Nigeria’s situation bad, Obasanjo laments

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has said that though things might not be cheering and bright for Nigeria, there is hope for better days for the nation.

Obasanjo, in his keynote address on Saturday at the Chinua Achebe Leadership Forum, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA, lamented that “as the world can see and understand, Nigeria’s situation is bad.”

The former President, according to a statement from his Special Assistant on Media, Kehinde Akinyemi, on Saturday, disclosed this while speaking in his address titled “Leadership Failure and State Capture in Nigeria”.

Obasanjo, who was said to be in the Democratic Republic of Congo but had the 25 minutes video recorded to the forum, noted that in a country like Singapore, “The government has also been responsive to the changing needs of its people and has invested heavily in areas such as healthcare, education, and social welfare.

“Nigeria’s situation, as we can see and understand, is bad. The more the immorality and corruption of a nation, the more the nation sinks into chaos, insecurity, conflict, discord, division, disunity, depression, youth restiveness, confusion, violence, and
underdevelopment.

“That’s the situation mostly in Nigeria in the reign of Baba-go-slow and Emilokan. The failing state status of Nigeria is confirmed and glaringly indicated and manifested for every honest person to see through the consequences of the level of our pervasive corruption, mediocrity, immorality, misconduct, mismanagement, perversion, injustice, incompetence and all other forms of iniquity. But yes, there is hope.”

Obasanjo, while quoting from a short, classic treatise published in 1983 called “The Trouble with Nigeria” by Chinua Achebe, admitted that, “The trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely a failure of leadership.

“The Nigerian problem is the unwillingness or inability of its leaders to rise to the responsibility, to the challenge of personal example which are the hallmarks of true leadership.”

Obasanjo added that two prominent US intellectuals, Robert Rotberg and John Campbell, had once raised the alarm about the failing status of Nigeria and its inevitable effects on the African continent given the country’s size, economic viability, and population, among others.

The former President was said to have described state capture “as one of the most pervasive forms of corruption, a situation where powerful individuals, institutions, companies, or groups within or outside a country use corruption to shape a nation’s policies, legal environment, and economy, to benefit their own private interests.

“State capture is not always overt and obvious. It can also arise from the more subtle close alignment of interests between specific business and political elites through family ties, friendships, and the intertwined ownership of economic assets.

“What is happening in Nigeria – right before our eyes – is state capture: The purchase of National assets by political elites – and their family members – at bargain prices, the allocation of national resources – minerals, land, and even human resources – to local, regional, and international actors. It must be prohibited and prevented through local and international laws.

“Public institutions such as the legislature, the executive, the judiciary, and regulatory agencies both at the federal and local levels are subject to capture. As such, state capture can broadly be understood as the disproportionate and unregulated influence of interest groups or decision-making processes where special interest groups manage to bend state laws, policies, and regulations.

“They do so through practices such as illicit contributions paid by private interests to political parties, and for election campaigns, vote-buying, buying of presidential decrees or court decisions, as well as through illegitimate lobbying and revolving door appointments.

“The main risk of state capture is that decisions no longer take into consideration the public interest but instead favour a specific special interest group or individual.

“Laws, policies, and regulations are designed to benefit a specific interest group, oftentimes to the detriment of smaller firms and groups and society in general.

“State capture can seriously affect economic development, regulatory quality, the provision of public services, quality of education and health services, infrastructure decisions, and even the environment and public health.”

On Achebe’s personality, Obasanjo hinted that the great author and writer has been known through “his work and his values for as long as our Nation has been in existence. He was a great and distinguished Nigerian.

“Yale University would be correct in their belief that Achebe belongs to the world – and therefore to them as well – but I am here to tell them that he is an African Icon that belongs to Nigeria first.

“The Igbo amongst us – his own ethnic people – will remind us that within Igboland he is known as “the Eagle on Iroko” – the “king of the birds” perched on the tallest tree in the African.”