Mr. David Akoji, Director of Special Duties and Zonal Operations at the National Orientation Agency (NOA), has stated that no country in the world has fully met the expectations of its citizens.

Akoji said distrust in government is a global challenge and not peculiar to Nigeria.

“The default position of citizens is we don’t trust government until government does things to make us trust them.

“I don’t blame the citizens for this. In many countries, governments are not working as hard as they ought to, to meet up with citizen expectations.

“Although citizens’ expectations are diverse and complex, no country in the world has met fully the expectations of all the segments of its citizens,” he said while speaking on Volume with FemiDlive.

He said information gaps widen the trust deficit between the government and the people, noting that the agency is working to close this gap across Nigeria’s 774 local government areas.

“We are not relenting in putting the information out on all platforms so as to satisfy the information needs of this diverse audience demography,” he said.

Akoji said Nigeria should not be viewed as a country where bad things happen in isolation, stressing that other nations face similar challenges.

He stated: “One of the challenges we have here is that we seem to think that when things happen here, it had never happened anywhere else before.

“That impression is not correct. What we are trying to get Nigerians to understand is that there’s a difference between Nigeria, your country, and the leadership per time of Nigeria.”

He highlighted Nigeria’s natural endowments, from clement weather and fertile land to mineral wealth and human resources, adding that these blessings remain despite leadership shortcomings.

“Nigeria has iron, steel, coal, crude oil, and quality human resources. Some of the best doctors in the US and Britain are Nigerians.

“The governments come and go, but this Nigeria country will remain. Our children will inherit it. Their own children will inherit it. Great-great-grandchildren down the line will still inherit this territory called Nigeria,” he added.