Former President Olusegun Obasanjo and Nigerian lawyer and human rights activist, Mike Ozekhome on Thursday shared their different experiences with the deplorable state of roads in the country.
Naija News reports that Obasanjo and Ozekhom were both in Ekiti State yesterday at the convocation ceremony at Afe Babalola University, Ado Ekiti.
Obasanjo who, however, arrived at the event late than schedule, blamed the bad roads that lead to the state as the reason why he was behind schedule. The former leader said he spent many hours on the road to get to Ado Ekiti for the programme.
“The roads are bad. We started asking for the best route to take to get to Ado Ekiti. It was tough before we could get here”, said Obasanjo.
Apologizing for his lateness while delivering a speech at the varsity’s 10th convocation ceremony, Obasanjo said: “I thought if I left Abeokuta at 4:30 am that I would get to ABUAD at 10:00 am. But when we got to the middle of the journey, the conditions of our roads were bad”.
Sharing his part of the experience, Ozekhome said it took him about eight hours to get to Ado Ekiti from Abeokuta on Wednesday in view of the deplorable condition of the roads.
The human rights lawyer, while delivering the lecture, described the menaces of surging school abduction, banditry and endless borrowing, as evils presently killing Nigeria’s education system and portended bold signs of a “failed state”.
Ozekhome said there was a need for proactive and aggressive actions before sanity can be restored to the Nigerian education system.
Corruption, poverty, insecurity, commercialisation, mediocrity, illegality, deprivation, cultism, poor funding and other ills confronting the education sector according to the human rights lawyer, must be tackled before the system can attain a good state.
Ozekhome, who said good and quality education was the best way to secure the country’s future, said, “It is certainly the best guarantee for a secure, peaceful, prosperous, egalitarian and stable Nigeria governed by law and not by men. It is the only guarantee of fairness, equity and social justice”.
In his remark at the event, ABUAD founder, Afe Babalola said education could not be isolated from the problems plaguing the nation.
He lamented the country’s high debt profile, which he said stood at N41.6trillion as at March 2022 while the domestic debt service rose to N5.24tn as at June 2022.
Babalola said, “The first duty of any sincere and diligent government or any other organisation is to pay its debts and achieve a balance economy and break even. When Obasanjo took over in 1999, the first thing he did was to spend the first two years to go round Paris Club and other creditor countries to beg for debt forgiveness.”
Proffering a way out of the country’s debt, Babalola said, “Today, I make bold to suggest that we should set up a committee to launch a Special Debt Liquidating Fund by all patriotic Nigerians.
“I will suggest that the committee be headed by Obasanjo and consist of Gen. Yakubu Gowon; Bishop Matthew Kukah; presidents of Nigeria Labour Congress, Academic Staff Union of Universities, National Association of Nigerian Students; and members of professional unions like Nigerian Bar Association, Nigerian Medical Association, Nigerian Union of Journalists, Nigerian Society of Engineers etc.”
Among others, Babalola suggested that those on the Forbes 2022 list of 21 richest Nigerians should pay a minimum of $500million, all those who paid N100million for presidential nomination forms should pay $50million, while all those contesting elections should pay N500million.
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