By Taye Obateru
Jos — It was all knocks again for the country’s current crop of leaders for failing to sustain the dreams of the founding fathers of Nigeria, in Jos yesterday with a call on them to change their attitude in the  interest of the country.

Most speakers at the one-year memorial service for former member of the Oputa Panel, Ngo Elizabeth Pam, at St. Luke’s Cathedral Church, Jos were agreed that the leaders must turn a new leaf for things to get better in the country.

Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, Governor, Malam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi said “all of us who are in position of leadership need to ask ourselves where we have failed and take practical steps to redress it so as to build a strong and virile country.”

Noting that the current leaders have failed to sustain the legacies bequeathed to them by previous leaders, Sanusi wondered why this was so, adding: “It is for those of us who inherited office from them to ask ourselves where we have failed and retrace our steps by going back to doing the same kind of things they were doing.”

Sanusi who described the late mother of the Chief Medical Director of the Jos University Teaching Hospital (JUTH), Dr. Ishaya Pam as a friend of his uncle, the Emir of Kano, Alhaji Ado Bayero, decried the exploitation of religious and ethnic sentiments by some leaders.

“Jesus Christ is one of the greatest Prophets in Islam; we (Muslims) honour and adore Him. I attended a Catholic School and was a choir boy in King’s College, so for me, we are one people. Whether Muslim or Christian, we worship the same God”, he said.

Also speaking, Catholic Bishop of Sokoto, Most Rev. Matthew Kukah said the nation’s founding fathers did not envisage the current situation the country has found itself and advised leaders to have a rethink on the state of affairs.

According to him, “they are already gone but there is still so many lessons for us to learn because this is not the kind of country that people like Elizabeth Pam had dreamt about.”

In a sermon, Bishop Benjamin Kwashi  of the Jos Anglican Diocese who also lamented the attitude of the country’s leaders noted that the late Mrs. Pam touched many lives. He said the diversity of those at the memorial service which cuts across class, ethnicity or religion was a testimony to this.