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By Faheem Lawal
Former President Goodluck Jonathan has called for reforms to Nigeria’s democracy and the way political leaders are recruited, saying the country cannot meet the goals of its founding nationalists without them.
Jonathan spoke on Saturday as chairman of a colloquium in Lagos marking the 162nd birth anniversary of Herbert Macaulay. The event, titled “Herbert Macaulay, 80 Years After: Monumenting the Spirit of Lagos,” was organised by the Macaulay Heritage Foundation with the Lagos State Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture.
He said independence was only the start of nation-building and asked whether, 66 years on, the founding fathers’ expectations had been substantially met.
He urged a national development agenda with clear targets and timelines ahead of the 2060 centenary of independence.
Jonathan described Nigeria’s democracy as “opaque and amorphous” and called for an end to recruiting political leaders by religion and language.
He also said no Nigerian university ranks among the world’s top institutions and that Nigeria needed research-intensive universities, citing India’s Indian Institutes of Technology and Singapore’s universities.
”A nation that forgets its history risks losing its sense of identity and direction,” he said.
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The keynote speaker, Emeritus Professor Jide Osuntokun, said Lagos played a decisive role in awakening Nigerian nationalism, and that Macaulay used the 1925 deposition of Oba Eshugbayi to advance his political agenda.
The Lagos State Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, was honoured with the Herbert Macaulay Award for Leadership in Public Service, Cultural Ambassadorship and Urban Development. He was represented by the Secretary to the State Government, Bimbola Salu-Hundeyin, who received it on his behalf.
In a message read at the event, the governor said Macaulay’s 1923 founding of the Nigerian National Democratic Party was a defining milestone in the country’s political history.
He said that in seven years his administration had worked to improve transportation and infrastructure and invested in the creative and cultural industries. He said Lagos must modernise without losing its history and identity.
The Deputy Vice-Chancellor of the University of Lagos (UNILAG), Prof. Afolabi Lesi, who represented President Bola Tinubu, said investing in education was central to building a prosperous nation.
He said the Federal Government was pursuing this under the Renewed Hope Agenda through the Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND), skills development and start-up grants for young entrepreneurs.
A former Deputy National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Chief Olabode George, who welcomed guests, said Macaulay’s family would write to President Tinubu asking for the return of the General Post Office building in Lagos, to build a permanent memorial hall there. He said politics, as Macaulay showed, “is not for yourself” but a service to the people.
