Obasanjo Challenges AU Leaders on Corruption, Impunity

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo, has challenged leaders of the African Union member countries to shun every act of impunity and corruption in governance; enthrone the regime of good governance and critically define their interest in the global scheme of things, insisting that they were panacea to the development and advancement of the continent.

Obasanjo, who stated this while addressing a gathering of African media at the 24th Annual General Meeting of the African Export Import(AFREXIM) Bank, holding in Kigali, Rwanda, also appealed to the leaders to liaise with regional Financial institutions like the African Development Bank (ADB), African Import Export (AFREXIM) Bank and a body like Economic Commission For Africa(ECA). That, he said, would enable acquainting themselves with their activities, plans and programmes so as to advance their individual countries' mission, and vision for regional economic integration.

"African leaders should embrace good governance, shun act of impunity in governance, remove prevailing corruption among them for these cannot help us to move forward, it will retrogress development and provision of basic infrastructure that are supposed to enhance trade. With good governance, some of the basic things that we lack will be there, we will have basic amenities like transport without which trade cannot thrive," he stated.

He said for Africa to achieve economic integration, transform its current low level of trade growth which he put at 15 per cent and be able to in the next few years, achieve at least 10 per cent growth in intra- regional trade, the private sector, the public sector, regional financial institutions and the civil society organisations must come together and unanimously agree on where to take the continent to in their struggle to meet their western neighbours in terms of political and economic advancement.

He said African people, must agree to grow together by first realising where they are, what they have achieved, what need to be achieved and what needed to be done to get to their desired destination.

He advised the AU leaders to say no to western pressures, study all their partnership agreement offers, define their own interest and see if such agreements were in their favour or not before signing them.

He noted that Africans were not as weak as they presumed, adding that there was need to change their present mentality that tend to tell them that they were nobody before their western neighbours.