BUILDING A NEW NIGERIA – OUR COLLECTIVE RESPONSIBILITY Today, I honoured an impromptu invitation to interact with fellow Nigerians in Manchester, United Kingdom. I had the pleasure of sharing fraternal moments with some of our compatriots in the diaspora. I spent time listening to their concerns about our nation and was encouraged by their passion and desire to build a New Nigeria for all. The task of building a New Nigeria remains our collective responsibility, and there is no better time to roll up our sleeves and get to work than now. Our nation is standing on the brink of a precipice, and we must not shrink from the arduous task ahead of us. Massive corruption and accumulated leadership failures remain the bane of our national progress and development. I explained to them that Nigeria remains one of the most blessed countries in the world and would have taken its place among the most developed countries if not for corruption and the leadership failure bedevilling it. No nation, as I have always maintained, can rise above the character, competence, capacity and commitment of those entrusted with its leadership. That is why we must approach the coming general elections as a race for national survival rather than another routine exercise. It is our collective battle. The nation is ours to save for the birth of a New Nigeria that is POssible and OK. -PO

It is also why the recent UNDP report disturbingly noted that all the previous poverty reduction achievements in Nigeria seem to have been reversed. How can our most endowed nation be the country with the highest increase in the number of people falling into poverty? In a more organised society, the recent reports from many international and local organisations on the different dimensions of hardship faced by Nigerians, including poverty, insecurity, inequality, unemployment and corruption, should have compelled the incompetent, corrupt and unpatriotic APC government to resign. We must learn to learn from others so that we can fuel our leapfrog with what others have done. As an axiom in organisational learning states, unless the rate of learning is greater than or equal to the pace of change, an organisation is becoming a dinosaur. A New and Productive Nigeria is POssible, and Nigeria will be OK. -PO