Marking the start of the week-long activities commemorating the Armed Forces Remembrance Day for 2021, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo gave a sermon urging Nigerians to live in unity and harmony with one another as we are stronger together than apart despite differences in religion, ethnicity, and political affiliations.

Having been born to an Urhobo mother and my father being Yoruba in Abeokuta, his military career began our nomadic travels to Kaduna, Jos, Ibadan, at which point schooling in Ife, serving in Katsina, was followed by work postings to Malumfashi, Funtua, Kano, Idiroko and Sango-Otta.

It was the geographer in me that ensured that I utilized every opportunity to visit as many states in the South East and North East bringing me to a position where I can boast of having spent at least two nights in about 30 of Nigeria’s 36 states.

The reason for the above prose is just to highlight the fact that the average Nigerian is not only friendly and accommodating but is a treasure trove of culture and tradition molded over generations. True in the past, our forefathers fought wars to expand territories but the aftermath was not a complete animosity of the neighboring tribes, which is why till today, we have the wonderful events intercultural marriages that only Covid-19 has tried to reduce to an event of just a few family members.

A tree cannot make a forest, No one is an island, the more the merrier, the broomsticks get stronger the more they bunch together. We could go on and on with these expressions and the reason being that they are all true. Together, Nigeria is a stronger nation than the sum of its individual parts. This can only get clearer as we continue to diversify to non-oil exports.

We are already becoming self-sustaining in local rice production and the target is for all cereals we consume, mining of mineral resources has increased across the country, more tech hubs are springing up with one even in Borno. The industrialization of the South East, coupled with the manpower of the North, arable land from there as well as the South West who would also come with technological knowhow all buoyed by the oil in the South-South can bring about a full transformation of our nation and place her rightly where she belongs in the committee of nations.

The road ahead of us is long and requires dedication and sacrifices but the beautiful part is that we are already moving along the right path. The infrastructural deficit that used to be the bane of investors is already being addressed as we are seeing more towns and cities connected by railroads. Power is already improving in parts of the country plus roads and bridges are being built all in all the non-oil future is looking bright.

So yes, I’d say the temptation to break apart might be there for some as it is always easier to destroy than to build up, but I repeat in agreement with the VP, we are truly stronger together and if we were all to focus on the big picture, then “We would at every opportunity, insist just as has every great multi-ethnic and multi-religious nation has, through thick and thin, fight to realize the great dividends of diversity and pluralism” –Prof Osinbajo.

The labor of our heroes past shall never be in vain. God bless the federal republic of Nigeria.
Happy Armed Forces Remembrance Day.

Nicholas Adesina writes in from Ibadan.

We have come a long a way and i can say yes that we are stronger together amid religion and ethnic differences; I recall during the covid19 how some well meaning Nigerians contributed their quota buy giving out hand sanitizers, distributing face masks and other covid19 protective equipment to the people without asking where thy come from or which God they worship. In celebrating our fallen heroes also, Nigerians have taken the opportunity to pray for the fallen heroes who paid the ultimate price without being biased.

Nigeria has great potential. Unfortunately, potentiality and reality are two different things. The potentiality of Nigeria us huge, but its reality is tiny.

Nigeria simply can't work, it has never worked. The reason is that what divides us is far greater than what brings us together. We dont have similar ideology, we dont have commonality of purpose, we dobt have similar values system, no national philosophy and no unity.

The resultant effect is that we will be constantly fighting each over religion, economics and politics forever. Is it from this mess that we are one day going to build a great nation? Not possible

We should be talking about how disintegrate this failed British colonial experiment called Nigeria

As a nation we have been through a whole lot which many Nations couldn't have survived but we are still one not divided. Some men and women paid the price the best we can do is build in what is left that their labour may not be a waste.
We are stronger together