By Nathaniel Zacchaeus, Abuja
The Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, yesterday lamented the errors in lines three, five, and 18 of the new national anthem recently released by the agency.
The senate president observed the errors during the plenary and directed the federal orientation agency to immediately reverse the errors.
Last Wednesday, the Director-General of NOA, Lanre Issa-Onilu, unveiled the “standardised version” of the national anthem in Abuja.
Issa-Onilu, during the unveiling, urged Nigerians to pay attention to the words in lines three and five of the national anthem as released by the agency.
At the unveiling last week, Issa-Onilu said, “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.
But, at yesterday’s plenary, Akpabio said the correction introduced by the NOA is not what the National Assembly passed.
Akpabio said, “Take note, this is the version that was passed by the national assembly. What the National Orientation Agency has is not what we passed.
“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,” Akpabio added.
