Olusegun Obasanjo, the former president, has said that after years of military rule, Nigerians expected him to work miracles when he was elected president in 1999.
He expressed disappointment at his inability to immediately change the nation.
Speaking at an international colloquium celebrating his 89th birthday in Abeokuta, Ogun State, Obasanjo claimed that the expectations stemmed from the years of military tyranny, economic stagnation, and institutional deterioration that Nigerians had to endure.
“The Nigerian people had suffered years of institutional deterioration, economic stagnation, and military tyranny when I was elected president in 1999. Some of them believed that they had elected a miracle performer rather than a president.
The former president discussed the weight of leadership in his speech, “Burden and Blessing of Leadership: Reflections from Global Africa to the World.”
And I could hear some of them whispering when the miracle did not come in full force overnight, as it never can. This is the burden: to be measured by time and elevated by hope, frequently at the same time, he added.
He asserts that a leader bears the responsibility of becoming the storehouse of others’ aspirations, which are frequently greater than any one person can fulfill.
“Those who have not been in a leadership position cannot really express the unique loneliness that comes with it. A leader, especially a political leader, is never alone, thus it is not the loneliness of being alone. You are always surrounded by ministers, advisors, generals, aides, supplicants, flatterers, and critics.
“I’m talking about the loneliness that comes with making a final decision.” The point at when you are the only one who can make a decision after receiving all the briefings, arguments, and possibilities. And millions of lives will be impacted by your choice. There is no self-dispersal of the weight. He stated, “It settles on one pair of shoulders, the shoulders of the leader.”
