By Bode Olagoke
Abuja
President Muhammadu Buhari has said that Nigerians have chosen a new path for themselves, by overwhelmingly voting new leadership of federal government, adding that the result of their action has started manifesting.
Buhari, who spoke yesterday in Abuja as the special guest of honour at the annual Leadership Conference and Awards, said that the federal government was ever ready to partner with individuals and corporate organisations that define and add values to citizens, who contributed their quota to the fatherland.
Represented by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) Pastor Babachir David Lawal, the president commended the Leadership Newspapers Group for the annual event on one hand and the awardees on the other hand.
“The awards also complement other similar gestures by this government through established institutions aimed at acknowledging the efforts of our nationals in their various endeavours. For instance, there is the National Productivity Merit Award and the National Merit Award.
“I will like, at this point, to particularly salute the tenacity and resolve of the Leadership Group in its decision to uphold the laudable tradition and annual ritual despite the initial frustration it suffered in an attempt to hold this ceremony earlier this year,” he said.
While delivering his keynote address, Prof Ibrahim Gambari lamented that 100 years after the amalgamation of Nigeria, the country was still grappling with challenges.
Gambari, who is the chairman and founder of Savannah Centre for Diplomacy, Democracy and Development ( SCDDD), decried that it was worrisome and traumatic that after a centenary of the amalgamation of the Protectorate of Northern Nigeria with the colony and protectorate of southern Nigeria, to establish modern day Nigeria and 55 years after independence, the country was still beset with tremendous challenges of state making and nation building.
According to him, these constraints among others, consist of political fragility, political volatility, ethnic and religious mistrusts, intolerance and violent extremism.