Lagos State Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu says the reforms going on in Nigeria have touched every home in the country.

He said this on Thursday at the 66th National Independence Day parade, held at the Mobolaji Johnson Arena in Onikan, Lagos.

The governor did not pretend the last few years have been easy.

He also reminded the crowd that independence was not something Lagos only heard about. It began in Lagos, with Lagosians there to witness it. Everything Lagos has built, he said, it has built for Nigerians.

That made the venue itself meaningful. Onikan is an old ground that was hosting crowds long before the Nigerian flag was first raised above it.

Old enough to be honest

Sanwo-Olu said Nigeria has now reached an age where it can afford to be honest about itself, and is still young enough to finish what it started.

The country’s road, he said, has not been straight. Nigeria fought a civil war before it was ten years old. It spent most of its first three decades under military rule, with the constitution suspended for even longer. There were coups and counter-coups, annulled elections and exiles, hopes raised and hopes dashed. There were years when the only question was whether Nigeria would prosper or merely survive. And yet, he said, here the country is at 66 — one country, one flag.

Prices are no longer running from wages

Speaking to the anniversary theme, Road from Reforms to Stability, the governor said prices are no longer chasing wages the way they were.

He said the naira has found its feet, and that investors who spent a decade waiting at the door are now walking in. He believes the worst of the adjustment is behind the country.

But he was clear about what comes next. The work of making the reforms count for the people who paid for them is still ahead, and it is not a job for government alone.

Through war, hunger and predictions of collapse, he said, the Nigerian flag has never come down.

“It is not ours to be tired; it is ours to finish.”