{"id":125867,"date":"2019-06-12T05:51:00","date_gmt":"2019-06-12T04:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/?p=125867"},"modified":"2019-06-12T08:26:19","modified_gmt":"2019-06-12T07:26:19","slug":"why-are-nigerias-three-top-leaders-from-the-core-north-obj","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/?p=125867","title":{"rendered":"Why Are Nigeria’s Three Top Leaders From The Core North? – OBJ"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\"\"<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Olusegun Obasanjo, a former Nigerian president, has called out the President Muhammadu Buhari led administration for its insensitivity to Nigeria’s diversity by ensuring all three top leaders in the country are from the northern part of the country. <\/p>\n

He made the comments in an exclusive interview with Premium Times In Ogun state, Nigeria, to commemorate country’s democracy day.<\/p>\n

Obasanjo said, \u201cI think we have no choice but to be on the path for sustainable development,\u201d Mr Obasanjo said. \u201cThe progress we are making may be questionable\u2014-Is it fast enough? Is it steady enough? Is it stable enough? Are we taking two steps forward and one step back or one step side-way?<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can question that, but we have no choice but to be on (the) path for sustainable development. Any other thing will be a disaster. In fact, the pace at which we are going now is tending more and more toward disaster and instability and unsustainability.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe problem is that we are just not doing what we should be doing,\u201d said Mr Obasanjo, who supported Mr Buhari of the All Progressives Congress when the retired general contested against former president Goodluck Jonathan in 2015. \u201cNobody has that confidence, and we cannot develop Nigeria without that confidence in our economy. Both for domestic investors and foreign investors.<\/p>\n

\u201cI set up two (anti-corruption) institutions,\u201d he said. \u201cI came with two laws that were not there before, to fight corruption. And those who claim they are fighting corruption today have not brought in anything different. If anything, they have corrupted those two institutions.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd the institutions were open and independent. I never, never, as president had to say to either the head of ICPC or EFCC: \u2018Oh, chase this person.<\/p>\n

\u201cNigeria was a pariah state. Within the first four years (1999-2003)\u2026 we actually hosted the commonwealth. And Nigeria which was kicked out of the Commonwealth became the host of a Commonwealth Head of Governments Meeting (CHOGM). We became the darling of almost all nations. The economy started doing well.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember on one occasion one day or one week, Chukwuma Soludo (then governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria) phoned me and said: \u201cSir, in one day, we had an inflow of $80 million\u201d. From foreign direct flow; not money from our oil export or cocoa export. Just direct! And he (Soludo) said to me: \u201cSir, this is almost unbelievable.<\/p>\n

\u201cI said we were not where I want us to be yet. I want us to be $100 million per day. That means in five working days, that will be half a billion dollars. If we are making half a billion dollars a week of five working days; in 52 weeks, it will be $26 billion. It is possible. I got debt relief.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think there is a presumption in our constitution that our system will bring out competent leaders devoid of extremism, religious or tribal bigotry. Leaders who understand what it takes to hold the country together and put it in high gear for development, unity and inclusive and shared society.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are assumptions. And if these assumptions come true, what is meant to be achieved in our country will be achieved. But the kind of situation you have now cannot allow those assumptions to become reality. Now you have a situation where three top officials of government will be from only two northern zones. Ahmed Lawan (who has been pencilled down as Senate President) is from the North-East, the acting chief justice of Nigeria is from the north-east, The President of the country is from the north-west. They are all from what we call the core north. How can you have that kind of arrangement and then be absolutely insensitive to it (lack of geographical diversity)?<\/p>\n

\u201cSo the prescription that our constitution makes of the kind of leadership that should emerge, we have failed to achieve that with the present leadership we have in place. The Constitution expects the executive to care for the welfare and security of every Nigerian. But in the present situation, they don\u2019t seem to care.\u201d<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Olusegun Obasanjo, a former Nigerian president, has called out the President Muhammadu Buhari led administration for its insensitivity to Nigeria’s diversity by ensuring all three top leaders in the country are from the northern part of the country. He made the comments in an exclusive interview with Premium Times In Ogun state, Nigeria, to commemorate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":125868,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[2658,8898,41,8017,2397],"class_list":["post-125867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-politics","tag-a","tag-ahmad-lawan","tag-buhari","tag-femi-gbajabiamila","tag-obasanjo"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=125867"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125867\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/125868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=125867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=125867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=125867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}