African leaders have been charged to ensure the development of their countries through good leadership, and better management of their resources, instead of seeking loans and aid from foreign countries.
This call was made recently by dignitaries during a virtual conference to mark the 30th Obafemi Awolowo Memorial Lecture.
The platform which was created in 1992, was aimed at honouring the memory and propagating the leadership ideals of the late nationalist and statesman.
Some of the dignitaries at the virtual meeting include former President of the Republic of Ghana, John Dramani Mahama, and former Nigeria’s Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon.
Speaking on the theme of the lecture, ‘Values for Africa’s Development’, the keynote speaker, Prof. Dapo Folorunsho Asaju, admonished African leaders to shun the tradition of going to take foreign loans and aids to execute projects in their countries.
Asaju warned that the loans/aids enslave generations of African children, urging them to rather emulate the late Awolowo’s developmental values like having a Pan-African ideology, ensuring peace and security in their nations, having fear of God, righteous living, prayer, integrity, courage to do the right thing for the good of the people, contentment, ensuring rule of law, and developing strategic plans and foresight for development,
He said, “It is necessary to sound a note of caution to African countries who unwittingly take foreign loans thereby mortgaging the future of their young generations. Most loans taken by African leaders are stolen by their leaders or spent on unproductive projects. It makes no sense to take loans overseas and commit same to projects that are not revenue yielding enough to repay the loans and the interests accrued.
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“Consequently recent African countries such as Kenya and Uganda are already running into trouble with Chinese companies and government over unpaid loans and the resultant taking over of public assets such as Kenyan Railways and Ugandan Airport etc.
“Nigerian states have also been taking Chinese loans in huge amounts, and under very unfavourable conditionality.
“Obafemi Awolowo was a prudent manager of resources. He was not corrupt; he used revenue derived from legitimate commerce and trading in Cocoa to execute his development projects and infrastructure. During the Nigeria civil war, he managed the resources of the Federal Government so efficiently that the county did not take foreign loans to prosecute the war.”
Using Nigeria as a case study, Asaju traced the leadership dilemma in most African countries. He decried that 61 years after independence, Nigeria is yet to have its good bearing for peace, development and justice.
“Despite fighting a devastating civil war, the country has learnt virtually nothing on how to harmonize the constituted parts of the nation in unity and with justice to all generating units, he said. “So our moral and spiritual lives nosedived to the extent that corruption has become endemic, respect and value for life has disappeared, impunity pervaded the public and private sector and one tribe is pursuing agenda to suppress and annihilate the others for extreme religious and ethnic basis.”
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Asaju compared the present crop of leaders to the late Awolowo, to highlight the dearth of good leaders in the African continent.
“Our leaders at moment have no ideologies, no educational erudition, no finesse of charisma, no agenda, no character nor integrity, no principles nor discipline, just fashion shows. There are no more thinkers in Nigeria. The authors of inspiring political books are gone. We could count not less than ten books authored by Chief Obafemi Awolowo.
“Our leaders today are ignorant, intellectually empty-headed, diplomatically oblivious and incoherent and they lack persuasive ideologies of their manifestoes for governance.
“Eventually they experiment with power, become tin-gods, unreachable by the poor masses, thieves from the public treasury, corrupt squandermania and borrowers of huge debts which they hardly ever pay back while in office, rather emptying treasuries and leaving great indebtedness for their successors and potentially enslaving unborn generations.”
Also speaking, late Awolowo’s daughter, and Executive Director of the forum, Ambassador (Dr) Ọlatokunbọ Awolowo Dosumu, extolled the memories and leadership qualities of her father.
She praised the dignitaries, supporters that have helped in sustaining the values of Obafemi Awolowo via the annual Lecture.
“Chief Ọbafẹmi Awolọwọ was, first and foremost, a thinker. He is generally acknowledged to have brought outstanding erudition and critical analysis to bear on the art of governance.
“For these and many other reasons, including the need to sustain this core essence of Awo’s legacy and, hopefully, protect it from the vagaries of partisan politics, it was evident that an institution in his memory would better provide the scholarly and systematic avenue through which we could accomplish our goal,” she added.
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