Governance Is A Moral Enterprise – Waziri Adio

Former Executive Secretary of Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI), Mr. Waziri Adio, has said governance is a moral enterprise which those given the opportunity to serve in must see as a public trust.
Adio, a prominent journalist and public affairs expert, stated this last Saturday where he was hosted at the 2023 August Meeting in Port Harcourt where his book, The Arc of the Possible was read publicly to highlight how public officers can use their positions to strengthen governance.
Adio, who admitted that public servants were always under pressure to do things that negate good governance and ethical conduct, said public servants must however see their offices as God-given opportunity to contribute to the betterment of society.
“If you are going into office to do the right thing, be prepared to make sacrifices. Our attitude to public property is outrageous. We live n a country where the boundaries between public property and private have collapsed,” he lamented.
He however said there were also benefits for doing things right, “one of which is peace of mind.” Those who intend to be change agents in public service, he said, must be strategic and intentional in addition to surrounding themselves with the right people.
Also at the August Meeting the Unity House Foundation announced the institution of the Port Harcourt quiz contest in which the winner will take home N10 million as prize money.
The Convener of the August Meeting, Mr. Kingsley Weneda Wali, who said the prize money was to encourage brilliance among young people, said the quiz contest will take place in the first quarter of 2024.
He regretted that some reality shows were rewarding laziness with as much as N100 million and N150 million to inmates who spend several months idling away in a house, while winners of mathematics contests are hardly rewarded with up to N100,000.
He said the sponsorship of the quiz contest has been guaranteed for three years, explaining that the whole idea was not just to give out money “but to reward brilliance.”