Distinguished leaders of government, members of the diplomatic community, representatives of security and law-enforcement agencies, traditional and religious leaders, distinguished guests, fellow Rotary members, ladies and gentlemen:
It is an honour to welcome you to the “All Nigeria Rotary Peace Summit.”
The question before us is how to come together, work toward a shared national future, and achieve true and lasting peace.
Nigeria has enormous potential. We have contributed to peace and stability across Africa, including through our work with the Economic Community of West African States and United Nations peacekeeping and Peace Support operations.
Our work in Liberia and other parts of Africa shows that we have the experience and ability to help prevent and manage conflict beyond our borders.
Now it is time to turn those energies inward — to bring our commitment to building peace among our neighbors and the world back home.
But we cannot impose peace. We must nurture it from the very roots of our society so it may grow into a great tree that will feed and shelter all of us under its protective embrace.
As a member of Rotary, when I consider this idea, I look to the philosophy of Positive Peace.
Peace, through this lens, is so much more than the absence of violence. To achieve true and lasting peace, we must consider the attitudes, institutions, and structures that create and sustain peaceful societies.
Here in Nigeria, meaningful peace cannot rely on our security forces and government institutions alone. It requires every level of society to come together for the betterment of all.
To grow Positive Peace from the ground up, Rotary starts from the very foundation of life, as we have done here.
In 2022, Rotary began a program called, “Together for Healthy Families in Nigeria.”
Members of Rotary here in Nigeria and as far away as Germany partnered with federal and state health ministries to make giving birth safer for both mother and child.
The program has helped expectant mothers across three states and the capital receive better and more frequent prenatal care.
Community health workers made nearly 60,000 visits to homes of expectant mothers and spoke with them and their families. We supplied 158 health facilities with contraceptives, medicine, and equipment.
We have already seen positive outcomes. Maternal deaths were reduced by 77%, and newborn deaths were reduced by 45% at supported facilities.
There is more work to do, but we are making progress. This is one way we plant the seeds of peace in Nigeria and around the world — we listen to the community, work with people so they can make their own lives better, and we stay committed to our goals.
With each child born safely to a healthy mother, we ease the burden carried by the Federal Ministry of Health and Social Welfare. We give families a greater sense of safety and security.
This is the beginning of Positive Peace. But members of Rotary do not stop once the seeds of peace are planted.
Since 2020, Nigeria has been free of the deadly grip of the wild poliovirus, which paralyzed and sometimes killed children when their lives had barely begun. And we continue to work with our friends at the World Health Organization and others to keep it that way and address the more recent outbreaks of variant poliovirus.
Rotary also builds peace directly. Members of Rotary clubs across Nigeria devote themselves to building peace every day.
And the year after Nigeria was declared wild polio-free, Rotary worked with Makerere University in Uganda to open a Peace Center, where students — called Peace Fellows — can learn how to build lasting peace both here in Nigeria and across Africa.
Over the years, more than 75 Rotary Peace Fellows have come from Nigeria. Some of our Peace Fellows are even here with us today.
I tell you this not to advertise Rotary (although we can always use new members). I tell you this because I want you to know that Rotary is already a quiet partner in peacebuilding — not only around the world — but here in our shared home.
As members of Rotary, we are not soldiers, ambassadors, or diplomats. We bring people together to find common purpose through service to others. We are here for Nigeria, and we are here to stay.
This year, I have called on every member of Rotary to Create Lasting Impact, and today, my brothers and sisters of Nigeria, I ask the same of every one of us.
I ask us to look at every level of society in Nigeria and consider how we can make all our lives better — not only today, but far into the future of this great nation. We may not speak the same language, worship the same way, or live the same way, but our nation’s future depends on all of us working together.
This summit is an opportunity to turn our shared commitment to peace into practical action — to take mere words and transform them into a bright future for us and all our children.
To my dear friends and family of Rotary here today, I challenge you to make peacebuilding in Nigeria our legacy of lasting impact.
As I have said to the Rotary world time and time again, we must consider how everything we do contributes to peace and pursue that peace purposefully and deliberately.
Rotary can help build confidence between institutions and communities, strengthen public trust, and ease the burden of everyday life that makes peacebuilding that much harder … but we must do so with purpose.
And before we can Create Lasting Impact in Nigeria, we must first have the courage to change ourselves, whether we are members of Rotary or not.
We cannot continue to do what we have always done and expect our great tree of peace to magically sprout from the ground. We must nurture our country and ourselves with all our being.
Give yourselves permission to be changed by what you see and hear at this summit.
That is how lasting impact is achieved — through people who are willing to change, institutions that are prepared to work for everyone, and communities that have the capacity to sustain progress.
And once we allow ourselves to change, we open ourselves to a new future — a future where the circumstances of someone’s birth do not determine their access to justice, opportunity, or dignity.
A future where differences are respected, where violence is rejected, and where we all come together, not as different groups in competition, but as Nigerians in harmony.
As we begin this summit, let us commit to more than resolutions and declarations. Let us commit to stability through change.
Remember that our true measure of success is not the words we share among ourselves today, but the impact of our actions that lasts generation after generation.
And if our commitment to peace is true — if our capacity for change is enough — our children, and their children after them, will enjoy the fruits of our labor under our great tree of peace — protected, safe, and free.
Thank you.
