Former President Olusegun Obasanjo, on Friday posited that good governance can’t be provided by politicians who are corrupt.
He spoke virtually at the memorial lecture of Denis Joseph Slattery on “the imperative for moral rectitude in governance,” held at the Civic Centre, Victoria Island, Lagos.
While he referred to corrupt political leaders and politicians as “thieves,” he noted that such people cannot provide just governance.
According to him, they should be jailed for their misconduct, adding that the most important demand of anybody involved in governance at any level is “accountability.”
The elderstatesman who maintained that government officials with “questionable” integrity cannot make fair decisions for the greater good, said: “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.
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“You cannot expect thieves to give good judgement in favour of the owner of the property,” he said.
Recalling a personal experience, he said: “The first thing that shocked me when I went into politics was the level of corruption of election officials which was taken as normal”.
“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.’
“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 added that Nigeria needs “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”.
The memorial lecture, organised by the Old Boys’ Association of St. Finbarr’s College, was in remembrance of the late Irish-born missionary who sojourned to Ilawe-Ekiti, Nigeria in 1941.
