Former President of Nigeria, Olusegun Obasanjo has on Thursday said for one to successfully rule the country, the person must be passionately mad about Nigeria.
While playing host to Mohammed Hayatu-Deen, at his penthouse residence in Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital, Obasanjo said the country requires a leader with adequate knowledge, passion, innovation, and vision for the country, to put Nigeria on the table like other nations.
The former Nigeria leader called on Nigerians to sit up for the task ahead and be ready to make sacrifices to get the country on the right track.
Obasanjo who also played host to Former Minister for Niger-Delta, Godswill Akpabio, said only Nigerians at the fore front can make the country right.
He said, “It is an agonising situation for you, obviously, and also for me. I want to emphasise the point that the Nigerian situation, as bad as it is, will only be put right by Nigerians at the forefront of our situation. So, Nigerians have to brace themselves up to do what needs to be done to put Nigeria back on the right path.
“And you are right in saying that, wherever you go now, one of the things you hear is that Nigeria is not on the table, but why shouldn’t Nigeria be on the table? What does it cost Nigeria to be on the table?
“I will say four things, of which I was reminded this morning. One is knowledge. If Nigeria is not at the table, maybe the knowledge that we should have of ourselves, of our situation, of our continent, and indeed of the world is not that adequate, if that knowledge is adequate, we will do what is right, when it is right and how it is right.
“The second is vision, what is the vision that we have? And if you have no vision, you may have eyes, but you are blind. And I believe that is part of our situation.
“The third is passion. And when you said, that you are involved in this, with a passion and I was telling some people this morning that, passion means madness, that you are mad about Nigeria, I am and I have no apologies for that because I have no other country I can call my own and I have no other country I can go to and say yes, I have come to live here.
“Passion means being mad about Nigeria, having a touch of madness, and I look at you (Hayatu-Deen) and say yes, you are mad about Nigeria too.
“Fourth one is innovation. We cannot be doing the same thing that we have done in the past that did not pay us and continue to repeat it and expect any change, we have to move out it, we have to innovate, we have to re-strategise.”
Both Hayatu-Deen, a former Managing Director of FSB International Bank and Godswill Akpabio, a former governor of Akwa-Ibom State are aspiring for the office of the president on the platforms of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the All Progressives Congress (APC), respectively.
