Former Nigerian President, Olusegun Obasanjo, has declared that any country without equity and justice would not have stability, nor would it make any progress.
Mr Obasanjo, who made the declaration while speaking at the 2021/2022 School Debate Price Presentation Organised by the Vision Africa Radio Umuahia, Abia State, regretted that Nigeria is merely a country yet to attain nationhood.
He declared that Nigeria would not make any headway as a country until she grew into nationhood.
His words: “One of the things we need to achieve is nation-building. We have not built a nation yet.
“We have a country but we need to build it into a nation”.
Mr Obasanjo insisted that Nigeria would not progress “until there is equality, justice and equal stake for everybody”.
“We can’t make it unless we have equity and equality, and everybody has a stake in the project called Nigeria.
“Any family, state or country without equity and equality won’t have stability and can never have success,” he said.
The former President commended the successful students and schools in the debate competition.
He charged students to give serious attention to the development of their communication skills, submitting that people who lack the skill to communicate their ideas hardly go far in life.
”You won’t go far in life if you can’t communicate very well. If you are a poor communicator, you will be a poor achiever”.
In his address, the President of Vision Africa Radio, Bishop Sunday Onuoha, said that the essence of the school debate was “to broaden and sharpen the spoken English language proficiency of our secondary school students and to empower the schools with awards and as well educate and enlighten our teeming audience.”
He added that “Beyond its entertainment value and the use of cogent argument, poise and timeliness as a measure of grading the competitors, it is our hope that the students who participated have acquired or honed their public speaking skills, improved their note-taking skills, increased their self-confidence, enhanced their teamwork/collaboration skills, and have developed better ways to graciously state their point of view with gentleness, even when standing up for the truth.”
