BEING THE TEXT OF KEYNOTE ADDRESS BY HIS EMINENCE ALHAJI (DR.) MUHAMMAD SA’AD ABUBAKAR III, THE SULTAN OF SOKOTO AND SARIKIN MU’MINEEN OF NIGERIA, PRESENTED AT THE MAIDEN EDITION OF LECTURE/AWARD PROGRAMME OF CHARTERED INSTITUTE OF LOAN AND RISK MANAGEMENT OF NIGERIA ORGANISED IN COLLABORATION WITH The DEFENDER ONLINE MEDIA, HELD AT THE NNAMDI AZIKIWE HALL OF NICON LUXURY HOTEL, ABUJA, FEDERAL CAPITAL TERRITORY (FCT), ON SATURDAY APRIL 28, 2018.

Protocols

When I first got the message that I would be delivering a keynote address on the theme of today, “Toward National Integration and Economic Development of Nigeria: The Online Media and Risk Management Approach”, the first question I asked one of the organizers that brought me the tasking news was, “Yes, I know about the many unfortunate misrepresentations by most of the online media and can give my sincere advice about how they should change for the love of our great country Nigeria and peace of humanity.  But, how do you expect me to speak on “risk management” when I am not a risk expert?”

It however crossed my mind that once you are in a position of leadership, you have got to know a little virtually about everything.  It is on the backdrop of this understanding that I stand before you this morning to accept and want to convince you that Online Media and Risk Management are germane tools that we require to deploy, properly too, in our collective quest for national integration and economic development of Nigeria.

Having said that, Your Excellencies and fellow honourees, I will not like to belabour you much going into the rudiments of “online media and risk management” with a view to how connected they are to the building of a New Nigeria of our dream.  This is because, each of these items will be expatiated in the respective papers to be presented by our Guest Speakers who are, indeed, experts in the respective fields.

What I will only do here is to call our attentions to a very important fact, that is, getting Nigeria to the height of moral, spiritual consciousness that we require to really have warm handshakes with national integration and economic development, first and foremost, we need to get involved in the process; just like it is also vital that our risk management sector realise they have a strong role to play in achieving the same goal since economic success is the only way to come about a sustainable integration.

This is so because, once the media sector, particularly the online media that is the fastest medium for information dissemination today, gets it right with their accurate, well managed, balanced, sincere and patriotic reports all founded on “UNTWISTED TRUTH” about our nation and ourselves, it will surely be positive that we can have national integration. Yes, because, at that point, we will have achieved peace, unity and tranquility and our security agencies particularly the Armed Forces will be relieved of the stress of erratic insecurity in the land, thus the funds that should be used for the advancement of human good being used for security exercises will be redeployed for its normal purposes.

To deviate a bit, I so much agree with the approach that the organizers of this event have proposed being that the factors militating against our integration successes and economic development in this country can best be addressed if we can all agree and show it in our actions and utterances, whether we are president, traditional rulers, governors, journalists, lawyers, civil society activists, and so on and so forth, that we are first and foremost Nigerians before we are who we are.  If, therefore, our media and risk managers get involved and are fully committed to the fact of “Nigeria First, Nigeria First and Nigeria First, Then Other Things Next”, sky will be our limit.

It is therefore the reason I have usually told those who talk about restructuring to focus on economic restructuring rather than geographical restructuring that, by the way they usually agitate about it, means the splitting of Nigeria into pieces.  It is my and popular belief that our strength lies in our size as Africa’s most populous nation.  What we do with that strength should concern us mother than split because agitation for splitting of Nigeria, most of the times, has been linked to some individuals instigating it for them to escape justice over their misdoings and so it is not in the interest of the majority of Nigerian people.

That is why I have also argued that Nigeria had been well structured but that what is left to be done is for our individual regional and political leaders to ask themselves, “What have done with the resources that God has placed in our hands for the good of our people and environments?”

This is the better thing to do and this is in line with what The DEFENDER and Chartered Institute of Loan and Risk Management of Nigeria have simply tried to impress on us by their theme of this Lecture/Event Programme, “Towards National Integration and Economic Development of Nigeria” and they have made the task easier for all of us by proposing, “The Online Media and Risk Management Approach”.

Then, since most of the unrests in the country have been traced to social, religious, ethnic and political factors on one side, and economic (largely unemployment) factors on the other, once the properness and untwisted truth on the part of the Media Sector have been secured, a workable guidance to economic success is then required for the sustainable continuity of the integration made possible by the accurate, well managed, balanced, sincere and patriotic reports founded on “UNTWISTED TRUTH” about the nation and ourselves, and this is where we need to be well groomed in risk management.

And you will all agree with me that because, without the ability to take risk, to grow in life is almost impossible.  You must be able to take risk and when you take the risk, you also must be able to know how to manage the risk you have taken in a way that it catapults you to the economic success that will have kept your body and soul busy and alive in greatness that, the time to listen to those who hire human beings for the killing of innocent lives, destruction of properties and disturbance of public peace will not be available.

This is my charge.  And I believe that by the time we will all stand up from this place today and go back to our different fields of life, we will not remain the same as we will have been fully equipped and charged with those things that we require to be part of the process for achieving “National Integration and Economic Development” of our country without being misled by any misdoing of some unscrupulous elements in the media particularly the online media and the risk management sector.

It is as a result of the immense benefits accruable from this effort that I want to really commend The DEFENDER Online Media, which I want to see as print on the newsstand soonest, and the Chartered Institute of Loan and Risk Management of Nigeria (CILRMN) for shunning the complex nature of organizing a huge event of this type and still pushing ahead to make it happen.  It is also on the same ground that I commend all of you the honourees, lecturers and guests that have accepted to encourage the organizers to achieve the success of putting the event together.

I therefore urge you all to cooperate and support them to the end that they will be able to write a good history from what we are about to make on this day.

Thank you and may Allah bless you all.