One of Nigeria’s most celebrated former presidents, Olusegun Obasanjo, has said that most African leaders do not understand the economics of running their countries.
He explained that there are many countries in Africa that have moved from being highly indebted to paying off a lot of them and then eventually falling back into even more debts.
The former president, who is also the Chairman of the Brenthurst Foundation, stated that he came to that conclusion after listening to a prominent politician in Ghana speak about how the country came to be so economically challenged.
“Most of our leaders don’t understand economy and that is a disaster. We sat down last night, listening to one of the politicians in this country, telling all the stories of how Ghana got to the position it is now, economically, and you will be wondering, what is going on when all these was happening?
“How did we allow it to get to this stage? Is somebody not really understanding where it will lead us? and of course, if you think of Ghana, where you put Ghana, remove Ghana and put Nigeria there; that’s the situation we have in my country as well,” he said.
Olusegun Obasanjo further stressed that just as it happened in his home country, Nigeria, Africa seems to be headed towards doom with the way its leaders handle the economy.
“Less than 20 years ago, we got our debt from $36 billion to $3.6 billion. We got debt reliefs, the balance to pay, and we had a quantum debt of $3.6 billion. Today, it’s over $50 billion. Here, you have $37 billion, internal and external – it’s unsustainable.
“Now, if our leaders don’t understand this, then we are doomed,” he stressed.
President Olusegun Obasanjo was speaking at the West African Security Roundtable – Insiders and Outsiders: Meeting the African Security Challenge in the 2020s which he hosted alongside President Ernest Bai Koroma of Sierra Leone, and Dr. Greg Mills, Head of the Brenthurst Foundation.
The meeting was organised by the Brenthurst Foundation and the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre (KAIPTC), forms part of a series across the West African region: Accra, Abidjan, Dakar, Niamey, and Abeokuta.
Watch President Obasanjo speaking at the event below:
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