On March 1, 2011, a group of Nigerians, imbued by a common desire for change in Nigeria will begin a walk, an awareness walk from Lagos, through the bushes, intra and inter city roads to their destination of Abuja. The 30 or 40 individuals, individuals who are bound by the same commitment to change the way we are, and transforming our individual selves into selfless and self-sacrificing loyal citizens of a human civilisation are members of  One Voice Mission, a non-profit, non-religious and non political organisation registered in 2009.

The driving force behind the initiative are two young men, Adewole Williams and Emmanuel Okwuagali, both of whom are residents of the United States, but boyed by the passion to change in their country. One of the Co-founders, Adewole Williams spoke with Ayo Onikoyi, on how it all began and the journey they plan to undertake. (Excerpts)

OVM, One Voice Mission, right, what is it really about?

OVM as you rightly said means One Voice Mission. We are a non-violent volunteer movement and we are trying to retrain the future generation of Africans into a new mind-set. Actually that is our ultimate goal. However because we are Nigerians, we believe that charity begins at home and in that light we have decided to begin here in Nigeria. We started about 2009 and we got it registered last year January. I came home, along with a few friends of mine and went to 5 Major cities, meeting with people on and off the streets and we spoke extensively. From that we were able to draw conclusions that the real help to create change starts with the people. Having said that, we have to look at ways we can best create the needed range of change for our country. So we started working on different projects. We do our projects in town-hall meetings style and also crusades.

But right now the project we have at hand is called  ‘Awake Nigeria and behold your destiny’, it is in a form of a walk, an awareness walk. It is such that it is unprecedented and one that has never been experienced . We are hoping that it will really create the attention that we need to create before the message starts sinking in to the people and yes we are trying to walk the distance of 535 kilometres between Lagos and  the Federal Capital, Abuja. We will do it in the version of Mahatma Gandhi walk or the Martin Luther King crusade because to create the magnitude of awareness we want we need to go above the mountain top to do that.

The essence of the walk is not in the destination it is in the journey, the journey of 50 years that brought you and I to this spot. So we going to do that and we are projecting 30 days to complete the walk. The walk is going to be such that we will be engaged only by volunteers. No one is getting paid. Not me , not any of our principal staff nor the volunteers. We believed tha
t for Nigeria to grow we must sacrifice something of ourselves. We see how concerned people are everywhere, in the churches, in the mosques and the work-places but it seems that is all they are all about-Concerned. Now is the time to act and act right because change is not a dirty six-letter word, it is unavoidably inevitable. The question is how do we want to change? The how is the means and that is why we are doing something that is non-violent, that will bring people together. We are not affiliated to any political party or religious sect. We want everybody to be included and inclusive in the process of change. By the way, anyone who is going on this walk will be a registered voter, that is one way we are supporting the institution. That is what the walk is all about. That is the gist about it.

What triggered off the  idea since you are not resident here in the country?

I don’t reside in the country. I have been staying in the US for six years but honestly I sleep and wake Nigeria. It is home. It is a wonderful place. It is unfortunate in a sense that I have to end up to reside out there. The reason am out there is a personal thing not for a change of fortunes  it is because I have some personal medical needs that cannot be attended to here. Not because it cannot  simply be attended to it is because we have not upped our game but that is another ball-game. Now talking about how the idea came about, the idea came about between me and the co-founder and also our principal staff.

As concerned Nigerians about the situation in the country, we kept bringing up and discussing how best to create something of huge magnitude that will impact positively on the future generation in particular .  From these our discussions we came up with the idea of changing the mind-sets of our people through awareness campaigns. These awareness campaigns entail retraining of individuals in communities that change actually starts with you. We believe it will catch on with the people because from our test in Ibadan where we had 20 people signed on and within another year the number rose to 200 people.

Now we have about 200 people who have duplicated our mind-sets. I won’t take credit for it, it actually came as a suggestion from my co-founder, Emmanuel Okwuagali, he is from Edo state. After our first project in Ibadan, called The Road Traffic Project’ he said ‘I don’t know about you but I think we can do an impacting awareness walk’ . He didn’t complete the sentence and I bought into it because I knew exactly what that can do.

It seems you are only targeting the followership not the leadership which people have identified as the major problem of Nigeria. So, how are you bringing in the leadership cadre in your awareness campaigns?

Two things: the leadership is the reflection of the society. So if we are concerned so much about the leadership we need to construct or reconstruct the followership because that is what is going to change the process of our leadership because until you driving a car have regard for the Okada man and the Okada man has regard for the pedestrians then we will still be having the same issue of political killings, corruption and other malaise our society has come to know. So, to your question, is it about followership or about leadership? It is about both but we are taking it from the steps of going to changing the mind-set of the people first.

You have talked so much about changing the mind-set of our people. What mid-set are we talking about and what do you think is that our mind-set that needs changing?

Nigeria is a very‘wonderful country. You will meet people on and off the streets that will be very caring and loving, that could actually go out of their way to render help but there is a new trend that is coming up known as WIIIFM, an acronym which stands for ‘What Is In It For Me’. The culture has come to take strong roots and we need to do something about it. I have spoken to people about coming to cover the event of the awareness walk and the first thing they asked me is “wetin it go commot o’.

So, that is the mind-set. Me, me, me, and me. This is about human civilisation we are talking about. Human civilisation comes from the great idea of being human, to care for one another deeply not just on the surface and also the civilisation to work together for the goodness of all.  The moment we stop fighting for each other we lose our human civilisation. So that is what we are trying to resolve over time, to see ourselves as part of one human civilisation, there is no nation in the world where you do not find people of diverse culture, diverse ethnic background or diverse orientation and yet they still work their way around it to work and live together as people of one human civilisation. What we are trying to teach is called ‘Distress-tolerance’ to stay in the moment without making it worse

You think in order to change the mind-set of our people, to walk from Lagos to Abuja would be just about it to achieve this, just chanting some slogans?

Very much so. We think the best way  to go is to go on foot from Lagos to Abuja, about 30 or 40 of us and we will be in unity and unison and walk for about six hours a day, covering about 20-25 kilometres distance per day. We think that in itself will speak a lot to the minds of the people than just having something of a convoy they cannot participate. We believe people will want to get involved and participate in the process and that is the focus of this walk, to unite and bring people together. And the biggest thing we are going to be doing is reading  ‘The Pledge’. The Pledge of Nigeria (reciting the pledge).

Now, if you ask me, how many percentage of Nigerians do that, I mean read the Pledge, not just reading it, understanding it and acting it everyday of their life. The ‘Pledge’ is a covenant. Like every relationship or union there is always a covenant to bind the parties. Like in a marriage there is one between the husband and the wife, so is ‘The Pledge’ between Nigeria and its people. The creed for an
yone joining the One Voice Mission is ‘The Pledge’ as well and ‘The Pledge’ says I should sacrifice self for the benefit of the nation and that is exactly what we are doing by walking from Lagos to Abuja.

Let’s talk about the walk itself.What shape is it taking? What are the logistics?

The biggest structure we have in place is the volunteers, the people who are going to sacrifice to do this. This is not the easiest task you can engage in. I don’t think there are many people who would just rush into it. Now, talking about logistics; it is going to be an adventure; It’s not something that is going to be well-laid out. Like I was saying, we don’t want this to be a convoy, to drive people out, the big idea behind this is to get people involved to go along with us. Unlike convoys you cannot run into we want people to run into us, we want people to identify with us.

Of course we know we need some back-up facilities like an ambulance and others but for now we are moving on because we believe the best time to do something is when you are doing it. All we are doing is walking from one city centre to another, reciting the Pledge and reminding the people of their covenant with the nation. Part of the awareness walk will be to enlighten the people to follow up on their elected officials. With this comi
ng election we believe a lot will change and we  can only be there to make them know their rights and their covenant with the nation.

They have to understand their civic duty does not end at the polling booths they have to continue following up on their elected officials. We do have what is known as ‘Take A Pool ‘, we have names of all elected officials, from the local government chairmen to the president and we are showing people what to look at when they are writing these people. We are not trying to unseat anyone we just want everyone to improve at their game

Why is this initiative coming at this time, I mean an election year?

There is no better time to set such an awareness course in place as the time we are. I know it is such a sensitive time where people are very excited about the upcoming elections. I think this is just the time people will look up and listen because if the election is gone perhaps everybody goes back into their shells    and they feel unconcerned. Remember, you have to let them know what to do even after the elections.

What is the departure point and the destination point?

We are going to start off from somewhere around Alausa axis

Are you getting the state government involved?

We have not gone that far

Is there any plan to get them involved in future ?

Absolutely, if they buy into the idea; but right now we have not formally involved them in any way in this development but we will definitely want people in higher offices to get involved, at least for them to know what we are doing and we will welcome them if they want to see us up in form of support to help in the endeavour.

Do you have any known destination in Abuja that you are planning to go?

As things progress we will plan that out. The important thing right now is to walk and we will keep walking the walk.

Really, walking from Lagos to Abuja entails passing through some kind forests and desolate places. Isisn’t a scary business if you ask me?

We are hopefully going to have some security apparatus set up but we believe a bunch of 20 to 30 people will be good enough to take care of themselves yet we know the situation can be a scary thing. We are hoping to receive support from the Nigerian police. Not that we have anything on board but we know as soon as they realise what we are trying to do they will realise the need for us to be protected because they too will see it involves them.

What will be the age range of the walkers?

Voting age. That is anyone from age 18 and above can be a member of OVM.