Obasanjo Reveals Why Nigeria has not made progress

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Former President Olusegun Obasanjo, yesterday, said that Nigeria has not been able to make progress because successive governments failed to continue with good policies put in place by their predecessors.


Also, former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, Prof. Chukwuma Soludo, said that about 40 per cent of Africa’s non-land assets are held outside the continent, adding that Africans must repatriate such funds to form the fulcrum on which to build a large poll of international capital for the continent’s infrastructure development needs.

This came as Acting President Yemi Osinbajo urged Africa Finance Corporation, AFC to do more in providing necessary leadership towards mobilizing private capital for infrastructure development in the country, noting , “We will be relying on AFCs, especially our own DFIs to do much more; we will be relying on them to show much more leadership and to take greater risks.”

They spoke, in Abuja, yesterday, at a panel discussion on the 10 years of AFC, operations at the Infrastructure Summit. Also speaking at the forum, Finance Minister, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun, said there was huge appetite globally to invest in Africa’s infrastructure, adding: “We need to properly package and showcase the opportunities.”

In his remarks, former President Obasanjo, said that the continent has been unable to develop due to the penchant of its leaders to discontinue the few things that had been done right. He noted that AFC had a “rough” beginning because of lack of understanding by political leaders who succeeded him. Obasanjo also relived his tour of Singapore in an effort to unravel the secrets of the Singaporean success, with a view to applying same to the continent.

He said, “I remember taking 40 young and up-coming Africans to Singapore some years back. Lee Kuan Yew hadn’t written his book “from Third World to First World,” and we wanted him to tell us how he did it. We wanted to know the magic and Yew told us there was no magic. “He said: There is no magic. We did a few things right and we continue to do them right.

We in Africa have done a few things right. Our problem is that we don’t continue to do them right. “Many things are wrong about Africa but a few are right. We should continue to do those things that are right.” Prof. Soludo, on his part, said “The Sub-Saharan Africa is just the size of Belgium in economic terms. You can imagine Belgium being divided into 54 isolated countries.