Had we allowed such blindness to rule us, we never would have accomplished the historic merger that led to election victory and this opportunity for progressive change.

What we accomplished was based on a matrix of sacrifice and cooperation. I have sacrificed much for this day to come to pass.Thus, I want this day to endure.

I have done so by placing the welfare of Nigeria above my own advancement. I have done so because it is a lesson Bala Usman taught us every day of his life.

Those who consider themselves his students should do so not only while reading his books but also in our actions. The proof of our collective endeavour is not to be found in the word but in the deed.

We must remain united in cause – the development of this nation — and must do so from beginning to end.

You see, Dr. Yusufu Bala Usman was an intellectual not for the sake of intellectualism. He was an intellectual because he understood knowledge was the most vital weapon a besieged nation and its people could acquire.

Knowledge dismisses the fetters of poverty that many people come to mistake for the natural order of things.

His love of people and wisdom led him to see the economy we were given was not the economy intended for us.

We had become the victims of an unfair economic architecture arising from an unjust history.

Bala Usman accepted a profound, unique mission. He sought to emancipate us from the yoke of the past, all the time warning that old forms of oppression would give birth to new forms of the inhumane contest for dominion of man over man, nation over nation.

Colonialists might leave; but the injustice they spawned would reshape itself into the imperfections of an independence nominally gained but superficially evolved.

Nigeria was declared a nation. But of nationhood, little was to be found.

We were an independent country but our economy remained the appendage of others. We lived in the shadows of global forces that mocked our economic freedom and democracy.

The nation trembled and stumbled because we were always unsure, afraid or both.

We never knew whether the shadows were our own harmless reflection or that of a force with motives and means sinister to our development.

The title of this address, “Towards the Economic Liberation of Nigeria: Bala Usman’s Enduring Relevance”, is patterned on Bala Usman’s 1980 landmark publication ‘For the Liberation of Nigeria’.