On Monday, at the opening ceremony of the Nigerian Bar Association’s Annual General Meeting in Lagos, celebrities donated over N3 million for the NBA female football competition, which will be held as part of the events during the eight-day conference.
Chimamanda Adichie, an award-winning writer and speaker, called on citizens to hold themselves accountable before holding leaders accountable during her speech on accountability.
She said, “A bold transition must embrace audacity and innovation. They have called me troublesome. Although it is never enjoyable to be called troublesome. I never set out to provoke for its sake. But I refuse to silence myself for the fear of what I might inadvertently provoke. It has always been important to me to say what I believe, to call out injustice.
“As long as we refuse to untangle the knot of injustice, peace cannot thrive. If we don’t talk about it, we fail to hold leaders accountable and we turn what should be transparent systems into ugly opaque cults.”
She noted that there was “injustice” in the monetary compensation which the male and female NBA teams would receive in the football competition.
The male team would get N500,000 while the female team would get N200,000 as winning prizes.
However, after Adiche’s charge, several personalities made contributions to increase the women’s football prize to the sum of N3,200,000.
Personalities, who made the donations included the Governor of Edo State, Godwin Obaseki, the Federal Minister of Works and Housing of Nigeria, Babatunde Fashola, SAN, Paul Edeh, among others.
In her closing remarks, she advocated for an uncorrupted judicial system and called on the NBA to leverage technology in judicial process and the administration of justice in the country.