Daily Independent Online.
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Tuesday, June 22, 2004.
Commissioner urges promotion of friendship
By Rafiu Ajakaye
Special
Correspondent, Lagos
The Lagos State Commissioner for Local
Government and Chieftaincy Affairs, Mrs Remi Adikwu-Bakare, has urged Nigerians
to promote qualitative friendship through love for one another.
At a book launch dedicated to Senator Tunde
Ogbeha’s late wife, Jackie, in Lagos at the weekend, Adikwu-Bakare said
there was the need to entrench brotherliness and the spirit of forgiveness,
especially towards children, who are innocent of what is happening in their
environment.
“Africans,” she said,
“identify and address their fellow Africans as brother. We need to foster
brotherhood within our community.
Materialism means very little
to a fulfilled life but what matters most is the way we relate to our
brothers.”
Making reference to the late Jackie, the
commissioner noted with dismay
that selfless people like her who
contributed so much to the welfare
of helpless people around them are usually unlucky.
“Jackie was a philanthropist,
selfless and humble person who addressed other people with utmost regards, in
spite of her affluence. It was so unfortunate that we lost people like her too
early to unfriendly fate that cut short her useful soul,” Adikwu-Bakare
recounted.
While commenting on the main theme of the
book titled The Rape of Innocence, she said people have to desist from
maltreating children as that amounts to child abuse, an offence punishable
under the law.
The commissioner commended Mr Joshua
Suleiman, the deputy editor of Hallmark newspapers who wrote the book, for
what she described as a scholarly work, promising its recommendation for
secondary schools in Lagos State as a literature book.
