Nigeria needs critical mass to fight graft, say Obasanjo, Aig-Imoukhuede

For Nigeria to successfully tackle graft, there is the need to put the right people with good character in the public sector, former President Chief Olusegun Obasanjo has said.

Obasanjo spoke at the panel of advisory roundtable of the Africa Initiative for Governance (AIG) in Lagos yesterday. He said: “In all of these areas, we need to enhance the quality of men and women, quality of service, character, attitude and performance to resuscitate corporate governance.”

According to him, “That we have under-performed as a country is not because God has not given us the ability to perform better. The fault is not that of God, the fault is ours.

“When we have government with the critical mass of the right people in the civil service, parastatals, leadership of all levels, we are moving. “Countries where progress has been made like Singapore, Rwanda in Africa; the leadership has come from the government. If the leadership is not coming from the government, let government be a partner, let government not frustrate the efforts, rather it should encourage initiatives like this,” he said.

AIG’s Chairman and Founder, Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede, added: “We can’t fight corruption if we don’t put into government people who have been trained and are prepared to fight corruption. We need to put a critical mass because one man cannot change a nation. One man can stimulate the change of a nation but one man cannot change a nation. Although we have good people in government, we don’t have enough, the good people in government are not allowed to soar to their highest point of destination.

“We are trying to create a pipeline of men and women who have been prepared to take on the challenges required to build a great nation and help the government create an enabling environment for the good people to come and stay without their talents being knocked out.”

AIG, a non-governmental organisation will be funding 25 master’s degree scholarships in public policy as part of a new five-year partnership with the University of Oxford, which is based on the shared purpose of building good governance and public leadership in Nigeria.

The initiative, which will have five Nigerians funded every year for master’s degree scholarships in public policy at the renowned Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford, UK from 2017 – 2021 is an intervention aimed at tackling Nigeria’s challenge of poor public sector leadership.