Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, SAN, has said Nigerians must actively engage in building bridges across religions and ethnicities to ensure a better society and nation.
\u00a0
Prof. Osinbajo stated this on Tuesday when he received at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, a delegation from US-based Bridgeway Community Church, led by its founder and senior pastor, Dr. David Anderson; alongside a delegation from the Nigerians in Diaspora Commission led by its Executive Secretary, Engr. Dr. Sule Yakubu Bassi.
\u00a0
In building bridges, the Vice President emphasized on the need to build mutual trust and respect, stating that, \u201cwe have to find ways of actively disseminating to our people here, and in Africa in particular, the importance of building bridges across religion and ethnicities.\u201d
\u00a0
While noting that Nigeria is a country with different ethnicities and dominant Muslim and Christian populations, the Vice President added: \u201cIt has become clear to us that we must find different ways in building bridges, especially between the faith and ethnicities. And one of the critical things that our faith teaches, is that, regardless of what the situation may be, \u201cwe must love even our enemies and pray for them.\u201d
\u00a0
\u201cThe future for society, in my view, relies on our ability to build bridges and to ensure that those bridges are firm and we can walk across it and interact with each other,\u201d he said.
\u00a0
In his remarks, Anderson, who noted the need to build bridges between Africans and African-Americans, said he was inspired to build a Diaspora Palace, hotel and resort in Badagry, Lagos, \u201cso that when people come back from the Diaspora, wherever they are, they would no longer just come to the Point of No Return, but they would walk through the Door of Return; and\u00a0that they would be accepted as royalty.\u201d
\u00a0
Anderson observed that several African-Americans desire to be identified as Africans, and he is working with the Nigerians in Diaspora Commission, Foreign Affairs and Information ministries to realize that through what he called the Door of Return initiative.
\u00a0
Similarly, Bassi, representing the Nigerians in Diaspora Commission, noted that the Door of Return initiative, among other objectives, aims \u201cto advance exchange of economic cooperation and direct investment between Nigerian and the Diaspora, particularly in the area of tourism and sustainable development.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, SAN, has said Nigerians must actively engage in building bridges across religions and ethnicities to ensure a better society and nation. \u00a0 Prof. Osinbajo stated this on Tuesday when he received at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, a delegation from US-based Bridgeway Community Church, led by its founder and senior pastor, Dr. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":14027,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21682"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21682\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}