Nigeria’s Immediate Past Speaker, Dogara Calls for Caution In Solving Problems
By Idris Khalid
Speaker in Nigeria’s 8th Legislative Assembly, Rt. Hon. Yakubu Dogara has noted that it takes the kind of leadership which recognizes that compassion is not tossing a coin at a beggar, but rather pulling down the system that produces beggars.
He said, “leadership that knows that the real problem is what we demand and what we do not demand; Leadership that believes history does not just happen to us, we make history happen; Leadership that knows that not everything that is faced can be changed but nothing can be changed until it is faced”.
Dogara, the immediate past speaker of the House of Representatives in a keynote address to a two-day summit organized by Sultan Maccido Insitute for Peace and Development Studies, Abuja, explained that so the battle to build a peaceful Nigeria must be a battle for the minds of people.
The former speaker at the summit with the theme, ‘PEACE AND DEVELOPMENT IN NIGERIA: THE PRAGMATIC APPROACH’stressed the need for Nigeria to rise at different levels of leadership to halt the present trajectory before heading to final implosion and eventual extinction.
According to press release by Dogara’s Media aide, Turaki Hassan and made available to journalists in Bauchi, Dogara said every problem comes with its own solution, but it takes only those looking for the solution to find it, and described the summit as a positive indicator that the leadership is prepared in line with our civic duties to be up in arms against problems stultifying our development and advancement as a nation.
Dogara, while warning against turning Nigeria into a killing field and another ground for proxy warfare like Syria, Iraq, Yemen, among others, called for adopting a permanent solution to an ephemeral problem.
He queried, “How can the solution to our myriads of problems be a collective national suicide? It baffles me that even smart people think in these terms. We must therefore proceed with caution. Yes, our national challenges are great but the promise of Nigeria is greater”.