My Dear Rotarians, Friends, Family and Guests,
On behalf of my family and the Rotary family, I welcome you to the District Conference in the Imagine Rotary Year.
I feel honoured to be your host today. I am confident that your coming will add lots of value to your life, to our clubs and to the district. It will etch fond memories in your hearts leaving you with a deeper resolve to keep doing good to humanity.
It has been no doubt a year of imagination!
The more we allowed our minds to imagine, the more the Rotary wheel rotated, the more lives were touched, and the more fulfilment Rotarians had. I consider it a great privilege to be a Rotarian and more so leading you thus far.
I am grateful for every word of encouragement, every action of goodness, every dime given to the cause and every iota of energy that Rotarians and non-Rotarians have brought to the table this Rotary year.
Accepting the Governor’s job is akin to undertaking a three-year commitment, two years before becoming and one year of full-time service to humanity.
I have been fortunate and immeasurably blessed to share these years with you. The experience was a worthy mix of various feelings – great, amazing, sober, pleasant, curious, educational, intense, deep, humbling and more.
Thank you for every minute spent discussing, strategizing, sharing and laughing together. They are indeed treasured fond memories, way beyond what I imagined!
As we gather here at this District Conference, I am reminded of the power of Rotary to bring people together and create positive change.
We have so much to celebrate, from the countless service projects and initiatives we have undertaken to the friendships and connections we have formed along the way.
My visits to clubs were as insightful and challenging. With a reduced number of Rotarians in my entourage, we covered all clubs even though some were done in clusters. This helped with curbing costs and yet effective.
In the year, we offset the ground rent for Jos Peace Centre and received the certificate of Occupancy.
We paid for the approval of the building plan for the Abuja Rotary Centre and sustained payment of the salaries of security personnel at both Centres.
Abuja Rotary Centre is habitable and can be used for leased functions having fixed the broken borehole with burglary protections installed on all the windows.
Electrical cabling, a 10kva generator, twenty standing fans, public address systems, and furnished executive and secretarial offices were part of the activities completed to make the Rotary Centre functional.
We started the building of the permanent gate of the Rotary Center in collaboration with the Synergy Presidents in Abuja.
The Centre wears a beautiful look and is ready for further development.
While working on getting the Centre ready, my team and I worked from my personal office, saving cost on rent.
We initiated, produced and sold Synergy pins which yielded about N11 million and expanded the level of foundation giving by Rotarians.
Despite the poor economic turn in Nigeria, Rotarians pulled their weight and we made five hundred and sixty-thousand-dollar donations to The Rotary Foundation.
Our membership stands at four thousand, six hundred and seventy. We hope that there will be some increment to these figures before June 30th.
I must commend all the clubs who embarked on and completed prodigious projects this year.
I have not forgotten the joy on the faces of the communities who benefitted from your magnanimity as we inaugurated the projects, thank you so much.
News has been reaching me on the impact of this year’s RYLA. Many of the beneficiaries have taken their destinies into their hands, adding value to their immediate communities.
We all know that whenever value is added, money is exchanged. We had a fantastic turnout for the event, with young leaders from across our district coming together to learn, grow, and connect with one another.
Over the course of the event, we provided them with a range of dynamic and engaging sessions on topics such as leadership, team-building, communication, and problem-solving.
We also had inspiring keynote speakers who shared their personal stories and offered valuable insights into leadership and personal growth.
Many of them shared with us how the event transformed their thinking and helped them develop new skills and perspectives.
They also reported feeling more confident in their abilities as leaders and more motivated to make a difference in their communities.
Another success was the partnerships we formed with local organizations and businesses to provide resources and support for the event.
These partnerships allowed us to offer the young leaders in our district a truly unique and impactful experience that would not have been possible without the generosity and commitment of our partners.
Once again, I applaud the Imagine RYLA team while wishing our youths speed and success.
As we celebrate our successes, we must also remember that there is still much work to be done.
There are still people in our communities who need our help, and there are still challenges facing our world that require our attention and resources.
Let us use this conference as an opportunity to learn from each other, to share our experiences and our ideas, and to renew our commitment to Service Above Self.
Let us return the lessons and inspiration we gain here to our clubs and communities.
Can we create hope in our world except we have imagined it? I urge everyone here to keep their imagination on even as we transit to the next Rotary year for whatever we imagine for the world, we can do.
I wish you an amazing time at this year’s District Conference, remember that I’m still at your service, please, let me know how we can make your stay even more memorable.
Thank you.
Yours-in-Rotary-Service
Goddy Nnadi, Phd, mni
Governor
Rotary International District 9125
2022-23