From James Ogunnaike, Abeokuta with agency report
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has said that the only way to ensure enduring infrastructural and human capacity development in Nigeria was for every government to build on the projects and the ideas of the preceding government.
According to Obasanjo, most of the failures witnessed in the country stemmed from the refusal of successive governments to continue institutional and policy frameworks and projects put in place by their predecessors.
The former president reportedly took this position during a courtesy visit paid him at his Hilltop House, Abeokuta, Ogun State, on Friday, by the Good Governance Group (3Gs), whose convener is Mr. Seyi Gambo.
The 3Gs, in a statement yesterday, quoted Obasanjo to have argued that some of the projects initiated under his regime both as a military head of state and a civilian President, including the Operation Feed the Nation and the reforms in the rail transportation and power sectors, could have been beneficial to Nigerians if they had not been abandoned by successive governments.
The former President also said that the government must encourage the private investors in the country arguing that “the bigger private operators would be able to encourage price reduction on commodities.”
Obasanjo however called on the government to set up Anti-Trust Commission, to protect Nigerians from oppression by big entrepreneurs, saying, “I will never go against Nigerian entrepreneurs getting big but I will go against them becoming oppressive.”
Earlier in his speech, Gambo had said that the visit was to share from the experience of the former President, who during his tenure tried to entrench good governance by paying all the country’s debts and initiating “many developmental policy reforms.”
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