Encomium
What are your thoughts on the movie?
I think it’s a movie that asks whether you want to continue on the part of dismal failure or you want to disrupt the pattern of failure and progress. We saw Ashley who was a messed up woman get a revelation from the book by Pastor Rick Warren and it spurred her in a new direction.
That movie tells you that don’t ever give up on yourself. A nation cannot afford to give up on itself, its citizens cannot afford to give up! A family cannot afford to give up on their dreams.
How does this movie link to Nigeria’s current situation?
You could look at it that the greatness of Nigeria is not being achieved. This is not as great as was anticipated for us at independence. We have operated below our capabilities and our potentials. When you look at this movie, you see the drugs that held that woman down until she broke out of it when she realised that there was someone worth living for, her daughter.
Nigeria needs to say that the 61 percent of people who live below the poverty are enough reason to change our course.
Nigeria at 55, is it worth celebrating?
It is. Nigeria at 55 is very much worth celebrating. There are possibilities that we have and they are enormous. We can say we don’t want to keep failing. There are nations that when they decided that they were going to try to get their acts together to succeed, they faced questions about their past and their present; and then they agreed to define a future that offered them a pathway to greatness.
