Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq of Kwara has urged Nigerians to exercise their rights responsibly as they commemorate Democracy Day, saying Nigeria is progressing despite its various challenges.

The governor stated this in a statement issued by his Chief Press Secretary, Rafiu Ajakaye, on Saturday in Ilorin.

He said, “I felicitate Kwarans, and indeed all Nigerians, on this day of June 12 which has come to symbolise the struggle of our people for human rights, participatory democracy, and development.

“Whatever the challenges of nation-building confronting our fatherland, we are moving ahead in all indices of development, while institutions of democracy are growing stronger and getting more mature.”

According to him, the growing public consciousness around issues of rights and development, “the widening space and platforms” through which public opinions are ventilated, and the “increasingly responsive, yet firm leadership” underline the fact that “we are moving.”

The governor urged Nigerians to “strike a delicate balance between rights and responsibilities as citizens so that we can always have a country to call our own.”

He called for the building of “a consensus around the indivisibility of the Nigerian state.”

“I join Mr President, my colleague governors, and our compatriots across the world to pay glowing tributes to all the heroes and heroines of our democracy, dead or alive, sung and unsung whose toiling birthed this republic.

“Our responsibility is to continue to face up to the challenges of nation-building, as many great and older nations had done and are still doing.

“That way, we can bequeath a better, stronger, more prosperous, more secure, and more united country to generations unborn,’’ the governor added.