From Romanus Ugwu, Abuja
Former president, Olusegun Obasanjo, has bemoaned Nigeria’s socioeconomic and political morass, noting that the situation would persist unless those he described as self-centred leaders quit the scene.
Obasanjo, who spoke in Abeokuta, Ogun State, on Saturday as Special Guest of Honour at the Leadership Empowerment International Conference, where 25 distinguished Nigerians were conferred with honorary Doctorate in leadership by a South Africa-based Immanuel Theology Institute International in affiliation with Priesthood Leadership Development Initiative Inc, stated that Nigeria has remained backwards in all development indices because of leadership deficit, suggesting that the present crops of leaders occupying offices at all levels of governance must loosen their hold on the country to entrench progress.
He challenged Nigerians to seek, by all means possible, an end to the culture of enthroning transactional leaders as against transformational leaders who will deliver good governance.
“There is no end to leadership and service to your community until you breathe the last. And you can never be too old to be a leader and to give something to the community in which you lead and serve as a leader, to serve your state, your country, the continent and the world. And if you ask me in one word, what is the bane of Nigeria today? I will not think about it twice. I will say it is leadership. Leadership that is self-centred, leadership that is a deficit of knowledge and understanding and leadership that does not see service as the centrepiece of what leadership is all about.
“If we can get the leadership right, we will get all other things right. This is what LEIC is doing that is commendable and very good. We must encourage and inculcate good leadership into every level of our national life.”
In a related development, former governor of Cross River State, Donald Duke, lamented that the Nigerian political class dominated by quacks have reduced politics in the country to the lowest level using religion as an instrument of victimisation of the masses.
Duke spoke at a programme organised by the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), The Everlasting Arms Parish, Abuja, tagged the power of music, held at the weekend.
He described politics as an elevating vocation that could be used to stem the tide of Nigerian youths leaving the country in droves, but the selfishness of the political class and the quacks that have hijacked it will not allow them to put into productive use.
He said: “Religion is a human organisation, I am not religious, I am striving to be spiritual, because the core of any human being is a spirit. Religion, at best, is a vehicle in that direction. But like everything, every endeavour of human beings, you have quacks. You have quack doctors, quack engineers, and quack religious people, but the answer is not with them.”
“Politics could be the most elevating vocation, but a lot of quacks are involved in it, so they have brought it down to the lowest level. But look at it, when politics is right, it elevates everything. It elevates medicine, and livelihood. When we complain about the country not being good, it is the politicians. So if you have the right politicians, you have the right country. It is the most noble of all vocations,” he argued.
On what could be done differently to restore the confidence of young Nigerians leaving the country in droves, he said: “We need to reflect, it is a two way thing. People see politics as a means of livelihood rather than a means of service.
“If we begin to see it as a means of service and then politicians become role models and create hope, an eternal effervescent power, in the young ones that their tomorrow will be better than today, just as that today ought to have been better than yesterday.
“That is a failure of our system. And unfortunately, when I look at the horizon, I don’t see the political class ready for that. They think of themselves. But anyone that has common sense will know what they call enlightened self interest.
“When Christ said, love thy neighbour as thyself, it is enlightened self interest, because what you do for your neighbour, if your neighbour is hungry, you are threatened. One thing I learnt from Professor Aluko, when we were in the National Economic Intelligence Committee, was when he would always say that when the poor didn’t eat, the rich won’t sleep. That’s where we are today,” he lamented.
Defending his claims that every problem in Nigeria is resolvable, the former Cross-River governor said: “There is absolutely not. You see this inflation you are experiencing, you know why you have inflation? It is because of high energy. So, if the cost of energy, fuel goes up, inflation will go up, because we are going to transport food. I am just giving you that as an example. For instance, if fuel was N700 per litre, and is now N1,500, inflation will almost double. If the cost of electricity increases, it will also inflate. But let me look at this.
“This is a country that flares gas. That is energy. It’s a country that has oil. We can fix the price of our oil. We don’t have to allow the rest of the world to determine the price of our oil for our own consumption. This is how we’re going to do it, and monitor it in such a way that it serves us and not go to other countries. That’s very important.
“The second thing is, all this energy, gas that we are flaring, does it occur to us to use it for the sake of our own people, just that alone will crash this inflation we are talking about. So when you look, there is no problem that cannot be solved,” he argued.
Explaining the motive behind the programme, the pastor-in-charge of the Parish, Eva Azodoh, said: “We want to provide our teenagers with people they can have as role models. We want them to have people who, by dint of hard work and integrity, have achieved what they achieved in life so that people can look at them and know that with hard work, honest work and integrity you can succeed. We want to give them those role models and that is what we have done.”