The Nigerian President came to power last year on the back of change. The president in several campaign trips has informed Nigerians that he was out to change Nigeria for the better.
In one of his many speeches last year he referred to change in this manner ;
Change means:
- A country that you can be proud of at anytime and anywhere: where corruption is tackled, where your leaders are disciplined and lead with vision and clarity; where the stories that emerge to the world from us are full of hope and progress.
- A Nigeria in which neither yourselves, nor your parents, families or friends will have to fear for your safety, or for theirs.
- A Nigeria where citizens get the basics that any country should provide: infrastructure that works, healthcare that is affordable, even free; respect for the environment and sustainable development, education that is competitive and outcome-oriented in a knowledge-economy.
- A country that provides jobs for its young people, reducing unemployment to the lowest of single digits and providing safety nets so that no one is left behind.
- A Nigeria where entrepreneurship thrives, enterprise flourishes and the government gets out of your way so that you can create value, build the economy and aggressively expand wealth.
Fast forward to 2016 and the President has changed what change means for you and I. Here is how he defined change when he spoke on Thursday, at the State House, Abuja during the launch of a national re-orientation campaign, tagged “Change Begins With Me”.
“I am therefore appealing to all Nigerians to be part of this campaign. Our citizens must realize that the change they want to see begins with them, and that personal and social reforms are not theoretic exercise.
“If you have not seen the change in you, you cannot see it in others or even the larger society. In other words, before you ask ‘where is the change they promised us, you must first ask how far have I changed my ways and what have I done to be part of the change for the greater good of society.
“Nigeria today is passing through a challenging moment where hardly anything works in a normal manner. Many have attributed this phenomenon to the total breakdown of our core values over the years.
“It is safe to say today that honesty, hard work, Godliness have given way to all kinds of manifestations of lawlessness and degeneration in our national life. This is why we have among our cardinal objectives ‘change’, which implies the need for a change of attitude and mindset in our everyday life.”
It’s obvious a lot can change in the mind of a President in one year.