Nigeria’s former President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo has said that most Nigerian leaders are interested in public offices to enrich themselves and their cronies and not for service to the people.
Former President Obasanjo who made the disclosure in one of his two new books unveiled to mark his 88th birthday, pointed out that these leaders obtain loans from banks and other sources with the belief that paying back such loans from the public funds after being elected won’t be a problem.
In the book, ‘Nigeria: Past and Future’, the former President painted the characters of Chief Executives at both the federal and state levels as selfish and corrupt leaders interested only in themselves and their cronies and not the larger interests of the people.
The former President said the majority of those who have been opportuned to hold leadership positions in the country such as governors, presidents, ministers, commissioners and local government chairpersons, were ill-prepared, satanic, self-centred and all out to corruptly enrich themselves while the nation continues to wallow in abject poverty and condemnable underdevelopment.
“How do you explain the situation of a chief executive, a governor, whose business was owing the banks billions of naira and millions of dollars before becoming a governor and within two years of becoming governor, without his company doing any business, he paid all that his businesses owed the banks.
“You are left to guess where the money came from. Having got away with that in the first term, he consigned to himself almost half of the state resources in the second term. He was a typical example of the goings-on at that level almost universally in the country with only a few exceptions.
“State resources are captured and appropriated to themselves with a pittance to staff and associates to close the mouths of those that could blow the whistle or raise alarm against them while in office and when they are out of office,” he stated in the book and added:
“The ones that are criminally ridiculous are the chief executives that deceive, lie and try to cover up on the realities and truth of action and inaction on contract awards, agreements, treaties, borrowings and forward sales of national assets. Such chief executives are unfit for the job they find themselves in.”
