By Gilbert Ekezie
There was excitement at the 2024 Wilson and Yinka Badejo memorial lecture on August 7, when the foundation instituted in the name of Late Wilson and Yinka Badejo awarded scholarship to 52 indigent students in various universities in Nigeria.
The occasion, which had the theme, ‘Cultivating a culture of dialogue: Nurturing understanding in a culturally and socially diverse nation’, took place at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (NIIA) Victoria Island, Lagos State.
Son of Wilson and Yinka Badejo, Femi Badejo, who is also the vice chairman of Wilson and Yinka Badejo Foundation, spoke on the reason the foundation is focusing much on education.
He stated: “Part of the mission of the foundation is focus on students, practical community development, having annual lecture just as we have it today, we also focus on providing support for at risk youths. So, at the core of the mission of the foundation since inception has always been the need to support students because they are practically the future.
“If you are investing in the right direction, you will reap in that direction. Of course, to be honest, they are the ones that need the most support, and our focus is not just random scholars, it is more about indigent students, students that actually need help.”
He disclosed that this year, the foundation has a herculean task of choosing from a huge number of applications for scholarship.
Femi said that they are also involved in how the scholars can create a community that will give back to the society. “Another thing we did this year was to go through a very rigorous process. There were over 2600 students that applied and those that came up on top were the topnotch. There is huge investment as we continued to push our investment into students and actually seeing them, not just benefit from the scholarship but actually give back to the society.
“So, one of the things we look forward to or we are trying to do is create more of a community within the scholars themselves to say, how do you come together while you are in school?”
He explained that those offered scholarships came from different universities. “They are coming from 20 different universities this year, studying different courses, so when you think of the richness of what they have to offer, if we have a community within the scholars themselves to actually work together, we think we are going to achieve much from that perspective.”
Speaking about his parents and what they stood for during their lifetime, he said that his parents fully dedicated their entire lives for service to the community. He said: “When you have parents like the parents I had, you don’t realize their reach until they have gone, because that is when you see people coming out to say I am missing something, I am missing somebody; somebody that used to provide for me is gone.
“If they were still here today, I don’t think they would be doing something different from what we are doing in terms of continuing to attend to the need of indigent people that need the support in our local communities. My dad was a huge advocate of reaching the under-privileged. My mum had a huge heart for orphans, widows and the elderly. I think they gave all of their lives, in spite of their professional careers. They gave all of their lives to community service and to humanity.”
Speaking on the theme of the lecture, he said that the foundation has to think of something different from what they used to do. “We thought about something different this year, because over the years it has always focused on poverty. But when we started looking at macro and national economic issues that were happening and seeing how it is causing a divide between the societies, focusing more on the differences than their similarity, we thought it was a good time to actually start this dialogue and bring it for people to actually see.”
Debola Deji-Kurunmi (DDK), who delivered the first paper stressed the power of dialogue in a culturally and socially diverse nation. She highlighted the five core pillars that are critical for dialogue communication and engagement, citing the state of the nation and the protest against bad governance drawn from the drive of the people about hunger, poverty, corruption and violence.
She said: “On that backdrop of the agitation, we started to say that the important way forward is bridges of negotiation and dialogue that have to happen between the people and the government. Some of the pillars we highlighted were around the need for understanding our common heritage, refreshing our sense of commonality and belonging.
“We also speak about the need for collaboration and creating safe communities of engagement where people feel seen and heard, the government intentional access point for the citizens to engage in policy formulation and we talked about the need for strengthening conflict management and resolution where we can heal wounds, rebuild trust and find the way forward for our collective future as a people.
“So my speech centred on the power of dialogue as an approach that is different and likely more effective than activism and agitations which continues to lead to loss of lives and properties.”
On how the nation can rebuild trust amongst the citizens, she said: “There is such a thing as trust barometer of nations and the trust level of the people in relation to the key stakeholders of governance, the no-profit, academia, church and it is lowest with the government, and that is because we have a historical data that shows broken promises, oppressive mechanisms and severe degrees of corruption. So, there are three key angles you have to explore in rebuilding trust. The first is the effort government has to make in fixing what is broken. Until the people see changes, they are going to be unwilling to believe again that the government has the best interest, but having said that, the people themselves have a role to play in what I called the office of the citizens of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
“Some of the degrees of development outcomes and progress we have witnessed have actually not come from the government; it often comes from the third sector, civil societies, NGOs. So we are saying that while we are waiting for the government for development, we have to intervene at our own level; citizens have to become more engaged in driving for development outcomes that augment and alleviate the challenges of the people.”
Speaking on the third level, she stressed on dialogue. “When you are in the room and there is a platform of engagement, there is a way your hope rises again. Maybe you are getting it right this time, so some of the frustration of the people is that we don’t even have anybody willing to talk to us. We heard the president made a speech, and he doesn’t even feel like introduce hope and optimism. If there are more rooms for engagement, I believe it will yield a different result.”