I’m too old to keep quiet on shameful election — Obasanjo

Obasanjo said, “Given what we saw during the election, Nigeria is now even more divided and more corroded than we thought.”

By Jeffrey Agbo

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has said he would not remain quiet in the face of trouble in Nigeria.

The former leader of Africa’s most populous country said on Thursday in Abuja at the presentation of a book authored by Tunji Olaopa that the 2023 election divided Nigerians even more.

Obasanjo described the election as a “sickening show of shame” and urged the incoming administration to put measures in place that would foster national reconciliation.

He said, “Given what we saw during the election, Nigeria is now even more divided and more corroded than we thought. This places a deep onus on any administration following the current one, to urgently facilitate the process of national moral rearmament and national reconciliation for the aggrieved and will lead us across Nigeria and to assuage the youth.”

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Obasanjo concluded “by stating clearly that I am now too old to keep quiet and watch Nigeria’s seemingly clueless launch into dystopia.”

He said it has become his own personal obligation, continuing in his relentless service as a letterman who is dedicated in his twilight years to saying the truth so as to push Nigeria in the right direction.

The former president recommended innovative ways for expanding growth and development in the country, adding that gains made would be reversed in the absence of political will.

“Governance in Nigeria now calls for thinking outside the box in terms of development financing, this has become inevitable in the face of Nigeria’s dwindling fortune, in oil revenue, Nigeria’s huge foreign indebtedness and the urgency of diversifying Nigeria’s neo-cultural economy,” he said.