GOVERNOR Sullivan Chime of Enugu State has enjoined Nigerians to embrace those ideals which unite the citizens and eschew parochial issues that tend to divide the nation.

The Arewa Consultative Forum, ACF, says 50 years in the life of a nation is too short for any meaningful assessment of its socio-economic and political development but that it is worth celebrating for the express purpose of assessing progress against plans in order to effect correction and move forward.

THERE is something to celebrate in the fact that we got this far. For a country that went into war only six years after its independence, we rejoice that it pushed all that aside to stay together for another 44 years.

A people with a written Constitution incorporating a Bill of Rights, a free judiciary and a robust civil society should be in a position, as we are, to blame its Judiciary, at least in some sense of being an accomplice, if such a country misgoverns, or aborts the dream of its original founders.

At that time, every service you have, the Customs, the SSS, the Immigration, the NDLEA, even the Federal Road Safety Corps; name it; every arm of the security we have today were all parts of the Nigeria Police Force. We had the Police Custom Service, the Police Immigration Service, the Police Fire Service and of course, the Hausa Constabulary eventually became the Royal West African Frontier Force (WAFF) which became the Nigerian Army.