Former Foreign Affairs Minister and Nigeria's ex-Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Professor Ibrahim Gambari, was among the 20 prominent Nigerians honoured with Lifetime Achievement Awards during the 20th anniversary of THISDAY Newspapers in Lagos. He took time off to speak to journalists on the importance of the award. Ademola Adeyemo was there

What is the essence of this award?

First of all, there were two categories of awardees. There was what they called 'The 20 Game Changers' which tends to be Nigerians of the younger generation but our own category is what they called ' The Lifetime Achievement Awardees' of which I was honoured to be one of the twenty individuals that was honoured. The purpose of the award is to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the first publication of the THISDAY Newspaper. So, to me, it is a great honour to be one of the 20 Nigerians that were recognised for their contributions to the society, to Nigeria and I guess in my case, they also mentioned my contributions to Africa and the international community.

My special thanks go to the publisher of THISDAY Newspaper, Nduka Obaigbena, for considering me worthy of this award. Secondly, as I said in my acceptance speech, I will also want to thank all the seven Nigerian heads of state for giving me the opportunity to serve, because no matter your background and experience, if you are not given an opportunity to serve, you will not be known and you will not be recognised.

When he left, Mr. Ban Ki- Moon asked me to remain for about two months as the Under Secretary-General for political affairs and then he later appointed me as special envoy to Myanmar, Burma, Iraq, Compact and then finally as the head of the only Joint Peace Keeping Operations of the African Union and the UN in Darfur and Head of the United Nations, African Mission in Darfur, from where I retired voluntarily in 2012. Finally, I dedicated this award to all the victims of Boko Haram and violent extremism in our country, in the continent and all over the world.

How do you feel being honoured alongside prominent Nigerians?

On a lighter note, I feel old to be in the company of Chief Alex Duduyemi who was celebrating his 80th birthday. So, I feel that in I am in the company of senior citizens of Nigeria. But seriously, these are people who have given a lot to the country, who have achieved a lot in their respective field. And I really feel greatly honoured. Among the 20 honoured, we have three Chief Justices of the federation, Justice Kutigi, Justice Mukhtar and Justice Musdapher. We also have traditional rulers which is also one of my constituencies. Don't forget that I come from Ilorin, from the ruling family there. In that group, you have the Obi of Onitsha, who incidentally, I have a second affinity as he also went to Columbia University in New York, one of the Ivy League universities in the United States where I had my masters and PhD. We also have the Emir of Zaria, Alhaji Idris. If you can recall, in my adult life I taught at the Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria.

The Emir regards me as his son and I go to the palace very frequently to perform any little thing the Sarkin wants me to perform. We also have in that group of 20, industrialists, jurists, royal fathers, and also my namesake Ibrahim Coomasie who was a former Inspector- General of police and currently the head of the Arewa Consultative Forum. He was also the chairman of the northern delegates to the 2014 national conference of which I was also honoured to be a delegate. As regards the national conference, I have said it publicly and I will like to repeat it that when you have 492 Nigerians who have come together for almost five months and produce recommendations that are in three categories. One, those things that can be implemented on the authority of the executive. The second set of recommendations are those that required change in our laws, therefore the National Assembly has to pass the legislation and third, the few that requires constitutional amendments which requires both the National Assembly and states house of assemblies. I think it will be a pity if those reports are ignored. About 20 of them on various subjects ranging from defence to security, revenue derivation, local government autonomy, foreign policies, and the economy and so on.

All these reports were adopted by consensus. It will be a pity if we throw the baby out with the bath water simply because they have some feelings in some quarters that the conference was organised by the former president who had ulterior motives. In any case, whatever the ulterior motives were, they were not achieved. Some people even felt that the conference was convened in order to have a new constitution so as to prolong his tenure or to have a new arrangement of a six years single tenure for which former president Goodluck Jonathan will be eligible. In any case, none of those was achieved. The regime has gone. The Nigerian people voted him out and his administration. So, we should look at this report critically and those that are consistent with the vision and philosophy of the president and his party should be seriously considered for implementation.