Senate President Godswill Akpabio has identified significant errors in the recently released “standardised version” of Nigeria’s national anthem, urging the News Orientation Agency (NOA) to rectify them immediately.
During a plenary session on Tuesday, Akpabio highlighted discrepancies in lines three, five, and 18 of the anthem unveiled by the NOA last Wednesday.
The Director-General of NOA, Lanre Issa-Onilu, had presented the anthem in Abuja, emphasizing the need for Nigerians to pay attention to specific lines.
Issa-Onilu had noted the correct phrasing for line three as “Though tribes and tongues may differ,” stressing that both “tribes” and “tongues” should be in plural form.
He also pointed out that line five should read, “Nigerians all, are proud to serve,” with “are” being the correct word rather than “and.”
Related: Senate Passes Bill to Revert to Old National Anthem
However, Akpabio contested these corrections, stating they did not align with the version passed by the National Assembly.
“Take note, this is the version that was passed by the National Assembly. What the National Orientation Agency has is not what we passed,” he declared.
He detailed the specific errors, noting, “Where you have, ‘Nigerians all, are proud to serve’, they said ‘Nigerians all, and proud to serve’. And then it said, ‘though tribes and tongues may differ’, they said, ‘though tribe and tongue’.
“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.”
Akpabio instructed the NOA to cease circulating the current version and adhere to the text approved by the National Assembly.
The National Anthem Bill, quickly passed by both the Senate and the House of Representatives, reinstates the original anthem introduced at Nigeria’s independence in 1960, which was later replaced by the Olusegun Obasanjo military regime in 1978.
President Bola Tinubu signed the bill into law on May 29.
