Former President of Nigeria, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, Director General, World Trade Organisation, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, and former President, Nigeria Bar Association, Olisa Agbakogba were on Saturday among Nigerians who proffered solutions to the challenges bedeviling the country at the 113th Anniversary of Kings College.
The anniversary titled, ‘Building the Nigeria of our dreams,’ was organised by the Kings College Old Boys’ Association.
Obasanjo who led the Kingsweek 2022 colloquium which was held at the Kings College, Lagos, said Nigeria as a country was poor, insecure, and had other challenges because of its choice of leaders.
The former Nigerian leader said, ‘‘We are politically divided, economically disunited we are nowhere, we are down the drain. Diplomatically, Nigeria is not at the table. Before, we had sent troops to Sudan, Seirra Leone but today, we can’t send troops to the Republic of Benin. There are three races in the world, white, yellow, and black. For now, America is leading the whites, the Chinese are leading the yellow race, and Nigeria with 225m people is created by God to lead the black race. When we stop disappointing ourselves we can take care of the continent and the black race. Nigeria has no business with poverty, insecurity, or political division.
‘‘It is the advertently or inadvertently choice of our leaders. It is not God’s choice for us. If God hasn’t chosen that for us we can do better. For Nigeria, we have done a few things right but we have not continued to do it right. We need a government that understands Nigeria and Africa which will be fair and sincere with Nigerians, together with the right government, this nation can become the right leading country to develop Africa.’’
In her speech, Okonjo-Iweala said her dream was for a Nigeria in which 95 per cent of the people had access to potable water, quality education, and more women participation in the political and economic life of the country.
‘‘Nigeria can fight poverty, and improve people’s lives if it is properly managed. Our revenue sources are not diversified we depend only on one revenue. Nigeria lacks a sacrosanct social compact in the country, there should be a guideline that dictates certain things that should be sacrosanct. We should have guiding principles to decide our we manage, save, spend and take vigorous actions on our revenues. As a country, we need to have certain indicators of how our economy should be governed. If we do this, we have so much to gain.
‘‘We have had episodes showing we can sustain strong growth, all we need is to work on all key indicators and move in the right direction.
‘‘If we build a strong governance we need to choose our leaders wisely, we need to ensure we build a strong foundation, we need to get our leaders to accept social compact that will take us into the future.’’
Agbakoba said, ‘‘We have been to a lot of conferences and it is time for us to face the real question. We will never come out of this if we don’t sit and ask ourselves if we are really one until the infractions are tackled. Do we wish to be one because this marriage was imposed on us? What marriage do we really want? Why have we excluded all the nationals at the national conferences we have had?’’
Another guest speaker, former Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, Prof. Attahiru Jega, enjoined Nigerians to get involved in the political and electoral processes, saying lack of appropriate and quality leadership, selection process, and criteria while choosing leaders were a major challenge in the country.
