…says Nigeria Needs Transformational Leaders to Combat Corruption
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has said that some of the people in government, both at the executive and legislative levels, should be permanently behind bars for their past misdemeanor and criminal misconduct.
Obasanjo made this statement during a virtual address in Lagos on Thursday at the memorial lecture of Denis Joseph Slattery, organized by the Old Boys’ Association of St. Finbarr’s College at the Civic Centre in Victoria Island. The event was attended by notable figures including Donald Duke, former governor of Cross River, ex-footballer Segun Odegbami, music producer ID Cabasa, and actor Patrick Doyle.
In his speech titled “The Imperative for Moral Rectitude in Governance,” the former President emphasized that the foremost demand for anyone involved in governance at any level is “accountability.” He stated, “If you look clinically at the people in government today at both executive and legislative levels, some of them should be permanently behind bars for their past misdemeanour and criminal misconduct.”
“You cannot expect thieves to give good judgement in favour of the owner of the property,” he added.
Obasanjo recounted his shocking experiences with corruption, noting that the normalization of criminal behavior among government officials was particularly disheartening. “The first thing that shocked me when I went into politics was the level of corruption of election officials which was taken as normal,” he said. “The second was the level of general and criminal misbehaviour which was taken with levity and impunity. We were at a meeting and a man lied, and when I confronted him, the next thing he said is, ‘It is all politics, Sir.’”
He lamented that “every bad thing they do is passed on as politics,” implying that politics often lacks morality, principles, rectitude, ethics, good character, and integrity.
“Nigeria needs transformational leaders rather than transactional leaders, truth instead of lies, honesty instead of dishonesty, integrity instead of disintegrity, hope instead of despair, production instead of deduction, inclusion instead of exclusion and marginalisation,” Obasanjo declared.
Denis Joseph Slattery, the subject of the memorial lecture, was an Irish-born missionary who arrived in Nigeria in 1941 and founded St. Finbarr’s College in 1956. He served as the pioneer Chairman of the Nigerian Football Association and was a founding member of the Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ). Obasanjo honored him with the Order of the Niger (OON) in 2001, and he passed away in July 2003.
