Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has called for the imprisonment of corrupt politicians, asserting that "thieves cannot provide just governance." The 87-year-old made this declaration during a virtual address at the memorial lecture for the late cleric Denis Joseph Slattery, held in Lagos.
In his speech, titled "The Imperative for Moral Rectitude in Governance," Obasanjo stressed that accountability is the foundation of effective governance. He argued that leaders with "questionable" integrity are incapable of acting in the public's best interest. He called for decisive action against corrupt officials, emphasizing that justice and transparency are essential to ensure good governance in Nigeria.
“If you look clinically at the people in government today at both executive and legislative levels, some of them should be permanently behind bars for their past misdemeanour and criminal misconduct,” said Obasanjo, who served as Nigeria’s head of state from 1976 to 1979 and later as president from 1999 to 2007. “You cannot expect thieves to give good judgement in favour of the owner of the property.”
Obasanjo also reflected on his shocking experiences with corruption, recalling how dishonesty was normalized in politics. “The first thing that shocked me when I went into politics was the level of corruption of election officials which was taken as normal,” he said. “The second was the level of general and criminal misbehaviour which was taken with levity and impunity. We were at a meeting and a man lied and I confronted him, and the next thing he said is ‘It is all politics, Sir’."
Obasanjo lamented how politics has been used to justify unethical behaviour, adding, “Every bad thing they do is passed on as politics which means politics has no room for morality, principles, rectitude, ethics, good character and attributes.”
He concluded by urging Nigeria to seek “transformational leaders rather than transactional leaders, truth instead of lies, honesty instead of dishonesty, integrity instead of disintegrity, hope instead of despair, production instead of deduction, inclusion instead of exclusion and marginalisation.”
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