Like Mandela, Leaders Must Be Ready To Risk Their Popularity To Promote Peace — Osinbajo
Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo believes that, like Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s first black president, Nigerian leaders must be willing to risk their popularity in order to achieve peace in the country.
On Monday, when receiving a delegation from the Muslim Public Affairs Centre (MPAC), Osinbajo stressed that leaders must recognize the need of polite nonviolent communication in preventing conflicts from devolving into violence.
The vice-president asked leaders to use their positions to address ethno-religious crises in the country, like Mandela and Abdullahi Abubakar, a preacher who saved over 200 Christians during a religious crisis in Plateau state in 2018.
“Those sacrifices are sacrifices, even in what you say, how you say it, and then sacrifices also in the acknowledgment of whatever people are saying and the willingness to accept,” Osinbajo said, according to a statement by Laolu Akande, his media aide.
“It is very important that we don’t diminish the importance of language and respectful non-violent communication so that we are able to keep our discussions at a level that ensures that we don’t degenerate too quickly to violence.
“We can all talk nicely and say the right things, but unless people are prepared to make some concessions which may cost them popularity within their own group, we cannot move forward.
“These are stories of people who are not only political or religious leaders but just ordinary people, doing the right thing. Unless we are prepared to not just talk about it but to make an open display, first of all, of those who are doing the right things.
“But more importantly, challenging our leaders to say the right things and to be prepared to risk some popularity in order to do so, then we will just be wasting a lot of time.”
