Protest: Nigeria threading path of anarchy, says Obasanjo

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has tasked President Bola Tinubu-led administration to come up with means through which Nigerian youths can be fully engaged before things get out of hand.

Fielding questions from reporters in an exclusive interview with Financial Times recently, the elder statesman hinged his submission on the ongoing #EndBadGovernance nationwide protests that paralyzed businesses since August 1.

Obasanjo warned that the federal government’s refusal to heed the warning bell and address several pressing issues like hunger necessitated by food scarcity could lead to anarchy.

He maintained that youths are restive because the majority of them lack the basic skills required to make ends meet while describing Nigeria as a nation sitting on a keg of gunpowder whose explosion is just a matter of time.

“Our youth are restive. And they are restive because they have no skill.

“They have no empowerment. They have no employment. We are all sitting on a keg of gunpowder. And my prayer is that we will do the right thing before it’s too late,” he warned.

Youths across the country have embarked on protests since August 1, a development that has since escalated with reports and incidences of violence and looting recorded across the country.

Speaking further, Obasanjo described the country’s reliance on crude oil as a “deadly mistake,” stressing that the nation’s current economic situation would have been avoided had the nation embraced agriculture and not relied solely on crude oil.

He also lamented Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL), the International Oil Companies, and other national oil companies’ failure to ramp up oil production to meet the country’s needs.

“I believe we made a deadly mistake by putting all our eggs in one basket by relying on oil. We had a very important commodity, gas, but we were flaring it,” he said.

“We ignored agriculture which could have been the centrepiece of our investment.”

The former president then touched on the reason that Nigeria’s four refineries have remained moribund despite huge investments and attempts at revamping them.

The former president revealed how Shell Oil turned down the idea of running the country’s refineries on the grounds of corruption.

“When I was president, I invited Shell to come and take equity and run our refineries for us. They refused and said our refineries were not well maintained. We brought amateurs instead of professionals. Then there was too much corruption in the way our refineries were maintained. They didn’t want to get involved in such a mess,” he said.

“How many times have they told us that the refineries would be fixed, and at what price? Those problems as far as the government refineries are concerned have never gone. They have even increased. And if you have such problems, and the problems have not been removed, then, it means we are not going anywhere.”