Former president Olusegun Obasanjo, has said that the level of corruption in the country has passed the alarming and entered the fatal stage.
He said this in his keynote address on the topic, ‘Leadership Failure and State Capture in Nigeria,’ delivered at the Chinua Achebe Leadership Forum, Yale University, New Haven, in the United States of America over the weekend.
The former president noted that corruption continues to rank among the most important problems affecting Nigerians.
“More than N700 billion in cash bribes were paid by citizens to public officials in 2023. Most bribes are paid in the street or in a public official’s office. Private sector bribery is increasing but continues to be less prevalent than in the public sector. Corruption goes with power; therefore to hold any useful discussion of corruption, we must first locate it where it properly belongs – in the ranks of the powerful. Corruption in Nigeria has passed the alarming and entered the fatal stage; and Nigeria will die if we keep pretending that she is only slightly indisposed.
Ranked 150 out of 180 countries in the Transparency International 2022 Corruption Perceptions Index,1 Nigeria’s ranking places it in the bottom 20 percent of the Comity of Nations and illustrates how systemic and embedded corruption is in the country. It is, in my opinion, and those of many, the most serious developmental challenge to the nation.”
He insisted that the nation would continue to sink into chaos, insecurity, conflict, discord, division, disunity, depression, youth restiveness, confusion, violence, and underdevelopment as long as it is embedded in corruption.
Obasanjo, however, gave a message of hope that all will be well with the country if the challenges of immorality and corruption are squarely addressed.
The former president while copying from a short, classic treatise published in 1983, called “The Trouble with Nigeria” by Chinua Achebe admitted that, “The trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely a failure of leadership.