Former Nigerian President, Olusegun Obasanjo, has said the country needs to be ruled by a leader who is driven by passion and “a touch of madness” to move it forward.
Obasanjo said this when he hosted a presidential aspirant under the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party, Mohammed Hayatu-Deen, in Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital.
The former President also played host to former minister, Godswill Akpabio, who is running for the presidency on the platform of the All Progressives Congress.
Hayatu-Deen together with his team arrived in Ogun State about 12:30pm and went straight into a closed-door meeting with Obasanjo which lasted for about an hour, according to PUNCH.
It was also gathered that Akpabio arrived at exactly 2:20pm while the Hayatu-Deen team was exiting Obasanjo’s residence.
Speaking during the visits, Obasanjo said Nigeria would overcome its security challenges within two years if the leader was ready to make tough decisions, while advising Nigerians to brace up and be ready to make sacrifices.
The former president said, “It is an agonising situation for you, obviously, and also for me. I want to emphasise the point that the Nigerian situation, as bad as it is, will only be put right by Nigerians at the forefront of our situation. So, Nigerians have to brace themselves up to do what needs to be done to put Nigeria back on the right path.
“And you are right in saying that, wherever you go now, one of the things you hear is that Nigeria is not on the table, but why shouldn’t Nigeria be on the table? What does it cost Nigeria to be on the table?
“I will say four things, of which I was reminded this morning. One is knowledge. The second is vision, what is the vision that we have? And if you have no vision, you may have eyes, but you are blind. And I believe that is part of our situation.
“The third is passion. And when you said, that you are involved in this, with a passion and I was telling some people this morning that, passion means madness, that you are mad about Nigeria, I am and I have no apologies for that because I have no other country I can call my own and I have no other country I can go to and say yes, I have come to live here.
“Passion means being mad about Nigeria, having a touch of madness, and I look at you (Hayatu-Deen) and say yes, you are mad about Nigeria too.”
