GOVERNOR Babatunde Fashola of Lagos State, weekend, in the United States, attributed the lack of adequate information and data system by the Federal Government to the raging tension and controversy being generated in the wake of Professor Chinua Achebe’s latest book titled: There was a country – a personal history of Biafra.<\/p>\n
Fashola made the remarks in his keynote address at this year’s Achebe Colloquium on Africa, held at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island USA..<\/p>\n
Speaking on the theme “The Role of Statecraft in the African Renaissance amidst Regime Change and Ethno-Religious Insurgency – A West African Case Study,”Fashola noted that some commentators suggested that the work had contributed to restoring old tensions and brewing new hostilities, prefacing possible inter-ethnic conflict.<\/p>\n
Fashola said: “Wherever your (Achebe) personal views may lie, we cannot but observe, from the tone of the commentary, that our national governments continue to fail us in the crucial duty of being repositories of information, data, records and archives as historical records are indispensable tools for policy development. Certainly the discourse would have been richer, less acrimonious and not predestined for tension if institutional national archiving and information disclosure was responsibly discharged by the Federal Government of Nigeria.<\/p>\n
“I am sure there are other examples across the West African sub-region. States must begin to see the connection between information management and inter-religious, ethnic and sectional tension across Africa. I speak here today not in person but by virtue of my office as governor of Lagos State.”<\/p>\n
The governor who said he would have declined to attend the event because of the raging controversy surrounding the book, because some leaders of his ethnic group had very strong views about parts of the book, added: “Professor Achebe is from the Igbo ethnic group. As you can also expect, there were spirited responses from leaders of opinion from his own ethnic group.<\/p>\n
Generational disagreement<\/strong><\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" GOVERNOR Babatunde Fashola of Lagos State, weekend, in the United States, attributed the lack of adequate information and data system by the Federal Government to the raging tension and controversy being generated in the wake of Professor Chinua Achebe’s latest book titled: There was a country – a personal history of Biafra. Fashola made the remarks in his keynote address at this year’s Achebe Colloquium on Africa, held at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island USA.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-238055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-business"],"yoast_head":"\n