Focus On Governance, Obasanjo Tells African Leaders

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has challenged African leaders to set aside personal aggrandisement and work towards a democratic prototype that will deliver good governance for the citizens in all ramifications.

Obasanjo particularly urged the continent’s leaders to individually rethink the kind of democracy they are practicing in comparison with the type they inherited from the colonial masters, both in context and in content to serve the people of the continent.

He emphasised that Africa’s governance problem is fundamentally an institutional and personality problem for which successive leaders in each of the continent have failed at consistently producing any institutional frameworks that would make good governance endures and last regardless of who the individual leader is.

The former Nigerian President maintained that leadership in the continent must take democracy seriously, not as a system to be manipulated for electoral advantage, but as one that has a covenant with the people on a genuine commitment towards good governance.

Obasanjo stated these on Tuesday in Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital while delivering his address at the International Colloquium on “The Burden and Blessing Of Leadership: Reflections From Africa To The World”.

In his address at the event held at the main auditorium of the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library (OOPL), Abeokuta, Obasanjo emphatically declared that governance problem in Africa has fundamentally being an institutional and personality problem, stressing that successive African leaders have not consistently produced the institutional frameworks that make good governance endure and last “regardless of who the individual leader is.

“We have produced extraordinary individual leaders like; Mandela, Nkrumah, Nyerere, Sankara, Machel, but we have not consistently produced the institutional frameworks that make good governance endure and last regardless of who the individual leader is.

“We must solve the personality problem and solve the institutional problems. When an entire country’s trajectory depends on the character of one person, that country is permanently fragile”.

He maintained that though democracy could be “imperfect, slow and frustrating at times”, yet, African leaders must come to terms with the reality that the alternatives are “infinitely worse.

“Let us take democracy seriously. Not as a system to be manipulated for electoral advantage, but as a covenant with the people: a genuine commitment to good governance that is accountable, transformational, transparent, selfless and oriented toward all-embracing development, growth and the common good.

“Defend democratic institutions; strengthen independent judiciaries; protect free expression. Let us in general, rethink democracy we practiced, inherited from the colonial masters in context and in content to serve Africa with our special situations in a world whose institutions were not created by ourselves for ourselves”.

“Let us have democratic institutions to which we contribute with others for ourselves or in the alternative create for ourselves in context and content a democracy that will work for us and deliver in all respects”.

“Build the courts for justice and not for the highest bidder. Build the regulatory bodies that are not subject to whims and caprices. Build the civil service that delivers service. Build the universities whose products compare with products of the best universities in the world. Build the institutions that will outlast all of us and which will not be derailed and destroyed with abuse and misuse”.