…Says Nigeria’ll continue to recycle failed leaders, unless…
Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), Chief Afe Babalola, has said the 1999 Constitution will not guarantee the emergence of credible leaders at the February general elections.
The proprietor of Afe Babalola University, Ado-Ekiti, made the declaration on Wednesday at the Ekiti capital at a news conference, said, “Unless a new Constitution similar to those of 1960 and 1963 Constitutions, with necessary amendments, is put in place, none of the aspirants, and indeed no angel can save Nigeria from total collapse’’.
He was reacting to the adoption of Peter Obi, presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP) by former President Olusegun Obasanjo. According to him, he still stands by his suggestion to the Federal Government in April 2022 that any election conducted under the 1999 Constitution cannot, and will not produce new leaders with new ideas.
The elder statesman noted that only a moneybag; and not the best-qualified candidates could win the February presidential election under the present constitutional arrangement.
Babalola stressed that the 1999 Constitution was too lopsided and faulty to produce the type of change agent and developmental leader Obasanjo had in mind, adding that the 1999 Constitution was not what Nigeria needed at a time like this.
He noted also that Nigeria’s external debt had risen to N42.84 trillion as of June 30, 2022, while domestic debt servicing rose to N5.24 trillion in the same period. The Senior lawyer said that any Nigerian aspiring to lead the country ought to be worried about the country’s debt profile and advocated for urgent measures to defray the huge foreign debts.
“In addition, the Government should emulate Obasanjo’s example, by approaching the country’s creditors, either for total debt forgiveness or for substantial reduction of the debts’’, the legal luminary stressed.
