Akinwunmi Ambode

The positive role the University of Lagos has played in Nigeria and Africa cannot be overstated. Through its halls have walked leaders and innovators in all academic disciplines; people who have devoted their knowledge and abilities to making our lives and this nation better. Drawing students from across Nigeria, UNILAG is an institution fertile with the type of social and educational interaction and inclusion vital to forging a robust and progressive country.

To declare that UNILAG is the best school in the land is not an empty boast nor is it a hopeful prediction to be left for future evaluation. It is a present fact. Thus, you, the graduating class of 2017, are but the latest inheritors of a lineage of academic and civic excellence.

In 1984, I attended a convocation much like today’s. On that day, I sat where you now sit. I was an eager, yet apprehensive young man set to graduate at 21. Although ready to tackle the world and make my mark, I was also a bit uncertain about what that world and life would bring. I knew I was blessed to have attended this university with its sterling faculty, leadership and staff, fine traditions and robust student body. Now looking back, I realise that this school had prepared me better than I prepared myself for the challenges and opportunities that were to come.
If you ask me a thousand times if I would have matriculated anywhere else, a thousand times I would have said “No, I will stay right here.” I am forever grateful for the chance to have studied and learned here.

Thirty-four years later, I now look at you only to see myself. You are as I was, except for one important thing: You are better. Whatever my generation has achieved, you must go further and do more to build a new and better nation.
True, I stand before you as the first UNILAG graduate to become governor of Lagos. I am humbled by this distinction and elated to be the first to walk this path. But I know I shall not be the last to walk it. I will not be the last graduate of this excellent school to become governor of this state that is the Center of Excellence of our beloved nation. Yes, all of you cannot be state governors. Yet, in your own way, you must be leaders that correct the direction of our nation by improving our social attitudes and by relying more on conscience than on cunning in the conduct of its affairs.

We must break down old walls in order to erect a better home. Yet good things do not just happen. Bad and evil come easily because they are the product of common human failings and lapses left too long uncorrected. But good and fine things are more difficult because they always must be crafted with adept care. Excellence is never by accident. It is the product of wise exertion.
For you to answer the call of this nation for your generation to be better than preceding ones, you must strap yourself to courage, you must peer beyond the immediate to envision a better future and you must have the enlightened decency to refuse to yoke yourselves to ancient and irrational biases and hatreds that have no place in the nation we seek to build.
We all must understand this important reality: None of us chooses the world into which we are born. Yet we can choose to make of that world what we want it to be. None of us can influence the place and time we are born or the family or nation into which we come.

Some will say that a person is of this or that ethnic group, nationality or faith by incident of birth as if these things occur by cosmic whim or the roll of dice. I don’t believe in accidents. Instead, I believe we all have been placed here by God-given design and purpose. If our presence is surely born of God’s hand, then we have not been placed on earth to hate another person simply because they were born of a different ethnic or religious stock. We cannot allow ignorance to fuel hatred in us. If we do, then we shall hold fast to a damaging ignorance because we have grown comfortable in hating one another. So comfortable in disliking others and so eagerly basking in our own ignorance, we do grave disservice to ourselves.

We have not been placed here to oppose, obstruct and destroy our fellow man. We honour the God who made us and we honour ourselves by honoring the rights of others and being concerned with the welfare of others as well. We are here to uplift and improve every thing around us. This requires compassion for each other.
Sadly, human history is checkered with examples of peoples and nations that have taken the wrong path by embracing the lessons of injustice and meanness. These places too diligently studied war, prejudice and division even among fellow citizens. Eventually, all such peoples and nations fade away, destroyed not so much by external threats but by their own strong but ignorant hand.

Fortunately, there are examples of nations and peoples that rose above pettiness to become great through unity, collective purpose and intelligent effort. We, as Nigerians, have a choice. We can follow the path of folly or we can follow the road to our appointed destiny. For me, there is no choice.

Yet, to assume the right course is also to depart from how we have misgoverned ourselves for much of our history. Colonialism brought many groups together into one country but manipulated our fears so that we suspected the worst of each other. We were wise and courageous enough to retire colonialism but we were too weak and imprudent to excise the divisive mindset that colonialism brought. Thus, we live in the same house but not as members of the same family. We have known each other all our lives but behave as if we are abject strangers. In this house, we live in discomfort. We sleep with one eye open, one foot on the ground and our bedroom door locked, if not also bolted.

The minute something happens, we jump to hurl the worse accusations at fellow citizens of other ethnic and religious groups. This is because we have been taught to view the world as a zero-sum environment. According to this forlorn outlook, whatever one person gains must come at the expense of another. Your gain is my loss and vice versa. Such a mindset is injurious to any household, be it a single family or a vast nation. It leads to constant bickering and battle. For it tells us there are no solutions that benefit all. There is only contestation about who shall win and who shall lose.
This mindset constructs enmity and friction as if it were a national monument.

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This perspective implies things cannot get better. That people cannot work together to produce more wealth, prosperity and opportunity so that everyone can reasonably expect to get a larger share of an expanding flow of wealth as the future unfolds. Cynical people tacitly believe the supply of wealth, prosperity and all good things is static if not diminishing. Thus, competition grows more intense by the day as more people compete for possession and enjoyment of static number of valuable items.

Dig deeper and this mindset reveals something terribly barren in those who hold to it. They believe we are not in possession of the intelligence, ability and vision to improve our political economy in order to create more jobs and elevate the standard of living for most Nigerians. Things will always be as is they are is their motto.

Well, this flaccid motto cannot be our motto and the cynical ways of these people cannot be our ways. Instead, I hold to the proposition that we shall become the best of who we are. We do this by keeping our fellow man in heart so that we do not end up lunging at each other’s throat. Here, I offer Lagos State as an example of what is possible for all Nigeria and Nigerians when we practice the governance of inclusion instead of the old, malign ways of exclusion.

Since the return of civilian rule in 1999, Lagos has been a fount of economic progress and social understanding and tolerance. Led by Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, a group of dedicated and committed Lagosians developed a blueprint for the transformation of the state. So much of the state had fallen down and decayed. The state’s glory seemed a thing of the past. But we have steadily repaired it. First, the administration of Asiwaju Tinubu and then that of Babatunde Raji Fashola moved the master plan from concept to concrete reality. My administration is both a beneficiary of their work as well as a continuance of that work. We strive to go further because we have the opportunity to build upon what they have done.

Through the years, we have steadily repaired our state, modernising and retooling things to the point where we now talk about turning Lagos into a smart city. In every way, our infrastructure is improved. Our roads are better, our mass transportation has expanded, hospitals give better care to the sick and afflicted, education is improving and more affordable housing is being constructed before our very eyes. The face of Badagry is changing. The makeover of Oshodi will cause you to marvel at the transformation that can take place even in densely-populated urban space when there is the political will and determined creativity to give the people the infrastructure they deserve.

We are improving and expanding the Airport Road so that a trip to and from the airport no longer takes more time than your flight itself. The Lekki-Epe axis was once an isolated, inactive tract of land. Now it bustles with energy, activity and prosperity due in large measure to the roads and other infrastructure our state has constructed.

We have and will continue to build bridges linking parts of Lagos that have not been linked before so that commerce, transport and communication among Lagosians will be facilitated. We aim to make this state fully integrated so that one part is well connected to any other.

All of this work is underpinned by the belief that Lagos belongs to all of us. Lagos is not an exclusive club. It is an inclusive family. What makes you truly Lagosian has little to do with where you were born, the origin of your surname or which Holy Book, if any, you read. What makes you Lagosian is whether or not you are of the right civic and individual spirit. If you want to innovate and make things better, then you are Lagosian in heart. If you seek to establish business, give jobs to people, and enrich the world around you, you are Lagosian at heart.

If you do not mind if a person of a different group or religion prospers so long as you too have the fair chance to do the same, then you are Lagosian at heart. If you don’t mind hard work for yourself but also believe that everyone has the right of quiet enjoyment of the fruits of their legitimate labour and toil then you are Lagosian at heart.

It is in this spirit that we build Lagos anew. It is in this spirit that we can build a new nation.

• Excerpts of lecture delivered by Lagos State
Governor, Akinwunmi Ambode, at the University of Lagos 2017 convocation