Chimamanda Adichie, a Nigerian novelist, said the nation does not have “heroes” who will inspire its younger generation.
Adiche said this on Monday in her keynote address at the Annual General Meeting of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) in Lagos State.
“We are starved of heroes. Our young people do not find people to look up to anymore,” the award-winning writer said during the event.
Adichie said that Nigerians should be open to self-criticism. This, she said, will engender good leadership in the nation.
“As long as we refuse to untangle the knot of injustice, peace cannot thrive. If we don’t talk about it, we fail to hold leaders accountable and we turn what should be transparent systems into ugly opaque cults,” Chimamanda noted.
“My experience made me think there’s something dead in us, in our society; a death of self-awareness and ability for self-criticism.
“There’s a need for resurrection. We cannot avoid self-criticism but criticise the government. We cannot hide our own institutional failure while demanding transparency from the government.”
Other guests
Some of the guests are the presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP) Peter Obi and his Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) counterpart Atiku Abubakar.
The All Progressives Congress (APC)’s Vice-Presidential candidate for the upcoming election, Kashim Shettima was at the conference.
Other presidential candidates at the event were that of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) Dumebi Kachikwu and the Social Democratic Party (SDP) Prince Adewole Adebayo.
