Former President, Olusegun Obasanjo, has said that some of the persons parading themselves as presidential aspirants in Nigeria today would be in jail had the nation’s anti-corruption agencies done their jobs well.
Obasanjo, who was speaking at an international symposium organized in his honour in Abeokuta on the occasion of his 85th birthday, said it is amazing that those who have committed economic sabotage of the country are seeking to take over Nigeria as presidents.
Obasanjo he has looked around him and seen people that cannot be trusted with “small things” let alone “big things.”
He said to huge audience at the event, “I cast a cursory look at some of the people running around and those for whom people are running around. If EFCC and ICPC will have done 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.”
Going to 1999 when Nigeria returned to democratic rule, Obasanjo said, “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.
“We have activities without requite actions and personnel to move us forward. If we continue in the same pattern of recycling, sweet-word campaigning, manoeuvring without the substance of integrity, honesty, patriotism, commitment, outreach, courage, understanding of what makes a nation and what make for development, we will soon have to say goodbye to Nigeria as a nation.”