The Senate Minority Leader,
Sen. Godswill Akpabio has called on Nigerian leaders to uphold ethics and
morality as part of efforts to curb corruption in the country.
Dr Akpabio stated this on
Thursday while delivering a lecture titled “The Nigerian Question: Ethics in an
Age of uncertainty,” at the 7th convocation ceremony of Chukwuemeka Odumegwu
Ojukwu University (COOU), Igbariam, Anambra.
The senator, who defined ethics
as “doing things that is right and moral,” stressed the need to instil ethics
and morality in the Nigerian politics to curb corruption.
He commended the Federal
Government for fighting corruption but stressed that it should be done across
boards.
Akpabio also advised political
leaders against cross carpeting, saying it was mostly done in selfish interest.
The senator assured that
members of the National Assembly would continue to maintain ethics and good
moral behaviour in making laws in interest of the masses.
He praised late Dim Chukwuemeka
Odumegwu Ojukwu for fighting in the interest of the Igbos but argued that the
civil war would have been averted if the past leaders did the needful.
“If our past leaders had done
the needful without bearing in mind sectional interests, the Nigerian civil war
would have been averted,” Akpabio said.
He, therefore, called for the
reintroduction of history in secondary schools for students to understand the
past and learn from Nigeria’s mistakes for a better future.
According to him, we need to
study the history on how Nigeria nearly went into fragmentation through the
civil war and how we obtained independence without bloodshed.
“The bloodshed we are seeing in
this country wouldn’t have been necessary if our children were taught the
history of how we were able to collectively in brotherhood obtain independence
without firing a gun.
“We cannot sustain that
independence with explosions in the Niger Delta, Boko Haram in the North, Odua
Peoples Congress (OPC) in the West and now Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB)
in the East,” the senator noted.
He advised youths to be morally
upright, saying that good moral behavior and hard work always brought success.
Akpabio further charged
graduates to be ambassadors of their institutions by maintaining good morals
and ethical behaviours.
“With love in the heart of
Nigerians, the economic hardship in the country could be reversed,” he
stressed.
In a remark, the Vice
Chancellor of the University, Prof. Fidelis Okafor commended Akpabio for delivering
the lecture and his promise to build a hostel in the institution, charging the
students and graduates to imbibe the spirit of morality in their endeavours.