Seguin James
A non-governmental organization ( NGO), Correct Connect Africa Foundation (CCAF) has called on African leaders to set aside a day as Africa Memorial Day to be recognised as a continental day of remembrance, reflection, celebration and renewal.
The Executive Guardian & Chief Advocate, CCAF, Fr. Aleakwe Odior, made the call during the celebration of 2026 Africa Memorial Day (AMD) organised by the NGO in Lagos.
With the theme, “Political Leadership and Governance in Africa – What is the End Product?” The call for the AMD is to be observed in every African nation and every African Diaspora community around the world. The event was attended by traditional custodians, government officials, scholars, artists, activists, partners and schoolchildren.
In his welcome address, the Convener, Fr Odior said: “We are here for more than a ceremony. We gather because memory is a political act. People who cannot account for their past cannot govern their future. And the silence around our history has cost us dearly – in identity, in self-determination, and in the quality of those we place in power.
“Five years ago, the CCAF lit a flame in Nigeria. Not because the timing was perfect. Not because resources were abundant. We lit it because we believed, and still believe, that Africa deserves voices that will not grow silent, platforms that will not be bought, and one day each year when Africans everywhere are compelled to stop, to remember, and to ask the hard questions.
“Today, that flame burns with greater purpose,” he said.
Odior added: “Let us be honest. The evidence around us does not yet speak of triumph.
“Across our continent, lands of extraordinary wealth still produce extraordinary poverty. Nations whose soil holds the raw materials of global technology cannot guarantee electricity to their hospitals.
Young men and women of uncommon brilliance still board dangerous boats in the dead of night – not because they lack ambition, but because their nations have failed to build conditions worthy of that ambition.
This is the governance crisis of our time. And it did not arrive by accident.
“It arrived through the systematic dismantling of African institutions over centuries of conquest. It was deepened by borders drawn to divide people and unite enemies. It has been sustained by leaders – in government, in business, in religion – who learned to speak the language of liberation while practising the logic of extraction. We are not here to mourn this. We are here to name it – because you cannot cure what you will not diagnose.”
While citing genuine African leaders such as Nkrumah, Nyerere and others, he noted: “They each asked the right question: Governance for whom?
That remains the only question that truly matters.”
According to him, “AMD was created to keep that question alive. To refuse the comfort of amnesia. To insist that remembrance is not nostalgia, but orientation.
“We remember not to remain in the past, but to draw from it the strength, the wisdom, and the moral direction we need to build what has not yet been built.
“Our vision extends far beyond this hall. We call for AMD to be recognised as a continental day of remembrance, reflection, celebration, and renewal – observed in every African nation and every African Diaspora community around the world.
“A day when our children are taught not simply that Africa has a history, but that history is a living inheritance with claims on the present. A day when our leaders are measured not against global opinion, but against the standards our own civilisations established. A day when Africa remembers – and in remembering, reclaims.”
While advising the youths, Odior said: “Protect your intellectual formation. Study the history you were not taught in school. Build competence – real, rigorous, unglamorous competence – in something that genuinely serves your community.
“Learn to lead in the spaces you already occupy: the home, the classroom, the organisation, the neighbourhood. The character of a nation is not shaped in parliaments alone. It is shaped in every small decision made by ordinary people who choose not to be corrupted. Leadership is not an office. It is a practice. And it begins now,” he stated.
Also speaking at the event, human rights activist, Mr Femi Falana (SAN) lamented the negative consequences of colonialism and neocolonialism on Africans.
He stated: “It was in submission that Africa was deliberately exploited and underdeveloped by European colonial regimes. The same forces ensured that the independent struggle was manipulated to produce political parties and politicians
that would retain the colonial system. In the case of Nigeria, and I am happy Reverend Father Anthony Odior, who has gathered us here once again this year,
did mention some of the great Africans, saying “They were those who genuinely fought for independence.
As a matter of fact, at a stage, members of the Zikist movement, Zik did not believe in them, But these young men were inspired by him and they formed the Zikist movement but for delivering a lecture in Lagos in 1948,
they were ended up and jailed for sedition.”
Falana, however, lamented that despite sedition had been declared illegal
as far back as 1983 in Nigeria, “but what they now do is to talk of criminal libel.”
While expressing satisfaction over the Lagos, Ekiti and Edo states for wiping out the criminal libel, he wondered why it was still being exploited as a form of oppression.
He said: “So recently a colleague of mine, Dele Farotimi was alleged to have offended a big man in Ekiti, the police captured him in Lagos and took him to Ekiti where he was charged illegally. On that occasion I did tell the authorities the criminal libel was not operating in Ekiti state and so there was no basis for the legal charge. We were later told that the case was withdrawn by the man on whose behalf the police filed the case. As we are gathered here today many Nigerians are languishing in custody not for committing an offence but for offending one big man.”
Falana maintained that these are some of the results of neocolonialism.
Citing an example, he said: “Foreign capital is used for the exploitation rather than for the development of our people.”
