President Muhammadu Buhari has called on Nigerians to be agents of change and to be patient with his administration, saying that “the change we seek will not happen overnight.”
The president made the remarks during a ceremony to officially launch the National re-orientation campaign tagged “Change Begins With Me” in Abuja on Thursday.
“We are under no illusion that the change we seek will happen overnight but we have no doubt that the campaign will help restore our value system and rekindle our national power,” he said.
Buhari said the campaign, which will last throughout his tenure, has become imperative due to the fact that “our value system has been badly eroded over the years.”
He said: “The long-cherished and time-honoured, time-tested virtues of honesty, integrity, hardwork, punctuality, good neighbourliness, abhorrence of corruption and patriotism have given way to dishonesty, intolerance, indolence, unbridled corruption and wide-spread impunity.
“The resultant effect of this derailment in our value system is being felt in the social, political and economic sphere.
“This campaign is part of the determination of our party to seek to carry Nigerians along on the journey to a better and greater society that we can all be proud of.”
President Buhari urged citizens to view change “not merely in terms of our economy and social progress, but in terms of our personal behavior, on how we conduct ourselves, engage our neighbours, friends and, generally, how we relate to the larger society in a positive and definitive way to promote our common good and common destiny.”
“I am therefore appealing to all Nigerians to be part of this campaign.
“In other words, before you ask ‘where is the change they promised us?’ you must first ask, ‘how far have I changed my ways? What have I done to be part of the change for a greater society,” he said.
The “Change begins with me campaign” is a brainchild of the National Orientation Agency, NOA, under the federal ministry of information and culture, headed by Lai Mohammed.