NOBODY
IS PRAISING US FOR ALL WE’VE DONE –LAI MOHAMMED
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he Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji
Lai Mohammed, in this interview with ADEOLA BALOGUN and GBENRO ADEOYE, says the
Federal Government will tell Nigerians the truth and not how they take it.
A lot of Nigerians are wondering if the
Change Begins With Me Campaign is about stealing because just after it was
launched, two men- Mr. Akin Fadeyi and Omo Bazuaye- said the concept was stolen
from them. What do you say to that?
It is unfortunate that some Nigerians don’t
believe in industry, honesty, integrity and hard work. But they should realise
that there is no shortcut to success except by being honest and
straightforward.
This is the case with these two young men because
I will show you evidence that proves that by October 14, 2015, the entire
thematic production of Change Begins With Me had been completed. And by October
31, the theme songs had been completed.
Fadeyi was sent to me by Simon Kolawole (a former
Editor of THISDAY Newspaper) in December or January and when he came, we
compared (our works). However, this is a campaign that will last the entire
administration. So, I said to him, ‘if and when we need contents and your
contents match our own, we will contact you’.
And that was why I told him, we can’t even take
your material because we are not changing our theme -Change Begins With Me-
because everything we have done is on that and yours is Not In My Country; and
he went away. The next time we heard from him was in June 2016, when he wrote a
letter to request for partnership. We did not make a secret of this campaign.
As soon as I became minister; I told the whole
world what I was going to do. I will read this out to you. The correspondence
was dated October 14, 2015 and was sent at 3.04pm on that day.
Some
Nigerians are incredible people. Fadeyi came in January. We thank God for
technology. As soon as I became minister, I called a meeting of all the
directors to say that I was going to launch this campaign and after that, I
received proposals from more than 20 people, including Jimi Johnson. And to all
of them, I had just one message- wait for me to launch my campaign, if your
material matches our own, we will call you.
In December, I came to Lagos to seek the support
of Don Jazzy, Sunny Ade, Kwam 1, Tiwa Savage, P Square, all of them.
I met them at the Southern Sun and told them that
they could produce a theme song for me. So how can anybody now wake up and say
this was his idea? Honestly, it is just inspiration from God and I worked with
a team of more than five people.
We invited Brian from CENTERSPREAD. All the time
I was telling the world that I was going to launch the campaign, why didn’t
anybody say it was their idea?
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