Former President Olusegun Obasanjo stated on Thursday that to manage Nigeria and put it on the correct track, the country needed a leader who was driven by passion and’madness.’
Obasanjo stated that he had no other country that he could call his own or to which he could travel.
Obasanjo said this while hosting Mohammed Hayatu-Deen, a presidential aspirant from the Peoples Democratic Party, in his penthouse residence in the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library in Abeokuta, the capital of Ogun State.
Godswill Akpabio, a presidential candidate for the All Progressives Congress, was also welcomed by the former President.
According to our source, Hayatu – Deen and his entourage arrived at 12:30 p.m. and immediately walked into a closed-door discussion with Obasanjo, which lasted nearly an hour.
Following the meeting, Obasanjo and Hayatu-Deen talked briefly to the press, describing the visit as cordial.
According to reports, Akpabio arrived around 2:20 p.m., just as the Hayatu Deen team was leaving Obasanjo’s apartment.
“I shall mention four things, of which I was reminded this morning,” Akpabio said after resigning as Minister.
The first is knowledge. If Nigeria is not at the table, perhaps the knowledge we should have of ourselves, our predicament, our continent, and indeed the globe is insufficient; if it is, we will do what is right, when it is right, and how it is right.
“The second point is vision; what is our vision?” You may have eyes, but you are blind if you don’t have vision. And I feel that is a factor in our predicament.
“The passion is the third. And when you said you are interested in this with a passion, and I was telling some people this morning that passion means craziness, that you are insane about Nigeria, I am, and I make no apologies for it because I have no other country I can call my home or go to and say yeah, I have come to live here.
“I look at you (Hayatu-Deen) and say sure, you, too, are wild about Nigeria.”
The fourth is invention. We can’t keep doing the same things that haven’t worked in the past and expect different results; we need to break free, innovate, and re-strategize.”
Hayatu-Deen had before stated that Nigeria was “decomposing and dissolving extremely quickly,” and that the country needed to be rescued immediately.
Hayatu-Deen, a former Managing Director of FSB International Bank, later met with PDP delegates at the Abeokuta party secretariat to solicit their support in the upcoming presidential primaries.
In his statements, Akpabio said he went to see Obasanjo to inform him about his presidential campaign, claiming the former president was “partyless” and whose “elderly advise is needed at all times.”
He urged Nigerians to assess him based on his accomplishments rather than religion or race.
If elected president, the former minister promised to repeat his “uncommon successes” in Akwa Ibom State as governor.
