1— Your Excellency, I want to challenge Your courage to be a pacesetter. Not only to be a pacesetter but a trailblazer. To go ahead. To have the audacity to go ahead to do what the Governors before you have never done before.
2—Your Excellency, this is not to flatter you. Your desire to maintain ethic harmony and religious harmony in the state is a God given desire. This is because God didn’t make mistake in creating the Ebiras, Okuns and Igalas and put them together and said, compulsorily, you must live together. So, if that is the destiny that God himself has confirmed before you, you have no other question to ask than to follow God’s pattern. Therefore, your desire is praiseworthy, and it’s noble
3—I was at a time in Aso Rock to see the president of the country, and I told him, Nigeria is a multi-ethnic, multi-religious country. And if we want to douse the tension on ground, what you need to assure everyone is fair play, mutual respect and justice. If there is fair play, mutual respect for every ethnic and religious group and there is justice for whoever is denied his/her right, nobody bothers about who is the president or where he comes from. I thank God that I have a Governor here who caught that fish.
4— Please, don’t be discouraged by those who will come and I said I was at that programme and I was hearing that you appointed Christian to be at so and so positions in your government, why did you do that? You will tell such persons that you did that because God commanded you to do so. And it was the same God that gave me the position. And because I also want peace in Kogi State where Muslims and Christians have no option than to embrace themselves. They have no option than to learn to work together harmoniously for the progress of the state.
5— Your Excellency, I also want to praise your openness of heart in bringing people together as brothers and sisters.
6— This groundbreaking for the Government House Chapel in the history of the state is truly amazing. And you have gone into history as Number 1 person to do it. Even if it’s going to be expanded in future, there can never be a groundbreaking again. I don’t care whatever the size of the Chapel may be. But somebody conceived the idea, was pregnant with it, and delivered it.
7— May the Lord help you to catch the fish of other things that will be first and first and first (Amen).
8— I want to thank you sincerely, for making operational fund available for this project. The field is real wide for harvest. It is not only labourers that are few. Funds for the harvest are not enough.
9— Let me also commend Your humility to listen to pieces of advice that comes from the significant organs in the state; the traditional rulers and especially, the leadership of the Church in Kogi State. It is a mark of respect you have for our Lord and savior Jesus Christ. The Bible says in the multitude of counselors, there is safety. When you listen to others, you borrow their brains and when you publicly implement the wisdom that comes from different people the achievement will be ascribed to you but not to them. Continue to exercise that humility of a listening leader.
10—I want to thank you for the donation of Evangelism Buses for the people to move about.
11— You have done exceedingly well in fighting insecurity. Kogi State is so central to movement in Nigeria. Kogi is not only a confluence state. It is a link state. When you are coming from the South and you are coming from the North, you have to pass through Kogi. Thank God you have worked on the route between here and Okene where armed robbers used to be very notorious. Your Excellency, there still few elements there. Please beam your searchlight on them. Give them no hiding place as usual. Catch them. These criminal elements are the ones giving our country bad name. We want to bring big meetings to Nigeria but when they hear of kidnapping, they are afraid to come. If we bring big meetings to Nigeria, it will help our economy, it will help our tourism but with these criminal elements, we can’t achieve that with these criminal elements. They are not only enemies to the people they kidnapped but enemies of all of us. I don’t know the names they call them; either fulanis, Ebira, Igala, Hausa, Yoruba or Hukuhuku, they are enemies of the whole nation. And nothing to be spared to fish them out and deal properly with them according to law.
12—I want to urge you all. Live in peace with one another. Embrace one another. Ethnicity wasn’t the perfect will of God when He created man. God wanted everybody to belong to one ethnic group (Read Genesis 11)
© Onogwu Muhammad
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