Fayemi: Like Nigeria, most countries are products of involuntary mergers

Kayode Fayemi, governor of Ekiti, says patience, hard work and patriotism are necessary to sustain Nigeria’s unity.

Fayemi said this on Wednesday at the national unity summit organised by the National Prosperity Movement (NPM), a sociopolitical group, which held in Abuja.

In recent times, calls for secession have heightened in some parts of the country.

Speaking on the concept of unity, the Ekiti governor said leaders and citizens have a duty to invest in unity as a full time vocation.

“One of the imports of my observation that leaders and citizens have a duty to invest in and grow unity as a full time vocation is that those of our compatriots who, out of a modestly understandable frustration, often say that the amalgamation of 1914 was a mistake, will do well to keep in mind that most countries in the world today are indeed the products of an involuntary and/or compelled mergers of peoples who, once brought together under the same roof had to work to forge bonds of unity among themselves,” he said.

“The important point which we must always remember is that unity anywhere and everywhere is an outcome that is generated out of initial conditions that are not by any means perfect.

“There is, therefore, no bypassing the hard work that leaders and governments must put in to build, sustain, and renew unity.

“And it is that hard work that we must call upon ourselves to undertake, doing so in faith and hope, with patience and patriotism, and an abiding commitment to the common history and humanity we share.”