Nigerian’s former President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo has advocated for stricter punishment for corrupt leaders in Africa and those who induce them, if the continent hopes to meet up with other continents in the area of development and also as a way of deterring others from following in the same path.
The former President who spoke in an interview with China Cable news Television (CCTV) channel reasoned that unless those who corrupted themselves while in leadership position and those who aided them to be corrupted are severely punished, Africa may still be far from real development.
Obasanjo who spoke on challenges of good governance in Africa noted that good governance has remain a challenge in Africa because, “corruption is still rife in Africa, we may say that there is no society without corruption, but there are many societies where corruption is not a way of life, where corruption is not carried out with impunity and that is what we are saying, that corruption should not be a way of life.”
“To achieve that, corrupters and corrupted must be equally punished and until you can do that, sanction those who make corruption happen, either by being corrupters or by being corrupted, then we will not be getting out of these pernicious issue of corruption.”
Obasanjo, who noted that all about leadership in Africa is not negative, reasoned that electoral democracy has started to take root in the continent, adding that with time, the problem of sit tight leaders will be a thing of the past.
“In the area of electoral democracy, I think we have made more progress there than in other areas. 30 years ago less than one third of African countries had what we can call electoral democracy, today the countries that are not electoral democracies are exceptions, rather than the rule.”
“30, 35 years ago, we had many sit tight presidents, autocratic sit tight leaders, today they are very few, if anything they are becoming a scarce rarity, so, in the area of democratic or electoral democracy we are making progress, we still have challenges, where election results are contested, I believe that if the systems are such that contested election results can be arbitrated by a tribunal or a court and people learn to accept the verdict of the just and fair arbitration, it is good, for me a disputed election result is better than no election at all,” he said.
