ndigbo people, Arewa people, the Yoruba
people, South-South, North-East, South-West,
North-West and South-East; and other parochial
description that were hitherto unknown.
The rise of ethnic chauvinism rode on the wings
of several agitations. The narrative of most
agitations centres around alleged
marginalization and fears of dominance of one
faith over the other.
In the 2015 elections, the ruling party repeatedly
tried to cast the opposition as a party of
Islamists determined to islamize Nigeria. The
expression Janjaweed party took root.
Most ethnic agitations are centered around
getting a larger share of the national cake or
more favoured placement in the food chain
because they were essentially elite claims: the
vast majority of the populations of the ethnic
groups that win some concession or the other
never really benefit.
So, the mere fact that a South-South person
became President did not necessarily translate
to prosperity for the tribe, neither was it the case
when a President from the North-West emerged,
nor one from the South-West.
Aside from a few individual beneficiaries of some
appointments or the other, there is usually
nothing to show for the ethnic group of those
who emerge in Nigeria’s numerous ethnic
contests for power. Yet, the contests of the
tribes are heightened by the elite, usually for
personal political or commercial ends.
When you hear a person say that my tribe has
been marginalized usually what he is saying is
appoint me. The ethnic card is an effective
bargaining tool.
A major drawback of ethnic chauvinism is the
way that it is used to mask wrongdoing and
promote impunity. Notice that when people are
charged with looting public funds they quickly
find a counter narrative. It is because I am
Yoruba, Fulani or Igbo; or the Christians or
Muslims are after me.
Appointments in the public service are no longer
even judged on merit. The question is how
many are from my own ethnic group. A terrible
affliction, when you consider that what we are
looking for are men and women of integrity and
talent to run our economy and create a future
for our children. Why is that when we want to
win at football we don’t ask which ethnic group
the players are from? But perhaps at its most
extreme and dangerous are hate-filled agitations
for secession or autonomy.
In the past few weeks we have as a nation
witnessed the escalation of such agitations
usually couched in deliberately intemperate and
provocative language. The reckless deployment
of hate speech and the loud expressions of
prejudice and hate, name calling of those of
other ethnicities and faiths is a new and
destructive evil in our public discourse. But
even more divisive words, expressions, and
actions calculated to create fear and uncertainty
have also been freely used.
Young people in the South-Eastern states under
the aegis IPOB, issued a stay at home order as
part of actions to prove support for their
agitations for secession. In the Northern states
young people under the aegis of the Arewa
youth, issued an ultimatum to Igbos living in the
Northern states to vacate before the 1st of
October.
The problem with hate-filled and divisive speech
is that they tap into some of the basest human
instincts, bringing up irrational suspicions, fear,
anger, and hatred and ultimately mindless
violence. People who have lived together as
neighbours and friends suddenly begin to see
each other as mortal enemies.
The tensions that led to the killing of over
800,000 Tutsis and Hutus considered Tutsi
sympathizers in the Rwandan genocide, were
roused by hate media. The most notorious was
the Radio-Television Libre des Mille Collines
(RTLMC), which became immensely popular as a
young, hip alternative to the official voice of the
government. It played popular music, and
encouraged the public to phone-in and
participate in radio broadcasts. Amongst its
listeners, RTLMC attracted the unemployed
youth and Interhamwe (Canadian NGO). The
station also became notorious for its covert and
overt naming of Tutsi individuals who it claimed
deserved to be killed.
General Romeo Dallaire, the commander of the
UN peacekeeping operation in Rwanda at the
time of the genocide, said: “Simply jamming
[the] broadcasts and replacing them with
messages of peace and reconciliation would
have had a significant impact on the course of
events.”
Fortunately the purveyors of this tragic hate
media did not escape unpunished. The ICC in
Arusha eventually sentenced the owners of the
hate radio stations and newspapers to long
prison terms.
Some of our youth groups urging secession
already are deploying hate media, using radio
and social media. The language on
those media are inciting, provocative and
insulting to the individuals who are named, and
to the beliefs of others.
While we must remain irrevocably committed to
freedom of expression and the tenets of a free
press, we must draw the line between freedom
that conduces to healthy democracy and that
which threatens and endangers the entire
democratic enterprise. It is an important balance
that we must strike. Failure in any way will be
tragic.
The truth is that our nation and national unity is
worth preserving and protecting. We are the pre-
eminent power in Africa today in terms of
population, size of our markets, natural
resources and economy.
We are a factor in the geopolitics of the world
and no one can ignore a nation-state that is
home to one in every four black persons.
Smaller is weaker not stronger today.
Your Excellency, distinguished ladies and
gentlemen, history and experience has shown
that countries can alter their destinies. Italy,
India and Nigeria — to use just three examples,
share one thing in common: at one point early
in their existence people questioned their
viability as nation-spaces; spoke of them in
terms of being no more than mere geographical
expressions.
Indeed not many Nigerians seem to know that
the often quoted line about Nigeria being a
“mere geographical expression” originally
applied to Italy. It was the German statesman
Klemens Von Metternich who dismissively
summed up Italy as a mere geographical
expression exactly a century before Nigeria
came into being as a country. Churchill
describing India said it was no more a nation
than the equator, (which is just an imaginary
geographical line.)
But what fate saddles a country with, and what
that country makes of itself, we have since
learned, can be two very different things. India
for example has over the last couple of decades
built itself into a technology and software
powerhouse, and has also made impressive
strides in nuclear and space technology. It has
successfully created alternative narratives to a
narrative of ethnic and religious division.
Italy on its own part has made its mark on the
world in fashion and in automobiles; so that
when people think of it today they are more
likely to think of its venerable cuisine and
fashion houses than its still-very-real fault
lines.
What the stories of these countries tell us is that
we do not need to be a perfect union before we
can be a great country and there is no better
example of that than the United States of
America — a country that thrives, not in spite of
its diversity, but because of it.
It is my respectful submission that the
responsibility for a similar kind of greatness
here in Nigeria lies in our hands as the
country’s elite. We must rise above
unproductive ethnic and religious sentiment.
We must develop the emotional intelligence
required to cope and adapt in a swiftly and
constantly changing world. We must adopt a
global mindset that seeks to learn from the
experiences of other countries, far and near, so
that we do not waste valuable time repeating
mistakes that we should have learned to avoid.
One of those lessons is that today’s wars never
really end. This should be a sobering lesson to
us all in Nigeria, as we contend with the forces
who seek to stoke violence and bloodshed in
our country.
Somalia, Syria, Yemen, and closer home, the
Central African Republic, Libya and the
Democratic Republic of Congo; these wars have
raged for years. Some of them have in fact gone
on so long that they have been tagged as
‘forgotten wars’. Contemporary wars, we have
learnt, are extremely easy to start, but difficult to
end.
Another lesson is that in the 21st century the
theatre of war is increasingly shifting to
cyberspace. Terrorist organizations, purveyors of
hate speech, all of these and many more who
seek to destabilize the world are busy staking
out territory on the Internet, and scoring
significant victories and conquests for
themselves. As members of the Armed Forces,
with a mandate to protect Nigeria from all forms
of internal and external aggression, you will
increasingly be judged as much on the basis of
your success online as on your successes on
the conventional battlefield.
The Internet has altered or disrupted every
industry we know of: Politics and Elections,
Business and Commerce, Governance; and is
changing the very nature of warfare. Websites
teaching on how to make and use IEDs and
other explosives are numerous.
Today a great deal of the threats facing Nigeria
are being nurtured and cultivated in the vast
spaces of the Internet. The rumblings of
secession, the dangerous quit ultimatums to
ethnic groups, the radio stations and blogs that
spew divisive speech and exploit our fault lines;
all of these are now to be found online.
This means that the military and its officers and
men must itself devote resources and talent to
these new battlefields, where mindless verdicts
on the continued unity and existence of Nigeria
are daily being delivered.
As you make your way out of the hallowed halls
of this institution, into the ‘field’, as you would
describe it, you have huge roles to play in the
way Nigeria turns out in the years and decades
ahead.
Even though the days of military rule are now
well behind us as a nation, the role of the
military is still as critical as ever — and not just
in the traditional areas of deterring threats and
protecting lives and property.
The Military of the 21st century must realize that
it has a role to play in supplying reinforcement
to the good side in the clash of ideas that today
define the world: ideas of moderation, tolerance
and sensibleness versus ideas of extremism,
xenophobia, and terror. The Boko Haram
terrorism is a perfect example of the types of
scourges that the world faces.
The battle is not just to defeat the terrorists, the
greater battle is to defeat the ideology and
mindset that feeds the madness and to cut off
its oxygen, money and publicity.
The great challenge and the wonderful
opportunity for this generation of the Nigerian
elite is to build a new Nigeria. Out of the rubble
of cynicism, division and suspicions we can
build a new nation.
A new nation built on trust, consensus, love for
one another and love for our country is
possible. A nation where the rulers do not steal
the commonwealth, where every Nigerian is safe
to live and work, where the State takes
responsibility for the security of each and every
Nigerian, where the state knows every Nigerian
by name and can find and locate each one of us,
a Nigeria where the Ibo or Ijaw man can live
peacefully in Sokoto, and the Fulani man can
live peacefully in the Niger Delta.
But building is an act of the human will. It is a
practical, routine, sometimes dirty, sometimes
frustrating enterprise. This is why no great
nation was ever built overnight or without the
sacrifice of group compromise, the pain of not
getting all you want, the feeling that your ethnic
or religious persuasion could be treated better,
that is the sacrifice of nation- building, give and
take; a little here, a little there. No one group
can have it all.
Our leadership must be courageous. Courage
means willingness to be abused and insulted by
our own people. The humiliation of being
heckled for making concessions is the price of
the privilege of leadership. The greatest leaders
are those prepared to take unpopular decisions
or make compromises unpopular with their
constituencies but crucial for long term goals.
Yes, they may be unpopular in the short run but
their greatness eternally is guaranteed. Nelson
Mandela after years in prison and decades of the
inhumanity and oppression of apartheid, to the
shock and amazement of his black constituency
preached reconciliation. An unpopular move in
the short term but no contemporary political
figure is as revered as he is even in death.
The opportunity to go down in history as
builders of the new Nigeria, now beckons. I trust
that you will heed its call.
I pray that your road henceforth will be laden
with favour and grace in Jesus name.