SPEECH: The Stakes And The Imperatives

Address by

His Excellency

Dr. Kayode FAYEMI

Governor, Ekiti State, Nigeria

at the Guardians of the Nation International (GOTNI)’s

Emerging Leaders Conference 2014

Abuja-FCT

Friday, August 29, 2014

   Protocols

I am delighted to be here today to share my thoughts with leading lights among the successor generation of leaders in out great country, on the stakes and imperatives we currently face in our quest for peace and sustainable development.

Let me start by summing up the dilemma that confronts every thinking Nigerian that genuinely cares about his or her country. The state of governance and the quality of our institutions are poor. Do we refrain from public service knowing that our governance is a cesspool of graft and incompetence or do we engage in it risking among other things, our hard earned reputations in a clime where the occupation of any public office is seen as a passport to illicit enrichment?

To refrain from public service may preserve our pristine reputations. However, when good and competent people refuse to engage in public service, the bad and the incompetent take their places and we all suffer for it. Thus, the proposition that politics and public service are the preserve of knaves becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Government is seen as a cesspool of corruption and incompetence precisely because it is dominated by the corrupt and the incompetent. It is dominated by these types because men and women who possess the intelligence and integrity that we direly need in these places have rejected public service. It is their very rejection of public service that enables the knaves to take over and consolidate.

Those of us who have reflected deeply on this paradox also realize an ancillary truth. When we forego the chance to serve, we are morally barred from complaining about the conduct of those who have taken up the responsibility that we refused, however atrocious their performance. To do so would be to engage in hypocrisy. Society abhors a vacuum. If decent men and women that possess the requisite competence and character do not actively take responsibility to propel the society and shape its institutions with progressive values, others with low quality motives and mentalities will seize the reins with devastating consequences.

To the thinking Nigerian who genuinely cares about Nigeria, the patriotic duty is clear. It is to heed the summons to national service and locate the sectors of public life in which our talents and passions will best help us build the sort of nation that we want to see. In the enduring words of Gandhi, we must become the change we want to see.

My background as a scholar and a human rights activist would seem to have ordinarily predisposed me towards a ringside position in public affairs or an armchair from which to second-guess those actively engaged in the public square. But I came to realize that despite my energetic labours in civil society, a ringside seat is no substitute for getting into the ring itself. You cannot simply declare change from the comfort of an armchair. Our ability to execute change is entirely dependent on what we do in the field. Consequently, I went into elective politics because I wanted to bring my values and ideals to bear upon public policy.

Because in the end, this is what it means to engage and to get involved in the public square, whether as a civil servant, a public functionary or an elected official. It means contending for the fate of your society with the weapons of your values and ideological convictions. The decay we see around us is not merely the product of the bad thinking and negative values of the wrong people in high places; it is also a product of our own dereliction of patriotic duty. It is the consequence of our abdication of civic responsibility and our refusal to fight for a better society. Instead, we have surrendered the arena to the most irresponsible among us.

The danger is that even as Nigeria reels from natural and self-inflicted tragedies, we are increasingly a nation of armchair critics and ringside spectators. Alarmingly, the role that good competent people see for themselves is that of self-righteous pontification from the sidelines. I see that this attitude prevails among the youth who take to social media to vent their frustrations, to find expression against bad leadership, to curse incompetent incumbents and sermonize about the right actions and policies, which in their eyes, are or ought to be, self-evident.

Being so vocal about what is wrong and so forthcoming about otherwise simple solutions to our problems invites its own scrutiny. The cynical response to the venting of our angry young men and women is entirely justifiable. If you know all these solutions and are brainy enough to have figured out the right things to do, how come you are not on the field implementing these great ideas or at least fighting for a chance to do so? Implicit in this query is a moral challenge.

In our national circumstances, it is not enough to merely tweet our grievances on twitter or to like similar pontifications on Facebook. Being vocal and speaking out have their place in the scheme of things. But when it comes to acquiring the capacity to make transformative shifts in public life, they are wholly inadequate. The truly courageous people are those who are out there in the field of public service not those who are content to snipe at them from the sidelines. In the words of the late (former) president of the United States of America, Theodore Roosevelt:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

If your generation is to change things, then it must sacrifice the comfort zone and move from the ringside into the ring. It must give up the self-indulgent habit of simplistic analysis and chronic murmuring. You can no longer afford to be professional grumblers. Another late (former) president of the United States John F. Kennedy famously said:

“Ask not what your country can do for you but one you can do for your country.”

This statement rings true for us here in Nigeria at this time. It is a call to get engaged in public service and show that it is possible to do things differently.

Our society today celebrates the self-centered pursuit of self-enrichment at any costs even as it caves in upon itself. We have convinced ourselves that somehow we can individually prosper in isolation while around us our communities continue to degenerate, so we have made the unbridled quest for wealth and immediate gratification almost a national sport. But however individualistic we may be the fact remains that we cannot do away with public service. I will go as far as to say that a country is only as strong and as prosperous as her citizens’ commitment to public service.

When it comes to national progress, personal aspirations are important but the most vital engines for propelling our nation forward is a keen sense of the common good and our responsibility as citizens to serve that public good transcending our own individual welfare.

The big problems confronting us today – terrorism, insecurity, graft, poverty, pestilence – are all tests not of our personal capacities but of our collective capacities. These are universal plagues that affect us in one way or the other. We cannot prevail over these plagues with the weapons of individualism. We will do so only to the extent that we are able to rally together as citizens to uphold the common good. This is what public service is really about – defending the good of all.

There is an ongoing struggle for the soul of this nation by the forces of progress and civility and those of impunity and retrogression. The stakes are very high. As corruption and incompetence erode the fabric of national governance, more and more people will take refuge under the umbrellas of exclusive sub-national identities and further polarize the country lending credence to speculations in some quarters about Nigeria’s potential disintegration. When leaders cannot offer a broad inclusive vision that accommodates the aspirations of all Nigerians for a better life, they pave way for a variety of ethnic and religious extremists to ensnare ordinary folk with sectarian sentiments. This is what is going on in the form of the terrorist insurgency in the northeast but also across the land where you have pockets of anti-State violence. Our unity and secularity are being threatened like never before.

Divisive politicians who have nothing to offer and seek only to line their own pockets are using sectional rhetoric to divide us and are using your generation as expendable cannon fodders to achieve their selfish aims. You must be vigilant and discerning enough to recognize these people for what they are and resist being used by them. More importantly, you must realize that these forces of impunity and vested interests are not invincible; they can be defeated. This has always been the outcome of my heartfelt contemplations on the future of our country during the toughest periods in our nation’s trajectory. This season is no different, light shall prevail over darkness.

In my view, every effort expended in the course of bettering Nigeria is well worth it. As someone who holding public office, I have witnessed firsthand how well-crafted policies pay off in tangibly transformed lives. I have seen governance make a real difference in the lives of people. I have also witnessed the power of leadership to inspire people just by the sheer force of personal example. It is these stories and testimonies of such individuals and communal transformations that embolden and encourage me. You cannot put a price tag on the potentials that will be maximized because of a qualitative school programme, or the lives of babies and mothers saved through functional healthcare, or the employment of young people who now have confidence and dignity as productive citizens and will not succumb to a life of crime or other vices.

Following the outcome of the Ekiti Gubernatorial elections, many of my young friends have asked if I have any regrets about my foray into politics. Securing a second term in office by the ballot is seen as a validation of your stewardship of the popular mandate during a first term. Ordinarily, failure to do so is seen as just that – failure. The collateral damage of losing an election is thus considered far reaching.

But in the current political clime that allows for dark forces to conspire and implement insidious manipulations of the will of the people with impunity, it is sad that in their bid to explain away the abracadabra they contrived, my kinsmen, people of the land of honour Ekiti State, Nigeria, have been made a laughing stock by being characterized as beholden to short-termism and unable to make informed choices in their own best interest.

The labeling of my people with a new entrant into our contemporary socio-political lexicon – Stomach Infrastructure – is a great tragedy widely lamented by honourable sons and daughters of our state at home and abroad. In due time, our people will be empowered with truth and justice to restore the correct narrative about us – that of pristine honour.

However, personally, my experiences rather than bring about regrets, have actually deepened my resolve to continue to reach out to a successor generation and to enlist a cohort that will run even further and faster than their fathers. Public service is a calling that transcends the temporary occupation of public office. So whether I am in office or out of it, the task of mentoring and equipping the next generation to expand the borders of progressive possibilities on our shores remains something important to me.

Public service is a moral and a practical necessity for other reasons. Your generation will bear the brunt of the bad policies that were ordained in the past and some of which are being enacted now. This emergent generation will suffer the consequences of weak institutions and a depleted common wealth. Consequently, we need to dispel the notion that public service is something reserved for the old. More than ever before there is the need for greater inclusion of youth in policy planning and implementation.

 If your generation answers the call to public service with a sacrificial commitment to the common good, it could reverse the trend towards degeneracy. We need youthful idealism to practically demonstrate new possibilities to raise the bar of what we believe we can achieve as a people.

 It will not be easy achieving, but real worthwhile change never is. But I am convinced that if this generation answers the call of patriotic duty, it will become that much needed progressive critical mass that will change the Nigerian story for the better. It is within your power to do this simply by being the type of citizens that our collective posterity needs you to be.

I plead with your generation, don’t just tweet the change – Be the Change!

Thank you very much for listening.

Dr. Kayode Fayemi

Governor, Ekiti State

Ekiti State Government Press Release