Nigeria Has Not Improved As A Country – Omololu Olunloyo

Posted by: Folamidavid in News, Politics Oct 2, 2019

Former governor of Oyo State, Dr Omololu Olunloyo, has come out to talk about Nigeria at 59 and how the country can strive to be better.

Speaking on if the country has progressed, “No, because 1960 was a great year of hope for us. There was evidence that it was a year of hope. We thought we would be able to improve this country. I got my Ph.D in 1960 with Professor Wole Soyinka. I think we just lost it along the way. The First Republic was better than the Second Republic, the second was better than the third and the third is already showing itself to be better than the fourth.”

On what the problem of the country is, “The problems are greed, corruption, laziness and I will say, without any doubt, that leadership and followership. Both the leaders and followers are corrupt. When you have bribery in a society, both the giver and taker of the bribe are both guilty. We never knew it would be this bad. If you look at the country’s map, you cannot pinpoint a centre and draw a circle of 100 miles without finding rivers, lush forest, various natural resources not to talk about our vast human resources.

Many of our citizens who have left the shores of our country to other countries have performed wonderfully there. While we are still practising low level politics, you can see that things are getting more and more confused and I am sorry about it. Some of us are not partakers of this corruption. We have nothing and we are not regretful. I can say this boldly.”

On Buhari’s government, “What this administration has been doing is selective punity. They have been using selective punitive measures. Even those who are guilty of corruption have a standard strategy. Some of these politicians are well known, they hide under the canopy of the ruling party and they have protection but that is blackmailing the country and it is not good at all. Corruption is bad, islamization is bad, Fulanisation is bad.”

On the solution to our leadership problem, “Look at Nkrumah in Ghana, Mandela in South Africa. It depends on the quality of the people. We have to teach our people leadership. Leaders are not manufactured. We need to teach our children the right things. There was a time we had National Development Plan, Seven-point agenda and several others. What led to their failure? They were not implemented. The constitution has the principal objectives of the state. We have never been honest. Anything we do, we do it for the motive of profit for our ethnic group.”