March 05, (THEWILL) – Former President Olusegun Obasanjo on Saturday, said that if the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission and the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission did their jobs properly, some aspirants contesting for political offices in the 2023 election ought to be in jail by now.
Obasanjo disclosed this at the international symposium to mark his 85th birthday celebrations held at the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library(OOPL), with the theme: “Africa Narrative with Nigeria Situation.”
The ex-president, who cast a cursory look at political aspirants running around to contest for elective positions in the 2023 election, said that some of them should be in EFCC and ICPC custodies if the anti-graft agencies had performed their duties very well.
He noted that Nigeria needed men of integrity to resolve her current challenges of poverty, insecurity, hungers among others, insisting that fixing the country must start with principles of nation-building and not nepotism, religion or bigotry.
Obasanjo said “I cast a cursory look at some of the people running around and those for whom people are running around. If EFCC and ICPC did their jobs properly and supported adequately by the judiciary, most of them would be in jail.”
“Any person who has no integrity in small things cannot have integrity in big things. Fixing Nigeria must begin on the principles of nation building, not necessarily on emotion, sentiments, euphoria, ignorance, incompetence, ethnicity, nepotism, bigotry, sectionalism, regionalism, religion or class.
“The issues of security, stability, development, economy and our relationship within Africa and with the rest of the world can only be taken care of if we get the issue of the nation building right”, he added.
The octogenarian, who lamented that since 1999, election results were being manipulated against the will of the people, noted that such had cause the backwardness of the nation, politically, economically and socially.
“Since 1999, we have changed from one political party or another, we have manoeuvred and manipulated to the point that election results are no longer reflections of the will of the people and we seemed to be progressively going back rather than going forward politically, economically and socially”, he said.
The two-term civilian president, who stated that as long as the country’s leaders continue to do the same thing, the nation would not change for better, stressed that if care was not taken, the country might cease to exist and that would be a tragedy for Africa.
“Nigeria is tottering and for as long as we continue to put the cart before the horse, it cannot be well. Or put another way, for as long as we continue to do the same thing over and over again, the result will not be different.”
“If the drift is not halted, the remaining twenty-five percent of Nigerian nation will be dissipated in no time and Nigeria will not be a country, but countries and will never be possible to be a nation again. That will be a monumental tragedy for Nigeria, Africa, the black race and humanity”, he noted.
