onward to 2011

“The tragedy of corruption is that whenever it takes over, it almost  becomes the engine of the  society, and then it continues to roll and it affects everything, and it is almost impossible for you to really take anything out of it, because corruption has taken over  the engine of that  room, and continue to roll. And everything boils to greed, that is almost where we are today in our own country.
“Young men and women have to take back their country from ruin, from poor government, from corruption, and from failure. Young men and women have a good reason to do this. They own the future; they need to invest in it accordingly. If the past 50 years of our independence had been one long night of failure and shame, the only people who can remake it are the young people. If they hold and cherish their faith as I hope they do, then they will also know that they have to do it with respect and honor to their fellow men and women knowing fully that we are all God’s children, and that we achieve more when we unite in purpose, and when we march as a team. We are one people with God that we must come together.
“There is always an historic challenge for every generation. The generation of our fathers interpreted their task as a call to liberate us from colonial rule and they were successful in rendering independence. “It is a different issue if the independence they gave us was blemish in one respect or the other. It is the task of others to sanitize it. Some of our contemporaries had the historical challenge to terminate military rule and help us restore democracy. This was also discharged with credit.
“I am saying it so easily now making it sound an easy task. No. Far from it. Many died, many lost beloved ones, and many more came out of it shortchanged. That is the language of progress. You don’t make omelets without breaking eggs.
“So what is the challenge of the new generation today? Our challenge today is to restore good governance, accountability, and transparency in government as a basis of sanitizing our democracy. Let no one tells you any other thing.
“Dear brothers and sisters that is your task today and you must not fail because each generation ultimately always carry the burden of defining its own mission, which they can either accomplish or retreat from in defeat. My prayers here today are that we never fail in our mission and that we make a great success of our goals, but remember that goal is to enthrone democracy through clean elections." ==(fro. nuhu ribadu)