Obasanjo said God has given Nigeria all that it needs to be great and therefore should not be blamed for its failure.
By Emma Ogbuehi
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has said Nigeria should not blame God for the country’s failures since it gained independence from Britain in 1960. The former president may have alluded to leadership failure as the bane of the nation.
Obasanjo made the declaration on Thursday at the launch of a book by the Editor-in-Chief of Premium Times, Musikilu Mojeed, titled “The Letterman: Inside the ‘Secret’ Letters of former Nigerian President, Olusegun Obasanjo” in Abuja.
Speaking on the nation’s 62-year journey, Obasanjo described Nigeria as a “giant in the sun” that had since underperformed by the world’s expectations.
“When Nigeria became independent, it was a giant in the sun. That was the expectation. Not a giant even in Africa. A giant in the sun. That was the expectation of the world about Nigeria,” Obasanjo said.
“Have we lived up to it? No. If we haven’t, why haven’t we? I think we probably don’t appreciate what we have as a country and I believe if we do appreciate it and make good use of it, we would do better than we are now.
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“I believe the right lessons must be learned. We have all that we need to have; God has given us all that we need to have. That we are not doing what we should do, God is not to blame and we should blame ourselves.”
Obasanjo is not the only one absolving God of Nigeria’s failures. Literary giant, late Professor Chinua Achebe, had in his book, The trouble with Nigeria, observed that “the trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely the failure of leadership”, adding “There is nothing basically wrong with the Nigerian character. There is nothing wrong with the Nigerian land or climate or water or air or anything else. 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 who was first democratically elected president of the Fourth Republic, assumed office in 1999 and stepped down in 2007 after completing two terms. Though he reintroduced Nigeria to global reckon during the time by paying off her debts and lifting her from the hitherto status of a pariah nation, he also contributed to the crisis currently holding the country down due to his autocratic tendencies. His regular assault on the legislature and the rule of law, is a particular trend the country is yet to recover from.
Prior to the current dispensation, he led the nation as a military head of state between 1976 and 1979, having succeeded Gen. Murtala Muhammed who was assassinated in a military coup.
His military administration oversaw the country’s transition to the Second Republic with the election of the late President Shehu Shagari, whom he handed over to in 1979.