I always say Nigeria is a complex country, you must understand that but Nigeria is not a difficult country to manage.”
By Saidu Idris
365Daily – Former Nigerian President, Olusegun Obasanjo, has attributed the country’s woes to absence of quality leadership, saying that it is not difficult to manage.
He disclosed this in Lagos on Wednesday, September 4, 2024, at the maiden memorial lecture organised by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN) in Lagos in honour of late Akintola Williams, themed: ‘Leadership Dynamics: Current Realities And Way Forward.’
While acknowledging the complexities of the country, he stressed that the will of leadership at the helm of affairs to work for the growth of the country goes a long way in its developmentrs.
Obasanjo said, “I always say Nigeria is a complex country, you must understand that but Nigeria is not a difficult country to manage. You have to be honest with yourself, Nigeria and your God.
“When I was there, I did everything I should do for Nigeria and I can beat my chest and say that.
“I took over as the affairs of Nigeria as elected President with N3.7b in reserves and we were spending N3.5b to service debt, so I decided we must debt relief and I went out from it even though we were fifth country in all exporting in the world and we got debt relief.
“Not only did we not get relief from a quantum debt of N3.36b we came to a quantum debt of N3.6bn and I left with over N25b in what we call excess crude that is the money we saved from the budget and what we actually received and we had a reserve of over N45b,” he said.
Speaking on the late Akintola Williams, he described him as a sage, saying he served humanity during his life time.
“He deserves every honor that we can confer posthumously not for what he did for this country but what he did politically, socially and economically,” he said.