Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has advocated for the punishment of corrupt politicians, claiming that “thieves cannot provide just governance.”
The 87-year-old statesman made the statement while appearing digitally at a memorial lecture for late preacher Denis Joseph Slattery in Lagos.
Obasanjo’s address, titled The Imperative for Moral Rectitude in Governance, emphasised the importance of “accountability” for everybody participating in governance. He contended that authorities with “questionable” integrity are incapable of making decisions for the greater good.
“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,” said Obasanjo, who served as Nigeria’s head of state from 1976 to 1979 and later as president from 1999 to 2007. “You cannot expect thieves to give good judgement in favour of the owner of the property.”
Obasanjo also reflected on his shocking experiences with corruption, recalling how dishonesty was normalized in politics. “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 I confronted him, and the next thing he said is ‘It is all politics, Sir’.”
Obasanjo lamented how politics has been used to justify unethical behaviour, adding, “Every bad thing they do is passed on as politics which means politics has no room for morality, principles, rectitude, ethics, good character and attributes.”
He concluded by urging Nigeria to seek “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.”
A Gentle Reminder: Every obstacle is a stepping stone, every morning; a chance to go again, and those little steps take you closer to your dream.
Nnamdi Okoli
