Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has said Nigeria is more divided than it has ever been after the 2023 general elections.
Obasanjo stressed that the country needs healing and advocated national reconciliation to enhance the healing needed for national peace and cohesion.
Speaking at Yaradua Centre in Abuja yesterday during a book presentation titled: “The Unending Quest For Reform: An Intellectual Memoir” authored by Dr Tunji Olaopa, Obasanjo said the nation can not keep spending like a drunken sailor on frivolities amid corruption and expect development and growth.
The ex-President’s comment comes about two days after a former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Muhammed Sanusi, said Nigeria is currently more divided than it was during the civil war between July 1967 and January 1970.
This must be done in sync with the imperative of national value orientation that Nigeria requires to build a collective sense of enduring and local values and national belonging.
Obasanjo said: “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.
“We cannot be spending like a drunken sailor on frivolities and corruption and expect development and growth. such a situation cannot take us into the fourth industrial revolution already underway or be fair also defeat.
“My experience and understanding, however, is that the money to develop and grow our economy is out there if we provide a conducive environment for it to come and stay.
“Three political will, political action and administrative efforts must be invested on reforming the public service into a capability ready institution that could enable Nigeria development agenda beyond 2023.”
He said all of these and more are necessary to correct and not repeat the sickening and painful show of shame that the elections of 2023 generated.
He said, “Let me conclude by stating clearly that I am now too old to keep quiet and watch Nigeria’s seemingly clueless launch into dystopia. All efforts are now required from all well many committed patriots to rescue the nation from the precipice. And when I look at the audience I have a feeling that among the people who can do it and who must do it are some of you here.
“It has become my own personal obligation, continuing in my relentless service as letterman, dedicated in my twilight years to say the truth, as I see it, so as to push Nigeria, in the direction of our collective aspirations. What is our collective aspiration? a better society where all Nigerian can become what the Almighty God destined to be.
“At times like this, some of us have to adopt the attitude of being known to be blind and not being afraid of the dark. But we must continually work for the light of all.
“Once again, congratulate you, Tunji for your continuing labour on behalf of the Nigerian public service and most importantly, for adding this significant intellectual memoir to your huge collection of publications and to the annals of administrative reforms in Nigeria, at this defining and auspicious moment like this.”
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