It’s the beginning of a New Year! Thank God for seeing us through 2013 and for making us witness 2014 hale and hearty. I also want to thank nurses for your support through last year working with us to move nursing forward and in changing positively the way people all over the world think about Nigerian nurses and nursing. I am particularly grateful to those who offered prayers, words of advice, and who made themselves available for various assignments in the quest to improve our profession. Those who offered criticisms {constructive and negative} are also significantly appreciated. Sincerely, the constructive criticisms have helped us in our evaluation while the negative criticisms have challenged us to determine that we cannot afford to fail and we will not fail Nigerian nurses. In the year 2013, we had some great successes and our fair share of life’s challenges and the lesson that life is not a bed of roses is being reinforced in our minds. We recorded some victories and a few loses notably the lives of a colleague, Nurse Jemilah Yusuf gunned down by insurgents, while rendering humanitarian duties as a member of an immunization team, and our comrade the national treasurer of our association {NANNM}, Alhaji Saidu Mohammed Fagge among others. Infact the list of those that died is inexhaustive but, the death of Rev. Dr. Olubi A. O is a great loss to the pools of our union veteran, Late Lady Dorothy Etuk ,the education desk officer at the national headquarters is also a collosal loss, while  the death of a colleague nurse in a ghastly motor accident on her way to seek university education can be described as a supreme sacrifice and a great martyr and heroine as a result of the gap in nursing education system in our country, Nigeria. We will continue to remember them and pray God grant their souls eternal rest and continue to grant their families fortitude. We hope to honour these heroes and heroines of nursing profession when the time is due. 

We still have unfinished businesses from last year and more tasks ahead of us this year. Our unfinished businesses include but are not limited to the struggle for professional autonomy, career advancement, and emancipation from the professional neo colonialist so as to have a professional unified scheme of service that will incorporate our much desired internship for fresh graduates of nursing sciences and a befitting welfare package for practicing nurses. I want to urge every one of us to brace up for the struggle ahead because liberty is never handed down to a people but they must strive to fight for what rightfully belong to them. I also encourage us to continue our advocacy, education and publicity to the mass media, powerful decision makers, stakeholders and the public at large what nurses really do to save lives and improve outcome. We should by our day to day activities, in and out of clinical, education and other settings prove to the world that Nigerian nurses are thorough bred professionals and a bunch of nice and caring persons. 

 I must show a great deal of appreciation to various Organisations that motivate us to do more by honouring me with various awards, honestly it serves as motivation to do more. I pray to Allah(God) to honour you all.

In 2014, nurses must become stronger and more influential, more nurses must become leaders in hospitals, nonprofit organization and government agencies however this may not happen unless we work together to improve the image of nurses and nursing. We silence our profession when we fail to identify ourselves as nurses especially when we perform unlaudable deeds. Nurses should ensure that nursing get credit for the good work and expertise nurses provide to the public, nurses should also ensure that the blame of bad deeds by impostors is not heaped on nursing, we must also ensure that elements that give nurses and nursing the bad image are exposed and let the world understand that they are not professional nurses. To this end we must all join hands to intensify our fight against quackery in the nursing profession. Our collective efforts should also be directed towards making the profession a better and greater one. We will continue to remain open to advice and constructive criticisms while not letting destructive criticisms derail us from our focus and our vision and mission statements. Our “open door” policy will be maintained and possibly pave way for a “no door” policy to ensure that we are increasingly accessible to Nigerian nurses. We advise that rather that abuse the accessibility to us, Nigerian nurses should redirect their energies and efforts from pursuing self serving agenda and combine forces to pursue selfless agenda whose benefits will cut across the entirety of nursing populace and the general public at large. 

I wish us all greater exploits in the year ahead and more importantly greater victories in the struggle to liberate the nursing profession and place her in her rightful position of leadership.

Yours in the struggle to reposition the nursing profession,

Comrade Abdrafiu Alani Adeniji