Senate President Godswill Akpabio has faulted errors in lines three, five, and eighteen of the new national anthem released by the National Orientation Agency, an act which has created an atmosphere of confusion.
Akpabio observed the errors during Tuesday’s plenary and directed the National Orientation Agency (NOA) to correct them immediately, reports Nigerian Tribune.
The Senate President said the correction introduced by the NOA was not what the National Assembly passed.
“Take note, this is the version that was passed by the National Assembly. The National Orientation Agency has not what we passed,” he said.
“Where you have, ‘Nigerians all, are proud to serve’, they said ‘Nigerians all, and proud to serve’, that is number one, it should be ‘are’.
“And then it said ‘though tribes and tongues may differ’, they said, ‘though tribe and tongue, I hope you understand and at the end where we said ‘Nigeria shall be blessed’, they did not say so. They said ‘Nigeria may be blessed’.
“We are using the word shall, which is compulsion, that this country shall be blessed. So, tell the National Orientation Agency to drop what they are circulating now. Congratulations to all of us” he added.
Recall that the National Orientation Agency (NOA) reportedly released the “standardised version” of the national anthem in Abuja by the Director-General of NOA, Lanre Issa-Onilu.
Issa-Onilu, during the unveiling, urged Nigerians to pay attention to the words in lines three and five of the anthem as released by the agency.
“We call the attention of Nigerians to line three of the first stanza, which reads: ‘Though tribes and tongues may differ’.
“Note that the words ‘tribes’ and ‘tongues’ are in plural.
“We want you to also note that line five of the first stanza reads: ‘Nigerians all, are proud to serve’.
“The word ‘are’, not ‘and’ is correct” Mr Issa-Onilu said at the unveiling.
