 I shall be speaking for a few minutes on the topic promoting national cohesion as a means of promoting progress and prosperity. I know that I've refrained it's like it also happens anyway that this is the subject as it's in consonance with the foundational ethos of the club and indeed the club's membership which is multicultural and ecumenical and composed of people from diverse backgrounds. This is a testament to your commitment to fostering understanding across ethnic, racial and other lines of identity. The spectacle of so many people of diverse creeds and ethnicities united by a common purpose and vision is perhaps the most profound hallmark of the Lagos Country Club. In this sense the club is achieving in an understated but significant scale the sort of cohesion and civic mutuality that we all aspire to as a nation. I think that we can also agree that this subject is apt for the times that we're in. We as a people are facing challenges that are testing the bonds of our fraternity, of our unity and our shared humanity. In parts of the country we have seen sectarian clashes and insurgency and immediately after the elections arise and kidnappings in different parts of the country. But perhaps the worst threat from those who would use these challenges to sow discord and division in the nation by exploiting harrowing tragedies, finding them into flames of conflict, manipulating even genuine differences of perspective and opinion and suffering national challenges as opportunities to promote prejudice, bigotry and strife. That is, in my view, the greatest threat of all. Nigeria is a complex country composed of over 180 million people, 250 ethnic groups who speak about 400 different languages and dialects. She belongs to that league of nations with populations of over 100 million people composed of a multiplicity of ethnicities and creeds. It has become commonplace for people to define Nigeria's diversity as a uniquely problematic attribute that condemns us to perennial volatility and international strife on a regular basis. However, we must reject these notions as of found. Nigeria is not in any way exceptional or unusual because she is diverse. Realizing the people of the country as complex and heterogeneous as ours under the banner of a common purpose was never going to be an easy task, but that is not to say that it is impossible. Multirreligious and multirreligious are multiethnic countries all over the world grapple daily with the tensions that come with diversity. The United States of America, for example, has a long history of difficult race relations and minority discontent, and that's on an ongoing basis. Although the motto of the country is out of many, one. And this is meant to convey the idea of unity in diversity. There are minority communities who see themselves as marginalized and excluded from the mainstream of society. European nations are confronting the rise of right-wing populism and nationalism, and the revival of identities long thought to have been buried under the supranational banner of the European Union and the multicultural aspirations of all of those nations. Immigration is complicating the demographic reality of these nations, unleashing greater diversity which in turn carries a greater potential for tension and friction between the different groups. Today we hear almost daily of all of the steps that have been taken to restrict immigration in many of these countries, and of course in many of those cases, it promotes tensions within the societies. The rise of xenophobia and nationalism and other forms of shown racism on the global scene indicates that the challenge of managing diversity is not just a Nigerian or an African problem. Racial, ethnic and sectarian tensions are common to diverse societies everywhere, just as being heterogeneous does not condemn a society to perpetual conflict, neither does homogeneity in itself ensure society against strife. The mere fact that we all speak the same language or that we all belong to the same tribe doesn't mean that there will not be strife. In the same way, the mere fact that we all speak different languages or we may speak different languages or belong to different tribes and religions doesn't mean that there must be strife. Somalia is probably the best answer to the suggestion that all our national challenges will be resolved by disintegration into small, ethnically and culturally homogeneous enclaves. Somalia is composed of just one ethnic group, the Somali, who speak the same language and almost all of them practice the same religion. None of these attributes has prevented her from being met in conflict for four decades and the conflicts are still there. A few years ago, many commentators were advocating for the splitting up of Sudan as a solution to its long history of conflict. Or they said once you divide the north and the south, once you separate them everything will come to an end. They called for disintegration of the country in the belief that such a measure would bring peace to both the Sudan, north Sudan and southern Sudan. And they felt that, well, this would relieve either of those, will relieve each of those divisions so that they could be free to thrive separately. But this has not been the case. Instead, South Sudan has been plagued by various conflicts and many of us of course are familiar. But the conflict that South Sudan is going through now and its northern neighbor is also really from severe unrest. If the odyssey of southern Sudan teaches us anything, it is that by simply separating people or from people that we do not like or people we believe to be fundamentally different from us, that's not a solution for the challenge of nation building. In the context of heterogeneous societies, the challenge of nation building comes with being innovative, being patient and being ready to see the greater good. Everything we have learned from the annals of history and from contemporary reports from all over the world tells us that social diversity can either be a trigger for conflict or a fountain of prosperity and progress. Diversity in and of itself is not a problem. It is what we do with it that matters, whether or not sociocultural variety results in strife or collective success entirely depends on how a society chooses to manage it. Diversity has the potential to ignite conflict because when elements come from different or dissimilar origins, principles and orientations meet a measure of tension, there is always the likelihood of some abrasion, some conflict. This dynamic applies regardless of whether the context under consideration is between races, ethnicities, creeds, clans or nation states. Prejudice and bias are part of the human condition and are understandable. These are the initial psychological responses that we all have to any form of plurality. And it is very rare to find any cultural group or any parochial group of any kind that does not have some prejudice against another cultural group. Very rare. It is very rare indeed. So there is nothing innately wrong in people feeling that their cultural group is superior to another. Indeed, many people feel that their cultural group is superior to several others. If you ask the Europeans, they will tell you that they are the leading cultural group in the whole of Nigeria. They will tell you that their cultures are the richest. If you ask the Epos, they will say that there is nothing like us. We are the best. Ask the fuller needs of the houses. They will say, oh, we are preeminent. Every cultural group really does believe that they are superior and it will be a lie for anyone to say that I do not have some prejudice somewhere, some bias somewhere in favor of your own tribe or my own tribe. Yet conflict is not inevitable, merely on account of this ethnic or religious piracy. But leadership, leadership is crucial in determining whether diversity will mean conflict or phenomenal progress. Leadership is crucial. And by leadership, I mean the elite as made up of the political, the business, the civic and the social leaders of society. The leaders of society are that political elite. The religious elite, the social and civic elite, the business elite. We are the ones who determine the direction in which our nations go, the direction in which our communities go. Depending on the narrative that the elite choose to propagate, they could either stoke the embers of fear and doubt or smoothing the rough edges of diversity and pave way for integration. The diverse elements, all of those diverse elements, depending on how the elite choose to play the game, diverse elements can become the building blocks for constructing a superior collective that produces far greater outcome than the sum of its parts. It is entirely possible that by leadership, by the leadership of the elite, that we can create a truly divided country, depending on how the elite chooses to play the game. When we invoke Nigeria's peerless potential, as we frequently do, it is the outsized results of such synergy that we're referring to. So how can diversity and national cohesion lead to prosperity? It is no accident that the most affluent economies in the world are places that have learned to leverage diversity. In the 21st century, the true wealth of nations is human capital, is talent. That's the true wealth of nations. This means that places that have learned or are learning to attract and retain the most diverse pool of skilled human resources are easily winning the race for success. Diversity means a multiplicity of perspectives and worldviews, but this also provides a broad range of cultural, philosophical and intellectual approaches for solving problems. In this rich soil, nourished by various ideas and schools of thought, productive synthesis is possible and innovation flourishes. Thus the world's richest nations, the world's richest nations today, are those places that have learned to attract talent from everywhere and harness their diversity as drivers of growth. One of the most obvious examples, of course, is the United States of America, a nation established by immigrants and that has continued to be renewed by generations of migrants from all over the world. Indeed, the American dream is widely described as the idea that anyone can come from anywhere in the world, seek his fortune in America, succeed through hard work and determination. America's global economic preeminence is due in large part to its long standing creative management of diversity and of course it is not always a success, but it's probably one of the best examples that we can find. It is not a coincidence that the global brands like Google, like Intel, like Yahoo, like Mattel and other firms were either established or co-founded by immigrants or their descendants. Some of these great global brands today were founded by persons who actually just migrated from their countries to the US in one shape or form or the other or generations before them. Many Western nations implement immigration policies that actively attract the best talents from all over the world to bolster their economies. Today, Canada has opened up its doors. It says it wants talents from everywhere and is attracting talents from Nigeria. Canada, of course, as you know, is a country with a huge size, huge land size, but very few people. By simply opening up its doors as possible and it's one of the most advanced economies in the world, it's attracting people from everywhere to come and live there, but it is insisting that it will bring in only persons of proven talent, persons who are already skilled, persons who have enough knowledge and hope, persons who have enough knowledge to make their country better. When nations have succumbed to short-sighted and narrow-minded policies that victimize minorities and countries that have learned how to utilize human resources, how not to utilize human resources, they often suffer from various forms of prejudice. Any nation, any group of any country that is oppressive of minorities, any country that wants, that promotes exclusivity in any way, or that promotes practices that tend to further separatism, such countries almost invariably regress rather progress. For example, when in Uganda, Idi Amin expelled East African Indians from Uganda, most of them fled to the United Kingdom and they had a positive impact on the British economy and, of course, the Ugandan economy itself suffered greatly and continued to suffer, even until this day, because of the expulsion of those Indians who were doing very, very well in their country. And they were the most skilled at the time and the most economically productive of that segment of the population and so that accounted for the decline of that country's economy. Similarly, it can be said that America's ascendancy as a global power in the 20th century gained momentum as it began to accept Jews fleeing antisemitic persecution in Europe. Those European societies were run by fascist regimes that violently opposed any form of pluralism and they sought to implement a racist vision of national purity and homogeneity based on supremacism. Those fleeing Jews had been part of the intelligentsia in Europe and brought their skills, their knowledge and their intellect to the nation that welcomed them and gave them circum. Some of them were instrumental in America's development of nuclear capabilities and therefore an important part of how and why the US has achieved the status of a superpower. So the influence of the Jews into America, the acceptance of pluralism by the American society is largely responsible even for its military prowess. The same principle of diversity and national cohesion must drive economic growth and this applies even to our own country. Our most dynamic economic spaces have been historically multicultural societies like Lagos and Kano for example. Lagos as a port city obviously benefited from the coastal location as a gateway to the African continent for traders and adventurers from beyond the seas as well as from the hinterland. Kano was also a major terminal on the trans-Haran trade route drawing commercial traffic from as far north as the Maghreb and the Middle East and from southern Nigeria. So it is clear that when we create spaces for migratory talent to flourish without discrimination, there's an economic multiplier that results in an ever-increasing radius of growth. But perhaps there's a little more to the prosperity of Lagos. If you look, for example, even in contemporary times, the conscious decision of Polatidugu, then governor of Lagos State, to appoint commissioners from everywhere in Nigeria, in my view is partly responsible for the peerless progress that Lagos State has made over the years from 1999. He appointed in 1999, he appointed Mr. Walieh from Lagos State as finance commissioner. Raouh Faragbe-Shula from Washington, as commissioner for works, Fola'athawari from Delta State, as commissioner for lands, the first commissioner for lands in Lagos State, Ben Aqabouisi as commissioner for budget and planning from Anambra State, Lai Mohamed, who was then chief of staff from Quarra State, and I from Ogustate as attorney general and commissioner for justice. In that period, of course, he was opposed by every, by Lagos indigents, people who felt that by virtue of indigentship, they were qualified to be commissioners and should be appointed commissioners. They would argue, you know, and the argument is always valid, that why should anybody come from their own state to come and be commissioners in our own state? But Lagos undertook during that period because the then governor sought for the best talents that he could find. He didn't restrict the talents that he could find to the indigents of Lagos State by the way there were several people in the cabinet that were from Lagos State but the vast majority. But he didn't restrict the search to Lagos State indigents. So Lagos undertook fiscal, real property, judicial and environmental reforms that have made the state a model for the rest of the country today. If you look at what has happened, if you're just looking at fiscal reforms alone, today Lagos States combined, and Lagos States IGR is greater than the combined total of 31 states of Nigeria. 31 states, the combined area. How did that happen? How did that happen? If fiscal reform took place, he simply took the best minds that he could find. If that best mind was in an Agra state, Ben Akabozi took it. If it was, Wally Adu from Omostate, he took it and it's made sense for everybody, including indigents of Lagos State and indigents of anywhere else. Nigeria is the same nation, this nation, that produced a Megawali, an Igbo Christian, the world's, and he produced the fastest computer in the world. Africa's first Nobel laureate, Wale Shoinka, Yoruba of known, known religion, is, I don't know whether you know it's religion or fast, I don't know, you know? Or Jelani Aliou, Fulani Muslim, world class designer of motor vehicles, reputed all over the world. So Nigeria is the nation it is because of the collective strength of its many talents, its attributes and the various contours of this great country. It is the reason why we are who we are. How then can we transform this diversity into cohesion? Having a properly harnessed, diversity is a powerful driver of economic growth and we've seen this just as an example of Lagos. However, as I said earlier, whether diversity leads to conflict or engender's prosperity depends on the extent to which our institutions promote cohesion and the key to promoting cohesion is inclusion. In other words, people pull together and work together when they believe that they are part of the same group, when they share a common vision, when there is a common objective and when everybody can aggregate around that common objective. I'm going to witness, for example, how Nigerians come together as one when our national team is playing. That's a vision, that's a vision. It's just a vision. Our vision is clear and our objective is set at those moments. We want our nation to win. We don't care who is scoring the goals. We don't care whether the man who is scoring the goals is from a new state or whether he's from Zanfarah state or whether it's from an app. We don't care so long as he can score. We'll put him out there and we'll hail him when he scores. In an earlier generation, institutions such as the National Youth Service School, federal government colleges, and which later are now described as unity schools, were established to foster national cohesion. The essential idea was that to take young Nigerians drawn from diverse backgrounds and places and places and to put them in the same academic and social context located far away from home. So the goal was to expose young Nigerians to different communities and people, acquaint them with their country's cultural, geographical, and social diversity, and in so doing, demystify that other sense, that sense of feeling that those other people are so different from us that we shouldn't associate with them. Such shared experiences are deeply educational because they make it possible for citizens of a multi-racial, multi-ethnic, multi-religious society to humanize each other, to recognize the basic humanness in each of us. In the years since these institutions were created, more Nigerians have been exposed to people and cultures different from their own. I was at an event in Lagos recently. I was invited by some old boys of King's College. King's College, of course, as you know, is a federal government college. So in that gathering was Adebayo Gulesi, a Christian, a Yoruba gentleman, who is noted as one of the, who founded one of the most successful private capital firms in the whole world. There was Kimbele Osage from Edo State, a Muslim from Edo State, who, as many of us know, was the largest investor in UBA and at some point at Tisselat. There was the Emmy of Canada and former CBN government. Of course, all of these individuals went to the same course. None of us, these ones, were classmates and they continued to work together, promoting each other over the years. But it was a deliberate step that was taken. The deliberate step was in establishing federal government colleges or unity schools, ensuring that these young men were able to spend time in this college where young women were able to spend time together, grow together and learn that there was no real difference between them. And so they've stayed united. It was a deliberate policy. And so even working in diversity takes deliberateness. It takes some dedication to creating the kind of unity we want to see, to creating the kind of converges that we want to see. That requires some doing. The challenge for us always is to continue to diffuse the potential perils of our diversity by pursuing measures that promote the social inclusion and national cohesion deliberately. One of the most important ramparts of national cohesion are the guarantees of fundamental freedoms. The guarantees of fundamental freedoms are so important in any kind of national cohesion. The right to life which comes within the duty of governments to ensure peace and security, freedom of movement, freedom of worship and the rule of law, everyone must be reasonably assured that their lives and livelihoods will be protected by government and its agencies. That their disputes will be fairly unjustly resolved regardless of ethnicity or faith. This is the main challenge of every diverse society. The assurance of the protection of basic rights and freedoms. That is a challenge of every diverse society. Our challenges as a nation, as a nation today, basically center around these issues. Religious conflicts, the farmer-herder clashes in the North Central and many parts of the Northwest, Boko Haram insurgency in the Northeast, militancy in the Niger Delta. When law enforcement institutions are weak, there is a huge opportunity to run divisive narratives. Once the law enforcement institutions, once the rule of law, institutions of the rule of law are weak, then you will see divisive narratives are the easiest. By that I mean that where, for example, the security agencies do not speedily apprehend criminals or where the criminal justice system is slow, then there's room for people to say, ah, they don't arrest or prosecute full-on-hearders when they kill. Easy for people to say so. Of course, it's convenient to forget that there are other people who have committed offenses who have not been arrested. But it's easy to make a divisive narrative or to create a divisive narrative where the institutions of security are weak or where they are not up to the task. Because the law enforcement officers are often not resident in the communities where they are posted. You then find a situation where it is easier also to promote doubt about their commitment to ensuring the safety of the communities, the police. By that I mean that where a policeman is not a resident of the place where he polices. In other words, if you bring a policeman from Aqwaiba to police in Osho State, it doesn't understand the language. It doesn't understand the territory. It's easier to promote any kind of doubt that is not committed to policing that neighborhood. That's the reason why policing is usually a communal function and why people are required to be, where you have civil police force, where you have a police force, those sorts of people are required to understand their territories. You should not have a situation where people are policing neighborhoods or communities where they don't understand the territory or where they don't even speak the language. Now where the quality and integrity of judges is endowed is easier to find parochial reasons for unfavorable decisions whenever you find if a judge gives a ruling. Why you don't trust the judge? Why you don't think that the judge is competent? Why you don't think that this judge is capable for whatever reason? If you get a wrong decision, you will find all sorts of reasons why that decision was given. Oh, the judge was bright. Oh, it is because the judge is Christian and I'm Muslim. Oh, it is because I'm Muslim and I'm a judge. Or whatever, you will find a reason where the judge is not competent, where the judge has not passed that test of integrity and competence. The answer to these issues is simple. In diverse societies, we must do all that is necessary to strengthen the institutions of law enforcement, of security, of administration of justice and the rule of law. The challenge is dynamic and our approach must also be dynamic. That's why I believe that the state police in a large and diverse federation is an imperative. However, we know that the state police requires constitutional amendment and that's of course is a product of the consensus of our legislators, both the National Assembly and state legislation. In the interim, the federal government has approved community policing as an option. The IG recently announced that plan. An important component of the plan is that the new approach to police recruitment is that policemen will be recruited in each local government and after training, they will be required to remain in their local government to police in their own environment. The plan also involves interfaces between traditional rulers, state neighborhood watches or vigilante programs and the police. The security architecture, and it's very important for security architecture to be as domestic as possible. Where it is domestic, where it favors the use of local persons, local institutions, it is bound to be more effective and that has been proved to be the case practically all across the country. Also, the security architecture is now being re-engineered for greater use of technology and more integration of the use of security platforms. A few days ago, some persons who were kidnapped on the already named road were arrested. The kidnappers were arrested and successfully and also not just the kidnappers but the kidnapped victims were successfully rescued because there was a prompt deployment of police helicopters, prompt deployment of tracking devices. It is not difficult to apprehend kidnappers. Kidnapping is an economic crime and the people who kidnap are looking for money. So they are not spirits disappearing from place to place and that is why it is entirely possible for where you have effective law enforcement, especially where you use technology, where we're able to deploy helicopters and where we're able to use local intelligence to effectively obfuscate kidnapping and to arrest those who kidnap. The governors of the Southwest states are also committed to purchasing electronic surveillance and tracking systems and patrol vehicles for the use of law enforcement agencies. And I think that the coming together of governors, especially in the various zones, to work together to police interstate roads along with the federal government is a very important part of keeping security. I believe that the challenges that we have, the various challenges that we have in security can only lead to a situation where we're able to rebuild our security architecture and where we're able to strengthen our security architecture. We must take advantage of what we're seeing and this is really the approach that the government is taking. That we can really take advantage of this current situation to build a better security architecture for our country and to ensure that all of those who are involved in the whole security framework of the country are sensitive to the various issues that are called for. We must strengthen our judicial system also, first by appointment of judges of integrity and sound legal knowledge. Again, I'll go back to Lagos. When in 1999, I was appointed attorney general in Lagos. We conducted a survey of lawyers who practice in the Lagos High Court. We took about a sample of 200 lawyers who practice in the Lagos High Court and we asked them a simple question. What is your perception of judges in Lagos State? And we gave them just unfair, corrupt, notoriously corrupt. We gave them those options. 89% said that judges were notoriously corrupt. 89%. Now, that was in 1999. We asked the question. So, since you have noted that judges are notoriously corrupt, what has happened? What have you done? Have you made any reports? Have you, nobody bothered to report anymore? From 1967, when the state was established in 1999, not a single majesty had ever been sacked for corruption. Not a single judge had ever been dismissed for corruption. And lawyers who practice in the courts were unanimous that judges were notoriously corrupt. So, we set out to change the system. And this is the point I've been making, that there must be a deliberate attempt to make a difference. It must be deliberate, it must be planned. We set out to make a difference. We decided, first, that we're going to appoint judges differently. It will not be on a man-no-man basis. We will headhunt, and then we will go, every judge that is headhunted, we'll go through a series of tests, including scrutiny by the Nigerian Bar Association. So, for the very first time, judges and Lagos were taken through tests and interviews before they were appointed. And we appointed many of them very young, who are conscious of pedigree, who are conscious of the integrity of these judges. And we took them through a whole process. Fortunately for us, we were able to get at the time, we appointed the largest number of judges ever. We appointed 26 new judges in 2001. Called a long story short, of course, we also took a look at their welfare, pay, et cetera, and all that. And we started paying our judges, you know, salaries that were previously unprecedented. As a matter of fact, I'd call it a conversation I had with the senior judges at the time before their salaries were increased. And we all sat down about six senior judges and myself, looking at their salaries. At the time, there were only 67,000 naira a month. Well, this was 1999. Very small money, but not as small as it sounds now. But anyway, when we looked at the salary and we asked, okay, so how many children, four children, one is in school in England, three are in the university, how are you managing on these six? It became evident that while we were pretending to pay them, they were also pretending to work. So it was a situation of mutual pretence. But I think that what we did eventually, of course, was to improve salaries considerably. And we insisted that every judge in Lagos must have a home. So once you appointed a judge to give you a house in Lekid, Cuyio, G.R.A. here, a big four bedroom house with voice quarters and all that, and become your house for life. So you don't have to worry about building your own house because the state government provided them a house. We found that it made a dramatic difference. First of all, in the quality of the judges who were able to attract better talent. But the point I want to make is that in 2007, the World Bank conducted with us a survey of the same, of 200 lawyers asking the same questions you asked in 1999, in 2007, they asked the same questions. What's your perception of high court judges? And of course, we found, the World Bank found that it was now 0% felt that judges were corrupt, 0%. It is not to say, and it's not to say that people had become overnight saints. No. First, they were better paid. Secondly, in that period, three judges had been dismissed, 21 magistrates had been dismissed. So people recognized that there would be consequence and people were better paid. So it is possible for us building institutions by deliberate process of trending institutions to really make things better and to give people greater confidence in the system and in the protection of their rights before the law. But beyond maintaining security, beyond just maintaining security and law enforcement, is that we must also clearly understand the nature of the problems that we face. We must not allow skewed or false or just simple narratives, no matter how plausible they may sound. As I had occasion to say elsewhere on the insurgency in the Northeast, and I'll quote what I said there. Since Boko Haram, we've seen other threats, other emerging threats. We've seen Islamic State, West Africa, Israel and others in the Lake Chad Islands and parts of Southern Bono. Radical Islamist terrorism is an evil that must be seen as a common enemy of all, of all faiths, including Islam. As the president said, and I paraphrase, anyone who says allow Akbar and goes on to kill is either insane or is dangerously ignorant of even the tenets of Islam itself. The likes of Boko Haram and ISIS or Islamic State of West Africa, Israel and many Salafist jihadist ideologies are expansionist ideologies. They fit purely on hate, hatred of any person or group that does not belong to their particular sect. They have no redressable grievances, so there are no terms of reference for peace. They are not saying that if you do the following, then there will be peace now. These are fanatics committed to a twisted creed and they exploit the ignorance of the tenets of Islam itself. They exploit poverty, exclusion and they recruit men and women and use children to perpetrate the most heinous atrocities. They are motivated by a satanic desire to control communities by murder and terror. So whether it is in Iraq or it is in Bono or Syria, their victims are men and women and children, Muslims or Christians or people who have no faith, so long as they do not share their Sikh ideologies, the target churches, mosques, markets, motorbikes, where people gather, using children as human bombs to kill randomly regardless of tribe or faith. I have seen the child bodies of dead men and women killed by suicide bombers in Gombe, in Bono, in Kano. The bombs are the ultimate agnostic destroyers, no discrimination in them, they don't care. I mean, these people do not care who it is that is hit so long as you do not belong to their own sect. The challenge for us is to recognize this extremism for what it is and to form alliances across faiths and ethnicities to destroy an evil that confronts us all. It is not an evil that confronts one religion. This is the reason why in Syria, where most people there are Muslims or Iraq, where the vast majority of people are Muslims, you have found ISIS destroying and killing as widely as they would anywhere else. This is the reason why in Bono, in the centers of Islam in various places, where you find death and destruction, the reason why you find all of this taking place, it will then be a false narrative. It will be a false narrative and will never be able to solve the problem. If somebody says, oh, this is just an attack against Christians. Of course not. That is a false simple, but a false simple, but it's ultimately a failed narrative because it cannot help us to solve the problem. It is not true. We must understand the nature of the problem. As Nigerians also, we have grown up familiar with the constant habit of some scholars, political and journalistic circles, making it seem that our diversity by itself is the problem. But it is worth asking whether we are really as diverse as some people insist that we are. There's no denying that we have differences. But the question is, are those differences so fundamental as to utterly negate the possibility of cohesion? My answer is no. And indeed we must recognize the extent of our shared values. We all esteem the extended family and all of the notions of the social obligations that we have. We all as communities, as our different communities, we share sociocultural emphasis on solidarity, on kinship, on community values. We are all over the country. We recognize and see ourselves in various places. Anyone who has worked outside this country who has lived outside this country. I mean, just a few days ago, I was in Kaduna to commiserate with the family of the young man, Precious Holabi, who was shot in the rioting, the Ironman rioting in Abuja last week. His parents have been living in Kaduna. His father's mother of fact and mother were youth coppers in Kaduna in 1919. And they remained there. I mean, he got married there. They got married there in Kaduna. And they've been living there in Saabongari in Kaduna all of that time. They haven't ever left. Whatever has happened in Kaduna, they've been living there. All of the neighbors who came there to commiserate with them were their neighbors. Different ethnic groups, different tribes, but people who were there with them, mourning with them, they didn't move to Lagos or move to any part of the country to mourn their loss. They remained there in Kaduna. Every one of us has the same, all of us, wherever we're from, we have the same cares and the same concerns. Every one of those people who gathered there on Sunday when I went there were people who felt the pain and anguish of the mother who had lost her child. All of them knew how painful it was. None of them thought that it was a light matter because it happened to a man called Owolabi and his wife. None of them felt that way. They all felt the common pain of that loss. In fact, I would argue, I would argue that rather than mere diversity itself being the problem, it is the allocation of access to social, economic, and political opportunities on the basis of identity that is really the problem. And I'll explain that. The problem is not ethnic or legal differences by themselves. The problem is the struggle for opportunities on the basis of those differences. So we see this when Nigerians are denied opportunity on the basis of their state of origin or because they are non-Indians. We see it when a Nigerian that has been recited in a state all his life is suddenly excluded from admission into an educational institution or an employment opportunity because he is not considered an indigene. Or when a young Niger who has served in a particular state during the NYSE year is suddenly excluded from opportunity because he or she is dubbed a non-indigene. Not only do these practices undermine national cohesion, they also feed the resentments that many people feel. Honesty demands that we begin to recognize the ways in which we perpetuate institutional discrimination and cause people to see their messages and religions as weapons for procuring opportunity, often at the expense of others. We must also realize the ways in which our system generates perverse incentives to practice prejudice and undermine national cohesion because people are forced to play up their ethnic and religious identities to achieve success. There's a tremendous incentive to deploy identity politics, to be horrendous and to mobilize along smaller group identities. Identity politics itself is inherently divisive because it turns people against each other and makes them aliens and strangers. As resources become scarce, identity-based claims to a share of the national patrimony become more aggressive and lead to conflict. Under these circumstances, identity politics causes us to see each other as competitors and rivals instead of competitors and eventually we begin to demonize each other as enemies. The truth is that very frequently, the reason why people hold on and especially the elites hold on to parochial identities is because it is a negotiating tool. That's the reason. So when a person says, I have been, my people have been marginalized. What he's saying is that I want an appointment and if you don't give me that appointment, I am ready to make it seem as if a whole people have been marginalized. It doesn't matter what is happening to those people. And that is the reason why no matter who is president of Nigeria, it does not mean that his people will benefit the most. And that is the experience of Nigeria and you can test it empirically. Whoever it is, whether the president is house, I mean, in any event, you've seen president from many parts of Nigeria. If it is true that by the mere fact that you are from a particular part of the country, if it is true that your people will advance, we have had people, we have had a president from the South-South, we've had a president from several presidents of the North, we've had Yoruba presidents. How come we're still complaining of the same sorts of backwardness? How come? It is because it doesn't matter. It is because it's an elite bargaining tool. Ethnic differences are just an elite bargaining tool. The reality of our country, the right of our nation is that the needs of our people, the common needs of our people are the same. Our people require education. We need a place to live. They require job opportunities, economic advancement, and it is not served by narrow ethnic, there is not served by any narrow ethnic considerations. No, it doesn't help and has never helped. Rwanda, for example, I just go back very quickly to Rwanda, experience a genocidal civil war in 1990. That conflict was rooted in the promotion of differences between Hutu and Tutsis by colonial authorities and the subsequent inspiration of that notion that, well, you are different people. When the war broke out in 1994, it was the culmination of many years of animosity between Hutus and Tutsis. Over 20 years later, now fast forward to now, Rwanda is becoming a poster child for post-conflict recovery and effective governance. One of the things that the Rwandan government has done to advance national cohesion is to abolish the ethnic categorizations of their citizens as either Hutu or Tutsis. It simply abolished it. In order to promote Rwandan national identity above all other subnational constituencies, indeed, the use of these ethnic particulars in Rwanda has been criminalized as divisionism. So if you say I belong to one ethnic group, it is considered criminal because that is regarded as the crime of divisionism. In learning from Rwanda and several other countries that have recovered from what we are experiencing, we have to deemphasize the elements of our national life that negate cohesion. One of the ways we can do this is by downplaying concepts like indigenship and ultimately erasing it from our national lexicon. The classification of Nigerians. The classification of Nigerians as indigens and non-indigens is our own form of divisionism and has long contradicted our declared aspirations towards unity and diversity. All that should matter in evaluating ourselves is where we live and fulfill our civic obligations. This is why, for example, when we're developing our social investment programs and administering them, we decide that I will be on the basis of residency. The eligible beneficiaries are selected based on their states of residence. None was discriminated against on any other basis. So wherever you reside is where you'll be appointed. Now this approach is actually consistent with our broader philosophy of fostering national cohesion by broadening access to opportunity for all Nigerians without qualification. The framers of our constitution clearly understood the importance of civic maturity and there was a number of provisions aimed at promoting national cohesion. Amongst these constitutional provisions are those found in what is called the fundamental objectives and directive principles of state policy is in chapter two of our constitution. One of them stipulates that national integration shall be actively encouraged whilst discrimination on the grounds of place of origin, sex, religion, status, ethnic or linguistic association shall be abolished. That is our constitution. That's what our constitution says. Our constitution actually says that anything that promotes what we today describe as indigenship and all of that should be abolished. The government is further enjoined and there's another provision to secure full residence rights for every citizen in all parts of the federation and even to encourage intermarried amongst persons from different place of origin or from different religions, ethnic or linguistic associations on ties, et cetera. These are provisions contained in our constitution. In the light of these provisions it is clear that the promotion of national cohesion for progress and prosperity is a constitutional imperative. It is not just a desire, it's not just something that we should wish for. It is a constitutional imperative, it's a constitutional requirement and our constitution has clearly provided for it. The question of course is implementable. I'm quite pleased to note that there are states for example, cabinet states to some extent has abolished by regulation all institutionalized discrimination based on indigent settler dichotomy and is advancing the cause of common citizenship by making residency the sole basis for providing public goods. Now this is important, this exemplary. It may not be perfect, it may not even be perfectly implemented but that it has become the subject of legislation itself is in my view, progress in the right direction. Our federation will never be perfect. Nothing organized by human beings will ever be but we must work a better union. We must work a better nation. A fairer, a more equitable, a more just arrangement is possible. We can do better but that must come from accepting that unity is ultimately more beneficial to all of us. That unity cannot be justly negotiated under duress. Every group must first accept the notion that unity is a desirable option. As governments, as leaders, as political, religious and business leaders, we can preach a different message. Those of us who preach the gospel of Jesus Christ for example, cannot be found preaching hate from our boopings but cannot because it contradicts it in the very essence of our faith. Our faith says that we must fight hate with love. We can insist as religious leaders everywhere that all children must be fed. That children must go to school whether it is here in the Southwest or in the Northwest that all children of school age free and compulsory education for the nine years, the first nine years of a child's school life. We must insist on that. Our purpose must preach those things. Those are the sorts of things that enhance a nation, that make a nation develop. We must have good healthcare. Whether we are Christians or Muslims, evil, full and ebibio or shakiri, we can insist that all our people anywhere, whether in Zamfara, Bono, Benue or Yom, deserve the protection of the police and law enforcement, frontally and decisively. We cannot condemn killings only when they touch our own because all of us share a common humanity. The death of the people of anybody is not a mere occurrence. Each person who dies means a grieving, devastated mother, father, siblings and friends. Each death demeans us all. Whether we speak their language or not, the Nigeria of our dreams cannot emerge from tribal, legalism, religious division, identity politics or any kind of parochial chauvinism. It cannot. There is no Nigerian tribe that does not have its own histories and folk laws of greatness and of achievement, but none on its own can be as great as the nation of so many and such diverse talents. The truth is that any group that suggests that it is that it's destiny takes outside the Nigerian common world and so must separate and so must separate to achieve or realize its ambitions will find soon enough that even within that group there are many little splinters, factions waiting to cut the pie into even smaller pieces, hoping that by doing so, they would eat a larger piece. This is a fallacy that is repeated time and time again that if we, if a kid is stayed together, if we are one country, we'll be okay. Not true. If the Jebus come together, if we are one state, we'll be okay. Not true. You and I know that. All of us know that. That we have conflicts even within our own little society. Such big conflicts that even make it difficult for us to make progress. We must resolve those conflicts. The enduring truth is simple. Those who can unite will always be stronger than those who want to go alone. Unity is ultimately stronger than separateness. Six decades after independence from the British Empire, Nigeria remains a work in progress and is still in many ways under construction. Nation building is a task before us and it's not only a task for those of us in government. It is for all of us. We must create spaces and institutions that nurture a higher sense of inclusion and commonality. Whether in and out of politics, we have a duty to mobilize people in the name of something much higher, much nobler, much greater than petty self-serving agendas, parochial, divisive, and chauvinistic causes. As elites, we have a responsibility to see our various subnational constituencies not as small mutually alienated fragments, but as elements with which we can forge the sort of grand cohesion that will truly transform our potential into progress and prosperity. For 70 years, the Lagos Country Club has in its own small way, but determinedly, served to promote cohesion and peaceful coexistence by providing a recreational haven for people of different creeds and cultures. As you continue along this arc of your journey, I wish you every success. It's my fervent hope that the ideals of peaceful coexistence, togetherness, fraternity, and mutuality, which you have exemplified thus far, will continue to be transposed on an even larger scale in our own lives as a nation.